No Confidence

We have adopted a new textbook this school year, and today I made the first assignment from the online version. The learning curve was moderately steep, as neither the students nor I had never used the interface, and I couldn't see what their end looked like until they pulled it up in class. It was relatively intuitive, though, and I was up front with them about how new the tools were. 

Even so, I spent the class circulating through the room, checking in and troubleshooting as best I could. Some of the support I offered was more content-related, and that was fine, too. We were reading the lyric poem, "Life Doesn't Frighten Me" by Maya Angelou, and answering the pre-formulated questions, something I have rarely done in my career. 

I have designed my own lessons based on student needs and interests for 30 years, but this publication is touted for being closely aligned to and supportive of our state standards (and hence the test), so who am I to kvetch? One of the items was phrased in such a way that many students were confused, however, and I found myself clarifying the directions over and over. 

The students were supposed to Annotate: In lines 13–21, Highlight the phrase that is repeated in most of the stanzas. I think the disconnect was that it wasn't clear that they were looking for one phrase in that section that was repeated throughout the poem. As a result, many students spent time trying to find repetition within that particular passage, which wasn't there, beyond the pronoun 'I'. If I had written the question myself, I would have revised it after the first class so that it was less perplexing, but we were stuck with it. 

After I helped one student, he came up to me reproachfully a little while later. "You told me that I was supposed to highlight "Life doesn't frighten me at all"! he said indignantly. "But when I looked at Lucas's, I saw I was wrong. He highlighted 'I' all the way through!"

"Really?" I replied, looking over my glasses with raised eyebrows. "You looked at another student's work after I helped you, and you think his is right and not yours?"

"Uh," he hesitated.

"Why don't you go back and help Lucas correct his," I suggested, shaking my head.