Career Day: Student Engagement and Assesment

Entry #5: Date and Time: Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (3 hours) Task/Activity: Since it was “Career Day” during Spirit Week, it should be noted that students were rather “hyped up” and class was rather leisurely in anticipation of the upcoming schoolwide events taking place both that day and later in the week. As a result, both classes worked on their “Summative Assessment” packets handed out the day before. Students worked independently to read each passage and answer its corresponding multiple choice and/or open-ended questions. After students completed the packet, they then worked on an independent writing assignment on MyAccess covering the topic of their future career, considering the fact that it was “Career Day.”

However, given the heightened level of excitement, I can understand why Mrs. Lanza implemented an easy day for her students. In fact, if Mrs. Lanza would have insisted on having a serious class day, she would have had to fight for her students’ attention amid the enthusiasm for the rest of the school day and week. Furthermore, I also feel that it was essential that students take a bit of a break considering the fact that the PARCC exam was less than two weeks away. Personally, I feel that if PARCC preparation was pushed onto students it would have only tired them out, especially during Spirit Week. It is only logical to expect that the week before the PARCC exam would be spent completing intensive preparation activities, so I feel that this break was the best move the could have been made in order to prevent student exhaustion. Overall, the only complaint that I have regarding this visit was that both classes did get a bit out of hand at some points. However, this is only expected due to their excitement and enthusiasm, and is well deserved considering how hard they had been working on PARCC exam preparation