Really getting into it

Over my break I read over the students' written responses. The first day responses were not very good. However, that was really only a brief introduction and the questions were not very in depth. Hence, the responses were not that great. After the second day when we learned more about the greenhouse effect and how it relates to global warming students started to gain a better understanding. In addition the questions on day 2 were more thought provoking. The responses were better but still not quite up to par as I would expect.

Upon thinking about this over break I decided that I should clarify what a good response would look like. What criteria would I grade it on. We settled on a 3 point rubric.
A 3 would be the best score where the entry covered all of the following elements:

- thoughtful and addressed the topic

- directly connected to ideas discussed or learned in class

- detailed explanation

- gave support or reasons why

A 2 would be given to a response where only 1 or 2 elements were missing and a 1 to those missing quite a bit or that were completely off-topic.

I decided to go back to one of the crucial topics related to global warming after explaining the rubric for how writing would be graded to students. The students were told they would have a chance to revisit what they had written to revise or add to it and improve their score.

After asking if this was helpful the majority of students said yes. This will allow us to move forward with quality responses to the questions being addressed. The same rubric will be used for grading the posts on the blog. Then, after the fact I can compare the results.

Finally, today the topic of blogs was introduced. We started by looking at several different examples and talkinga about what was there. Students are to look for one blog of their own interest tonight. Also, to list two do's about posting to blogs and two don'ts. We will use these ideas as a springboard for creating our "blogging bill of rights."

More to come soon!!!!