January 26, 2007

Homwork:
Pictionaries 1-10 unit 10
Practice for your oral reading

Today:
I read my piece to section 3. Just to let you know that I am not perfect, I scored a 96% on my reading. I had a few tiny pauses, but I had a huge stumble where I had to actually figure out what I had written. In a later class, I rerecorded that paragraph so it will sound better. I want to have my family listen to the recording, and I can't have that huge mistake in the final version.

I have been giving some thought to the GoMyAccess scoring of the "Monsters" essay. Even though I complained in the last blog entry that the computer scored a nothing piece of writing as a 5, the same scoring applies to all students. So the students who got a six did SOMETHING that earned them a six. Was what they did sound writing? I don't have time to score the essays. In general, the scores should only vary by one score lower if I were to grade them myself. The scores are not perfect, but they can give useful information about a student's writing abilities. The final verdict: the scores aren't perfect, but they are scores. I will use them.