2nd update on Inquiry Plan

After introducing how to create formal commands on Tuesday, my students practiced with several different exercises. Then they completed a take-home assignment which helped them write out several commands that a teacher would give a class. This made them familiar with the wording and structure.

On Wednesday, after I presented the project to my students, they got to work right away writing out four to five rules for their specific activity. They LOVED working in groups, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how well they stayed on task. They had a strict time-line which positively affected how well they stayed on task. The students spent Thursday preparing their visual aids and creating skits about how their activity should not look during class. I spent the time checking in with groups, helping them grammatical errors and assisting in prioritizing their rules.

On Friday, the students presented their posters and skits. For each rule that they presented, they were expected to give one reason why it was important. We discussed how it was important to have rules with a purpose. Some of the main themes running through their presentations were: respect, responsibility, and successful completion of assignments. I was impressed and pleased that all students created practical and truly important rules. Not one group made light of or created silly rules for their activity. Some of the groups were truly creative with skits...others were not. However, the students had fun watching all of them.

While the theme of expectations has been presented, now I will be observing each activity over the next two weeks to see how well students follow through. For each activity, we will be revisiting their self-created rules from this point on. I will report back after observing them in each activity.