L1BENG - End of Year Reflection

A little bit annoyed - my second attempt at a YouTube capture didn't work! Hopefully I can remember everything that was said today.

Creative Writing
These students were evenly split - half wanted free choice for their writing topics, half wanted set tasks. We talked about creating assessments where there was a range of options that allowed for each.
They were happy with the feedback that they received, but wanted more one-on-one time to 'find all the mistakes'.

Formal Writing
They found this really difficult. They wanted more practise around it - not just here's the task, here's how to do it, now do it. They wanted a chance to write an entire practice piece before the assessment so that they could make the mistakes and get specific feedback before their actual assessment piece (in this instance, portfolio drafts were included).
They wanted the same amount of freedom as creative writing - equal options of set and free tasks.
They wanted a range of styles to choose from - show them a number, eg a formal letter, a persuasive essay, a blog post and let them choose the style they want to write on.

Speeches
Very verbose on this - they loved it or they hated it, no middle ground. They were 'ok' with the idea of presenting the speech one-on-one with me, but not in front of their peers.They didn't like the recorded one very much, and they didn't like the live one very much.

Night
One student asked if it was the first time I'd taught it, because the content seemed worn out and hagged like I'd done it too much. Interesting - I felt a little that way too.
Some didn't like it, some found it eye opening. Many wanted to have a guest visit from the author so that they could talk to him about his purpose. They realised that couldn't happen with Night, so they wanted a New Zealand text so that they could do that. They found the book easy to read but struggled to get the ideas on paper because they couldn't identify with the emotions. They wanted the content to be taught in two ways - half emotive and half non-emotive.

Close Viewing
This was in the first term, and most students liked the text choice, however they thought 8-Mile would be much more appropriate than Freedom Writers. They thought Freedom Writers was too outdated. They thought it would be good to teach contemporary films that they already had seen and to learn how to seem them in a new light and find the deeper meanings in them.