I’m now teaching at full load and finding it manageable. I attribute this to the many weeks of building up work load, rather than being thrown in early.
The first week back from break has been fun. I’m the teacher sponsor for the Junior Ultimate team, and watched our team play against league heavyweights, Eric Hamber, on Friday, April 1st. Many of my business students are on the team and proudly share with friends that “Mr Robson is my teacher”.
On being outside: The weather last week was summer, only with cherry blossoms and fresher air. Many classes went outside, especially those doing humanities (and even one of the Physics TCs). I spontaneously changed my Bus. Ed 8 Budgeting lesson plan so that instead of scavenging for prices of common goods / services online, I wrote them out on 60 pieces of paper and planted them around the school orchard. During the lesson (in last block), we all went outside and students searched in trees and planters for the papers. This was a fun modification of the lesson, but I feel I didn’t plan enough for the follow-up with what to do with the papers. We went back inside and I asked students to enter the data into google sheets, then share it with me so we could analyze it next class. To my surprise, many students didn’t know what sheets were, and some didn’t even know how to log into their google accounts! Grade 8s are nevertheless a fun and vibrant group to work with, and I will remember going forward to never assume they know as much as older students!
Presentations: Bus. Ed 9/10 students are presenting their Warriors’ Den 2016 business plans to judges on April 7th and 8th. My class has been doing voice exercises and putting together slides. Nobody seems to have nerves, which makes me a little anxious (no nerves means they may not prepare as much as they should). However, a few groups have super ideas and I’m confident they’ll shine.
Rubrics and assessments: I created a rubric for my Marketing classes’ final project. It’s so reassuring having one of these to justify marks, and I’m sure will provide guidance to students who have trouble with my rambling instructions. The rubric is here.
I used mail merge to email feedback to 67 marketing students on Femvertising and Hunkvertising assignments. In years past, marking 67 short essays was a weekend of work, and thanks to google forms, sheets and mail merge, everything took about 2 hours. More time outside!