For generations, the academic community has relied on peer review as a way of enhancing the knowledge base and encouraging serious scholarship. Peer review can offer many of the same benefit to students… [and] computers [can] mediate the interaction among peers. Gehringer (2000)

·        Peer Review reflects constructive guidance at its collaborative best.

·        As an application to the classroom, Peer Review helps students and the teacher.

·        Anonymous Peer Review provides a framework for students to learn balanced reasoning at a time when modern discourse often descends into shouting and insults (and that is just on CNN and MSNBC!)

·        When using a thinking schema such as P*M*I, anonymous Peer Review teaches students how to offer points of help, practice proofreading, and strengthen other communication skills.

·        Peer Review introduces and encourages diversity of opinion

·        Peer Review models the importance of checking work before it is turned in. When the audience is the teacher alone, sadly, many students are apathetic. But when the audience is the students’ fellow classmates, an extra attention to detail emerges.

·        Peer Review offers students a practical application in this real-world review.

Peer Review provides a review committee for the teacher who often has, to butcher Robert Frost, “miles to grade before she sleeps.”

If you would like more information on methods for Student Use, please refer to this link:

http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/peerreview/studentintro.html

For forms to use with students, see this link: http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/peerreview/forms.html  and http://www.scribd.com/doc/2205303/English-122-paper-one-peer-review

Quote Source: Gehringer, E.F., 2000. Strategies and Mechanisms for Electronic Peer Review

This

“An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.”

—Carl Jung, 1875-1961

We vowed to change that dynamic this time around.

Enter    Ruby.

Ruby is a “goodle” a greyhound/poodle mix (Don’t ask me how–I defer to the biology teachers among us)

Here is how Thematic Curriculum applies to this:

Science: Newton’s 1st Law of motion states that every object (Ruby) will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force (Kozmo, the bull dog next door)
Community Friends/Music: Our neighbor Bob might have chosen to play Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring, but instead he used courtesy and polite dialogue to deposit Ruby back in our living room.
Math: Husband Jim will swing by Lowes tonight and pick up the necessary implements to dissuade Ruby’s future romantic overtures. He will use math skills of measurement, proportion to figure the amount of materials to buy and use currency skills for purchasing.
Technology/Language Arts/Photography/Speech: I learned of all this AM activity via text message, cell phone, IM, descriptions and photos.
Texas History: Texans, whether human or dog species are known for their rejection of all types of fences and confinement.
Poetry: At dinner tonight I will recite, Robert Frost’s delightful poem, “Mending Wall”

…”good fences make good neighbors”

What other curriculum connections do you see?

Well, you have seen them too—the back-to-school commercials. It is almost that time of year. 

One of the initial activities in the back-to-school task list is the Student Information Sheet.

Why not add a small section to your Student Information Sheet to reflect your students’ technology skills. If you have a hardcopy handout, add a small section at the end. Or, consider adding a section on your blog or wiki for students to fill out that asks:

Students, Do you have…

~A computer

~A webpage

~A cell phone

~Internet access

~Accounts on Music sites

~A Blog

~Favorite websites (that can be shared with you, the teacher)

~Special tech skills  (such as keyboarding, spreadsheet skills, programming skills, hardware skills, graphic design skills, etc…)

Try it and see!

{Add any other ideas here!}

or another option

Click on the Health A-Z link (link is on the Blogroll)