Three More Updates

At my high school we have tables instead of desks, and all last year, I put up manila folders when the students were taking tests. I was never happy with that solution, but I never found/had the time/whatever to change it. This year, this is my second version. These are just LARGE poster boards cut in half (the white part) with a slit up/down the center. Then I took other board (they'd run out of white by the time I went back), and cut accordingly:

It mostly works okay. I like it WAY better than the manila folders. They're still a bit floppy towards the outsides, but I think I can fix that with some sort of teeny stands or something on the bottoms.

Another goal I had was for the students to be more reflective, so periodically on one of their homework assignments (I've only done it twice this past 6 weeks), I assign as one of the problems a "how are things going" question. Then when test time comes around, I collect their notebooks to check that they're taking notes properly and to see their responses. Wooo, glad I asked. Here's one entry:

This student is so NOT stupid, and she doesn't put on an air of feeling stupid, so if I hadn't asked, I wouldn't have known this was going on.

Finally, I had my students make their 2nd foldable to eventually glue into their notebooks. We took 4 1/2 sheets of paper (8.5" x 5.5") and offset them a bit and folded them over and stapled at the top and voila:





The middle "same colored" flaps REALLY bothered me for 4 classes (OCD anyone?), so by the 5th time I did this with my last geometry class of this topic, I figured out a way to fix it. I took the middle folded paper, and folded another one the same way, and cut out a 3rd color and just shoved it in instead of the same color, and the magic stapling fixed things. Disaster averted.