final exams: well, i just finished marking half of them and i was so wonderfully surprised by the way that some of my students pulled together great ideas into an essay. i just give them the semester exam question at the beginning of the year – answer our essential question using evidence from history, english, & personal experience. about as far away from “real-world” as you can get, but it sure does help the students show what they know!

We have year-round classes, so I gave my midterm last week. I thought having just the one week left in the semester after Christmas was icky. But it did mean that I was able to use the midterm as motivation for reviewing the first semester worth of material. We hadn’t really had class for three weeks, so some sort of review before hitting new material was necessary. It gave me the chance to make sure that students were where we left them before.