#student communication

Teachworks' newest add-on: Cancellation Emails

Teachworks’ newest add-on allows you to send customizable email notifications to students, parents, and/or teachers when a lesson is cancelled.  The Cancellation Emails Add-on lets you choose which recipient groups (students, parents, teachers) should receive cancellation emails, and it provides you with the option to choose whether or not to send the cancellation email for a specific lesson when…

When I create an assignment, I always create a rubric to go along with this. While teaching Grade 8 Social Studies, I asked students to create a video game cover about a video game that takes place during World War I. This was part of an assignment from which students had to pick 3 of 9 smaller assignments to complete. Out of the 8 groups of 2-3 students, 7 groups picked to do the video game cover. 

When I passed out the major assignment (that is, a small booklet with all 9 of the assignments in it) every assignment had its own rubric. There were clear expectations communicated to the students before they had to choose. For this particular sub-assignment, I asked students to include certain items that are part of a typical video game cover. However, since the video game had take place during World War I, the cover also needed to include accurate depictions of items such as tanks, uniforms, weaponry and landscapes. 

By communicating my clear expectations, students had fun and were very successful this this particular assignment. Upon reviewing the marks and completed rubric, I noticed that none of the groups got below 90%. I gave the students the rubric when the assignment was passed out, and ensured that they used it a check list of sorts. This way they were able to communicate what I had asked of them, which resulted in some great marks and very artistic video game covers.