Tag Archives: assignments
Help the Poorly Organized Student. Please.
I’m the poorly organized student’s mom. Let me tell you: the poorly organized student needs all the help she can get. Don’t get me wrong: I think the poorly organized student needs to be responsible for her homework. She needs to write down assignments in her student planner. She needs to put completed homework in her folder and take it to school. She needs to clean out that locker and she needs to stop leaving socks all over the living room. Continue reading
Addressing Academic Dishonesty in the Classroom and Through School Culture
For many teachers, the excitement and energy of a new school year are among their favorite aspects of working in education. However, soon this excitement is overshadowed by the business of managing time and balancing competing priorities. Teachers assign papers, projects, and tests, while students become preoccupied with extracurricular and social activities. Competing priorities often collide, and the pressure for keeping up with assignments, studying for tests, and getting “good grades” leads many students to take shortcuts that equate to academic dishonesty.
Research indicates that many of our students are using deceitful methods to complete their school work. A recent poll by commonsensemedia.org found that more than one third of teens admit to cheating with their cell phones and about half admit to using the internet to cheat (http://www.commonsensemedia.org/hi-tech-cheating). Perhaps even more disturbing, about 25% of the students polled do not think that using a cell to get answers for a test isn’t cheating! The results of the 2008 Josephson Institute survey support these statistics. 64% admit to cheating on a test during the previous year and 36% admit to using the internet to plagiarize, yet 93% are satisfied with their personal ethics or character (http://charactercounts.org/programs/reportcard/2008/index.html).
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How to Encourage Challenging Students to Turn in Homework
Alicia was a student of mine. She was a smart girl with a giant chip on her shoulder. The kid could write, though. Once you got past the angsty teen stuff, her poetry was inventive and full of symbolism. Despite her best bluster, we became reluctant allies. She liked that I read her work and I liked that she worked.
We still had trouble when it came to Alicia turning in assignments. She wasn’t a fan of the day-to-day reading and writing expectations I had for my sophomore English students. She had no interest in reading nonfiction and less interest in creating plot diagrams. Continue reading
How to Address Classroom Cheating
The other day, my daughter’s middle school teacher caught my kid cheating. My daughter was finishing up a test, had moved to the classroom’s back tables, and was working when the next class entered the room. The bell rang and teacher began to teach. My kid quietly returned to her stack of books, removed the top layer, and took out a piece of paper that had writing on it. Continue reading
Students Online: Time Wasters or Innovators?
Your students are spending a lot of their free time online. Think of the number of hours you estimate they spend online. Double it. The doubled number is probably closer to the truth.
According to the Norton Online Living Report 2009, parents believe their children spend 21 hours online. The reality is that students in twelve countries reported spending 39 hours online. Don’t tell me these kids don’t have time to finish their assignments or clean their rooms. Continue reading
Posting Homework Online: Is It a Benefit for Students and Parents?
Lexi (named changed) has ADHD. She writes her assignments in her assignment notebook, but she doesn’t come home with all the books and materials she needs to complete her homework. Nearly every night Lexi asks her mother to drive her back to school to collect a missing book or packet.
Some nights Mom spot-checks Lexi’s assignment notebook against the homework the teacher posted online. It helps prevent missing assignments, Mom said. Continue reading
