I just finished a night of conferences with my two CT's and it was so interesting to see the disconnect between the students work ethic and how they are evaluated in school verses how their parents see them as workers. Parents defend to a fault and I saw so many defensive parents tonight. It was interesting to see how this was dealt with and how the CT's were able to work around that to be able to communicate concerns or give comments on what they see are the best possible options to support student needs and learning.

I just taught my first UbD lesson and I left overflowing with thoughts and reflections. There is so much wonder and excitement I have about the social studies content I'm teaching. I just wish I could transmit that to my students through osmosis. I wanted to incorporate student voice and boost status thorugh a jeopardy activity, and I think it was good. The group of students hasn't had activities like that ever before so, all things considered I think they did really well. They were responsive and provided measureable, appropriate feedback. With this activity though, I had one student in every group that was really engaged, the rest of the students were still getting over the novelty of being placed into groups for a "game" ( I didn't call it that, but that's what they were thinking.) How can I scaffold these activites appropriately if I want to start introducing them this late in the year? Do you just have to dive right in and begin by telling them your new expectations for experiences like this, or do you work up to them?