Keeping Track

With an eye toward the middle school portfolio, to be organized via digication.com, and the November exhibitions, we are tracking each child's progress more closely.

The method we're using for that is to triangulate. There are three ways to track a given student's work. There is the weekly syllabus and the portfolio list, referred to in previous posts. These cover primarily the general, class-wide assignments.

Now, as the end of the quarter approaches, I have begun producing weekly individual assignment sheets. These are fairly simple, but have had a striking effect on the kids. When there is work time during the day, they carry these around and refer to them frequently.


The students' computers have at long last arrived, and are currently being prepared for distribution by Matt Berg. The integration of the kids' work into these miracles of the machine age will also simplify the tracking of their progress, beginning after our return from the long weekend on Tuesday.

Here's a sample:

ASSIGNMENT	DUE DATE	RETURNED	REVISION DUE
prepare history of the week	oct 10
revise and type Why Mesopotamia?	oct 10
revise and type consequences of farming	oct 10
complete chart: project frame/pay-off	oct 10
watch Candy Chang TED talk	oct 10
propose prompts project	oct 10
revise and type Mesopotamia lesson plan	oct 11
write on Letters to Julia	oct 11
read Gilgamesh script; write journal paragraph	oct 12
list books for personal library	oct 12
write on The Red Pony	oct 12
propose songwriting project	oct 15
write on Tortilla Flat	oct 15