12th Week

It is very interesting to see the progress that has been made by certain (actually by many) of the students in the class. After the first test, and the failed grades marked in red in the excel sheet which you sent, I thought that we would have many students who would fail the class. Many came into this course not prepared for not just advanced grammar, but for the basics. And I guess from the initial result and from my observation, I assumed the worst for the students. That was a mistake on my part. I would have been more than ready just to continue on with what I was doing and not take a second look at how I was delivering my information. I would have attributed failure to them. Now I see however that we need to adjust and make sure that if we see students struggling, we work to help them both through conferencing but also through adjustment of the lesson plan and of the assessment. This is not to say that we should make the information less comprehensive but that maybe students need more support—more modeling, more explanation—and that is most certainly reasonable. And it has clearly resulted in a very good end to the semester for many of these students.