Reflection

12/9/16

My students were so incredibly sweet on my last day. I was surprised with signed posters
from both periods, and a couple of personalized gifts from one particular student and
Mrs. Frechette. What a wonderful send off!
As I thought would happen, the students were crunched for time, as they had to complete
a vocab test and a very long reading test on Camp Harmony/Anne Frank. First period had
some confusion about the short essay, because apparently Mrs. Frechette had given them
a very specific structure with a handout for writing short essays in the past, but that
format did not fit these particular essay prompts. So I wrote on the board a quick outline
of what I wanted the essays to look like. It looked something like this:
o Main Argument (1 sentence)- answers either prompt a or b
Prompt a sentence stem: Both Camp Harmony and the Anne Frank play teach us
that ______________________ by/through _______________________.
Prompt b sentence stem: Both Camp Harmony and the Anne Frank play reveal the
theme that ________________________ by/through____________________.
o 1 SQUID paragraph on Camp Harmony
o 1 SQUID paragraph on the Anne Frank play
o Conclusion (1-3 sentences)
This structure on the board helped the students get a better idea of what I was looking for.
They knew beforehand that they had to use SQUID paragraph structure for their essays,
but they needed a bit more explanation of expectations for the short essay. This write-up
took a couple of minutes along with some explanation, and several students ended up
needing more time than the period allotted to finish their tests. So I talked to Mrs.
Frechette and she agreed that they could finish their tests during history class. This deal
went to second period as well, which also had several students who needed more time.
Second period had more students who were able to finish however, because my essay
structure was now already written on the board and I knew exactly what I needed to say
to get second period up to speed on the short essay expectations.
When I graded students tests I saw that the vast majority of them did very well, and that
they were able to follow my short essay structure with no problems. I was very proud of
how students scored on this assessment.