Happy New Year,
I hope everyone had a peaceful and joyous holiday! Hard to believe half of the
school year has come and gone. As we enter into the Spring semester I look
forward to meeting with some of you whom I haven't met and reconnecting with
those I have. My classroom will take on a different look this Spring and we
will be doing some interesting projects and investigations into some pretty
heady matters! Expect lots of questions and commentaries that may require some
research on your part! I invite all parents to come and sit in on a lesson in
my class, to get a better sense of what your student is learning, how I teach
my class and "Is he really as mean and hard as they say?!" Some of you have
expressed a concern about the semester exam being different from the other
World Culture classes. Here is my rational for the additional questions that
the other instructors did not use. It was an assessment tool for me to see if
my students are learning information just to pass an examination or are they
retaining that information. The last twenty-eight questions on the semester
exam came from the last two units we covered prior to the Europe & Russia
Unit. Most of these questions were modified from the four choice selection to
only three choices, to sway the odds in the favor of the student. I chose to
do this evaluation on the semester exam as opposed to a regular examination
period because a.)it is the end of the semester and I wanted to see how much
total knowledge the students have gained, and b.) because semester exams are
not weighted as heavily as the regular unit assesments. If a student was not
successful it gave me the data that I need to re-evaluate teaching techniques
but did not harm my students overall grade point average. I hope this answers
some of your questions or concerns. Please feel free to give me a call or send
an e-mail if not and we can schedule a conference. As always thank you for the
gift of your student!I hope I return them to you a little wiser and always
questioning!
Pax tecum,
James R. Cudjo