Day 4

Day Four (February 28):

Today, Riley was late to class so I was assigned to work with another student until she arrived. This new student was named Adrian. She was working on Literature for grade nine. She told me that she had already taken and failed the course two or three times before she entered the e2020 program. I asked her if she liked it better and she said yes because she was able to pass the tests easier and could get more help. Adrian started this semester later than most of the other students. She did not begin until the end of January so she is quite a good bit behind where she should be in the program.

To help her catch up, the teacher in the classroom told her she would help Adrian work through a 12 page short story by working on the quiz with her.  After they finished the teacher said that that should help her with catching up some, but Adrian showed me her progress measured in the program and she was still far behind.

Once Patrice came back I worked with her while Adrian was receiving help from her teacher. Patrice was in the middle of finishing her test for her 10^th grade literature class. While we were working through it I would try to help her when she was having trouble determining the answer. I did this by asking her if there were any answers she could eliminate and if so which ones. After that I would ask her which one did she think was the best answer and after she would respond I would ask her why she chose that. Most of the time Patrice would respond “I don’t know”, but I would help her work through it. I would ask her why she knew it was not the other ones and then help her explain why she chose the final answer that she did. I think that by doing this, it helped her to understand the material better.  

I never really liked taking tests in high school where the teacher would ask short answer questions, or any type of questions and then ask me to explain my answer. Now I feel like as a teacher it is helpful to know how your students arrive at their answer by having them to explain their reasoning.  I think that even if the answer that the student gives is not necessarily “correct”, if their reasoning is logical they should still be allotted some points for their answer.