Sep 22 2007
in·ter·im (ĭn’tər-ĭm)
An interval of time between one event, process, or period and another.
Interims went home yesterday. That means we’re halfway through 1st quarter – an eighth of the year. Most of my students have earned respectable grades. 1st quarter grades are usually the highest grades. Of course some maintain those grades throughout the year, but of the kids who are going to slip, this is usually the best quarter, though many put on better effort for 4th quarter. 2nd quarter is typically the worst quarter for grades. The kids are comfy and they let things slip. But this is only Interims, not final 1st quarter grades. The purpose is to give the kids and parents a look at what is happening so that they can make corrections – or keep up the good work! I have one student with a failing grade. He failed one test and got a 60 on the second. He didn’t do one homework assignment at all and I excused him on the other one. Yes – only 2 graded homework assignments in 5 weeks. We’re reading a novel and most of the homework is to read in the novel. I know I could give a few questions to check that they read, but I don’t 
it will even out by the end of the quarter, though.
I need to post on a great lesson that I did on Friday. I got the lesson from The Reflective Teacher. He has some great ideas that I have stolen….er….borrowed in the past.This lesson was to write a Haiku about what the kids are reading. I changed it up a bit to have the kids describe a character in our novel because our Instructional Focus for the week was Characterization. As a description of how it went, I’m going to post my comment back to The Reflective teacher here:
I did this lesson with my 7th grade reading classes today and it was AWESOME! Every child was engaged and creative and even when I asked them to revise something (not on topic, etc) they didn’t give up and everyone produced amazingly insightful stuff!
It was funny and inspiring to see fingers counting and blank stares into space where you could just see the gears turning in their heads!
They completed the poems so quickly that I let them get on the computers and type them up and illustrate them with clip art.
Thanks again for another great lesson!
