Spontaneous Ceri took over this morning and contacted a few friends to meet for coffee and bagels. Usually, we do this type of blatant consumerism and carb-loading on Friday mornings; see how wacky I am today!
All of us have third-graders in the same class this year, so we were able to compare notes and share a collective groan regarding the upcoming biography project. Ideally, our children would come home from school every day and sit down to read their carefully selected resource materials and then spend time writing key facts on notecards.
Then there's the more realistic method of getting through "reportaggedon": It's called constant vigilance and entails having to nag our children to do a little bit of this assignment every day, . . . for many days.
Overall, though, I'm happy with Owen's experience this year. His teacher challenges the class, and as a result, Owen is getting more comfortbable with writing and with oral presentations. I love the fact that one of the rubrics (worth 25 points) for the oral presentation is "In-class presentation: eye contact, volume, pronunciation, charisma."
Hi, Rachael: Owen has the option of doing powerpoint or a video as well, though I don't see him wanting to spend that much time on it. It takes us long enough to get all the writing done. At least they get to learn about interesting topics. Second grade was really boring.
Posted by: ceri | January 13, 2012 at 08:55 AM
Jacob's up and coming report is quite interesting - Roman Architecture. He's done a lot at school but I want him to transfer it into a powerpoint as it will be easier at the presentation. He, on the other hand, thinks he's finished! Abi had a mystery machine to make. It definitely caused us all to argue, I hate home projects and I'm a teacher!
Posted by: Rachael | January 10, 2012 at 09:48 AM