I just realized I didn't post back with retake results! I stayed at school that Monday 'til 9:45 when the janitor warned me that the alarm system was about to be turned on so that I could get results ready to be turned back to kids. The overall average on the assessment went from 52% to 71% in one week! Some students are continuing to retake so they can master objectives. It is exciting to see that investment.
We wrote essays this week. Welcome to formulaic 5-paragraph essays! I saw some great work from many of my students. I am excited to start writing tracking. I am also excited to borrow a document camera and show some student examples of both strong essays and common places where people went wrong. Below I am going to type an essay that one of my students wrote. This student is an English Language Learner, though she has tested out of the program. She is incredibly hard working and an amazingly sweet individual. The students got to choose anything they would like to write about for their first expository essay. I had briefly talked about the AIDS pandemic on Monday--World AIDS Day, the day we chose topics. Kelly asked if she could write about it. I helped her get started, but these are her words and sentiments. I am really proud of her achievement. I'll transcribe the essay:
HIV/AIDS affects kids around the world by killing their parents, kids getting sick, need to take care of their parents.
When AIDS kills parents, kids became orphans which affects them because they don't have someone to take care of them. They're with hunger because they don't have parents to feed buy them food to eat. And by that, they could even die. By killing parents you hurt the kids feeling. They could die if they cry a lot of get very, very sad sometimes too.
Kids get sick for a lot of reasons. For example, kids get sick because when the kid is inside the mother's stomch and the mother has HIV the kid were be born with HIV because the kid has the blood of her and her blood is with the disease. If the HIV gets wrose the disease would be called AIDS. The kid will die faster if the kid doesn't have medicen to take. If the kid has medicen to take the kid will die in a longer time.
Some kids need to take care of their parents because they have HIV or AIDS. People that have that disease need a lot of care. But this taking care of your parents could stop them to be educated. Also, it could affect their future because they're not going to be able to go to school. Taking care of your parents is good but bad at the same time.
As you can see some kids in the world have HIV or AIDS that affects their education, future, family, and friends. That could affect letting them succeed in the future.
I commented at the bottom of her paper:
You are going to change the world if you keep writing like this!
I believe it is true.
