Slice of Life - What is Your Best Effort?

Slice of Life is sponsored on Tuesdays by Two Writing Teachers. For the month of March we are posting a slice each day on our blog. Join in!

As I wrote about earlier in the week, lessons in reading have focused on some questions:

• What is your best effort?
• How do you feel when you put forth your best effort?
• Have you completed assignments to your fullest potential this year? Ever?
• What is holding you back?

I asked my students to somehow represent a character from their current book on a piece of paper. Drawing/ sketching was fine. So was creating a web. The guidelines were very broad. Today they turned their assignment in.

I noticed a few things. One, there was not one assignment late from seventy-eight students. They rarely have their reading responses late, but typically, there might be a few.  Two, many kids turned it in during the week and then asked for it back to do more work. That is unheard of. And by far, the biggest question I had was, "Mrs. S., do you think this is done? Is it good enough?" 

With a smile I would reply, "I'm sorry, the only one who can answer that is you." 

We have all levels of learners in these classes. With every single one of them, I saw growth from what they typically turn in. We will have to continue having this discussion because, after all, they are eleven years old. I'm just excited to see where we are beginning and where we go from here.

You can view their work in the video below.