Last year, I got into the routine of playing a Jeopardy review game at the end of each chapter before we took a test.  Although I’ve got my reservations about its effectiveness as an assessment tool, it’s a fun activity and it helps reinforce some of the content that students need for the test.

Since I finagled a projector from the department this year,  I’ve updated the old Jeopardy idea and started using a Power Point template for the game.  It’s a big improvement over me reading the questions out loud, and its certainly good for the health of my voice.

As it turns out, some other teachers are doing the same thing this year.  In particular, the math teacher in my small learning community is playing Power Point Jeopardy games with our kids.

The Observant Student

A few weeks ago, as we were preparing for a Jeopardy game, one of the students commented that he seemed to be doing it in all of his classes this year.  [Note: I'm pretty sure it's just his Social Studies class with me and his Math class.]

He then asked, “Did they tell you all to do this?”

This observation really struck me.  In this era of accountability and administrative directives, do the students take note that all of us follow the procedures laid out for us by the administrators?  Do they see the Objectives posted on the board every day and associate that with a top-down directive?

What does that mean for the student’s perceptions of his teachers?  Does he see it as a model of good behavior – following rules and regulations?  Or are we simply mindless automatons, following the guidelines so carefully laid out for us?

I Suppose Small Learning Communities Kind of Work…

On a side note, it’s good that this student is connecting what he’s doing in my class with his other classes.

Our school (at least our sophomores) are organized into Small Learning Communities.  We call them clusters.  As the research goes, students that have teachers that can co-plan will see continuity in their various classes.  This results in higher student motivation and achievement.

Although I like the idea of SLCs in principal, we haven’t seen many of the benefits in our school – partly because of the way it’s implemented and the way that teachers resist that implementation.

Last year, I consciously made references to things that students were learning in their English class.  I used to sit in from time to time, so I knew the novels they were reading and the way their English teacher was framing the discussion.  More often than not, I’d reference things from English and just get a bunch of blank stares.

At least this year someone is seeing some continuity.