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Teaching Diary 22: Final Exams
Mar. 12th, 2023 01:05 pmSo we still have one quarter left of the year. Kids are done May 26. I'll have one last unit for all the classes, and it won't quite take me up to the end of the year. Kids also have AP exams for the first two weeks in May. I feel like essays are pretty for final exams, but I'm still required to do a FINAL final. For English II, I'll have them read a story and respond to it. That's fine. It's basic. It's good practice. For the middle school kids, I'm having a final project. They will make a Welcome to Middle School Zine for this year's 5th grade class. But I was stumped on what to do with my Expository Writing II class. I don't want to just assign more long essays because then I have to grade them. I haven't really done any projects with the kids this year, either. I find it difficult to do projects with my English classes, even after taking a project-based learning class because what they need to really know is the writing process and how to communicate effectively with academic writing. They are all ESL students, even if they are not in official ESL programs, and they all have ambitions to go to top US universities (or their parents have those ambitions for them, and I don't have any say on THAT), and for that, they need to be able to produce academic writing.
However, I was cleaning up my apartment this weekend, and I cleaned off some card games I bought in the fall. I was looking for some cool Taiwanese souvenirs that were more than just magnets, easy to pack, and not fragile. One of the local bookstores had a bunch of Taiwanese card games. I'm not the biggest fan of board and card games, mostly because I never seem to have enough friends to play with. My mom and I play Scrabble, and my bestie and I will play Uno with my BTS Uno deck. But these games looked really cute. (I also had an ambition for a board game club at school, but that was squashed.) Anyway, I bought four or five different games, like Miao Miao Canteen and Taiwan Snack Bar. I figured I could find the rules online, but that has not been the case. Google translate has not been helpful, either.
This is where my brain wave comes in. What if I have the sophomores work together to write the rules in English as their final project? They like to be social and talk. They would have to play the games in order to understand the rules. They wouldn't have to do heavy research or a lot of homework for the project, which would be nice for the kids who have AP classes. We're also supposed to have some sort of showcase of work at the end of the year, and this would be a nice project to show off.
I think this could be a good final project for the kids. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.
Edit: I threw this idea out on Twitter, and one of my friends had some good suggestions. She suggested I have the students peer review each other's translations, which is such a good idea! I will have the kids swap games and play through, using only the English translations. I might also have my middle school students play the games and give feedback if we have time. And I just used Chat GPT to write a tentative rubric for the whole thing, which is really handy.
However, I was cleaning up my apartment this weekend, and I cleaned off some card games I bought in the fall. I was looking for some cool Taiwanese souvenirs that were more than just magnets, easy to pack, and not fragile. One of the local bookstores had a bunch of Taiwanese card games. I'm not the biggest fan of board and card games, mostly because I never seem to have enough friends to play with. My mom and I play Scrabble, and my bestie and I will play Uno with my BTS Uno deck. But these games looked really cute. (I also had an ambition for a board game club at school, but that was squashed.) Anyway, I bought four or five different games, like Miao Miao Canteen and Taiwan Snack Bar. I figured I could find the rules online, but that has not been the case. Google translate has not been helpful, either.
This is where my brain wave comes in. What if I have the sophomores work together to write the rules in English as their final project? They like to be social and talk. They would have to play the games in order to understand the rules. They wouldn't have to do heavy research or a lot of homework for the project, which would be nice for the kids who have AP classes. We're also supposed to have some sort of showcase of work at the end of the year, and this would be a nice project to show off.
I think this could be a good final project for the kids. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.
Edit: I threw this idea out on Twitter, and one of my friends had some good suggestions. She suggested I have the students peer review each other's translations, which is such a good idea! I will have the kids swap games and play through, using only the English translations. I might also have my middle school students play the games and give feedback if we have time. And I just used Chat GPT to write a tentative rubric for the whole thing, which is really handy.
