Chapter Nine - Parents and Community

A.
R. I didn't like this chapter as much as the Meet Me in the Middle chapter. The section about the student-led conferences was pretty good though. I'm excited about the work we're doing in class for this. I would have liked to read about more concrete examples of how to involve parents/community in the work done with students.

Chapter Eight - Safe Environment

Chapter Four - Designing Instruction

Chapter Fifteen - Parents as Partners

A.
R. This was a cool chapter, and exactly what I've been hoping to read in one of our books. We need to get parents online. There is certainly something to be said for sending parent newsletters through the mail. House visits, personally I find them a little sketchy, but we should still continue to do them. There is a growing disconnect between students and parents. Adults need to work harder and longer to make enough money to support their families. That means more time spent away from their kids. No one wants that, it's just how it is. We need to find better, faster, more efficient ways to reach our students' parents. What Wormeli described in the book seems perfect. A place online where parents don't need to worry about not understanding the content being taught. Hey, if we can teach a bunch of preteens, I'm sure a few middle aged parents would be a piece of cake.

Chapter Eight - Assessment

A.
R. Assessment. You think that you're all done with hearing about assessment, but then you look at your most recent lesson, and realize that your assessment is WAAAAAY off. I like how Wormeli says good assessment should be easy to grade. We're not out to create one huge competition between students. All we are looking for is a clear grasp of the concept. I personally hate rubrics, so the idea of just checking off assignments is good for me.

Chapter Seven - Differentiated Instruction

A.
R. This was a nice refresher of Differentiated Instruction. I feel like this concept particularly is important to keep reading about because it's very abstract almost. There's really no cut and dry method for doing it. It changes for every lesson. Wormeli went over it, and I'm glad he did, that differentiation doesn't mean that the student does more or less work, it's really about quality and extensions.
I think that I'll have a good chance with this "chaos" factor when you have so many students, at different level, doing different things. I like chaos. Haha. It's almost calming because usually I am the one who has a tab on everyone doing whatever they're doing. So, I guess as Im the one creating the chaos, then it's okay.

Chapter Six - Standards

A.
R. This was a really interesting chapter. It was great to read that Wormeli thought large projects should be broken up into smaller pieces. So many times in my own academic career I've waited until the last minute to get things done. They do get done, but not the way I would want them to me. I think that big projects are great, but breaking them into smaller pieces and having constant deadlines for each part, are how big projects come together the best.

It is difficult to always have standards in mind. Sometimes you need to fit the lesson into a standard, and sometimes you need to the fit the standard in the lesson. There really are so many loopholes to following standards, which is nice. I think that standards are something I would talk about with my own students. It's possible that they could think of even better activities than I could for achieving the standards.

Dear Team Two

Your presentation was wonderful. I am jealous of your gorgeous Wix page. I liked how I was never bored during your BookTalk. I liked the Play-Doh. I will never read your book. The quiz that we took was long but interesting. It would have been better if we had had more time to do it, so that we could have discusses the information the website gave for some sections. Besides that, I really like the presentation. I don't think separate sex education is a good solution, although I'd be willing to argue about it you.