Hours 14 and 15

Mrs. A asked me to grade the Brown Bear Projects.  This was harder than I anticipated, partly because I didn't have the rubric I created for the project with me and partly because I didn't want to down grade the students for things that I felt I had made unclear to them.  Mrs. A generally grades her students work by giving the student a 1, 2 or 3.  3 is the highest grade that you can receive in a class her class.  She sorts all the art work into piles the represent the different grades and then considers if she should move anything.  I new I was partially grading the student on craftsmanship I wanted the shapes to be cut out in the forms that I had demonstrated to them and all of the edges of the shapes glued down.  I wanted them to have given their brown Bear's certain features.  The problem that several of the students had was that they had cut their brown bears bigger than what I asked for and some of the bears legs were hanging of the background page.  I debated about whether or not I wanted to down grade the students for this but I determined that the problem was one of my own making because I hadn't made it clear enough to the students that they shouldn't let any part of the brown bear hang off the page.  I'm looking forward to getting a little more experience at grading.

Mrs. A also started a new project with her 1st grade students.  They began weaving cups into baskets.  Mrs. A had cut seven slits into the cup and showed the students how to weave the yarn through the teeth that she cut.  The students then began working at their tables.  Some of the students had a really hard time figuring out how to weave the yarn around the cups.  The other problem students had was pulling their weaving tight.  Mrs. A said she usually tugs on their shirt to show them how tight they need to pull the yarn.  I had a hard time getting the students to really pull hard enough on their yarn.  I saw a few cups were the student had woven the cup pretty far, but failed to pull the yarn tight enough.  I wasn't really sure if I should pull out all the work they had done and ask them to work the yarn again.  Now that I've thought about it a little more I think that in the future I would take one strand of yarn out and have them weave it a little tighter leaving the loser stuff below. they could have on the last day the option of weaving a second better cup after they had mastered the skills on the first cup.