The third week (03/08 Monday - 03/12 Friday)

There were two big things this week. One was that Dr. Huhn from Marshall University came to Cabell Midland High School and observed my lesson on Wednesday (March 10). I received many good comments as well as many points that I need to improve. It was a refreshing learning, receiving comments from someone professional, and her comments were precise such as "I have to be more careful for pronunciation because the students were picking up my Japanese-accented Spanish." (Dr. Huhn at right)

The second big thing was that I gave the students mini quiz. It was somewhat a mid-term of my student-teaching. We were finishing up Lesson 3A and moving on to Lesson 3B, which is still within the same unit of "My Community." Many students were nervous because I did not allow them to see the verb conjugation sheet for regular verbs (which Ms. Ross has been allowing them).

Connection with Marzano

This week I would like to talk about the feedback. First of all I would like to write the processes I took up to the quiz day (thursday) this week.

On Monday I announced the class that there will be a small front-back quiz on Thursday. Told them what to study (on which pages, past tense of irregular verbs, vocabulary of community) , and how to study for it because some of them don't know how to memorize.

On Wednesday, my entire lesson period was to review for the quiz while Dr. Huhn was observing me. We reviewed 6 irregular verbs, not only orally but how to spell them, expressing things to do in each place in the community, such as "we check out books in the library." In this way, they not only memorize the each word, but they can create the meaningful sentence using those words. I also provided the study guide, and went over the study guide.

On Thursday, I gave them the quiz. They looked so nervous, so I announced before the test, that my test is notorious to be difficult, but my grading is fairly easy until you will finally learn the materials on the quiz. My goal is that everyone learns the materials on the quiz, so do not worry. Just do your best. If you need, I might give you the second chance. (I did not tell them what, but I was already going to have them re-do the part(s) they missed for 1/2 of the points after I return the quiz result to them. In this way, they will look at the part(s) they have missed and will learn from their own mistake(s). )

Also the bottom of the quiz, the students had to answer (in English) the feedback for this class. "Write your feed back for this class. Are you learning something? Did you study for quiz? How are you (and I) going to improve our class?" This part worths 5 points because I believe that reflection is important in order to improve, and no one will score ZERO as long as they write something here.

I worked so hard until late to grade all the papers, because I wanted to return the quiz with my feedback on Friday (03/12). Otherwise the students had to wait until next Monday. As the research in Marzano's book tells us, the feedback should be timely, even better when feedback is given immediately after a test (p.97).

I used the corrective method, so that the students can not only see what they have missed, but also how to fix it. Many students had a spelling mistake of "sacar, yo form, preterite," because it is orthographically irregular (if it followed regular -ar verb conjugation, it should be sacé which many students wrote. But sacé is pronounced as "saSe" losing original sound of "saKar." In order to maintain K sound, it should spell as saqué.) Yes, it was very time consuming, but I wrote both correct answer(s) as well as explanation for each students.

I also made a note to myself (while grading) which part is most missed by many students, including this saqué, so that when I returned the quiz next day, I re-taught on the board to all the class.

Finally I wrote my personal comment to each student, such as your pronunciation is good, or I would like to see you more participating in oral drills etc. I tried to write something good and encouraging as well as some room of improvement that I want to see from each student.

Because the students do not receive the feedback like mine, some students seemed surprised to see my red pen words everywhere while others did not care the put it away immediately. I told them not to put it away and have them corrected their mistakes. I used the cooperative learning method if they had to ask their peers. That was the lesson for Friday: to make correction and turn it in for partial credit.

Even though there were many anxieties over my quiz without the conjugation sheet, most students made 40 points and above (50 points as full score) whereas 3 students (in the same sitting area) scored 11, 17, and 18 ( 2 girls and 1 boy). I need to pay more attention to those three during the class, or have them change the seat.