Nov 29 2008
Playing Games & Cheating
I like to play games with my students. We play vocabulary games and reading comprehension quiz games. I always get excited about these games until I’m actually playing them with the kids. It gets completely crazy. The students get really excited and really loud. When I explain the game I think I cover all my bases but it always happens that students do things that I never expect. By the end of the day when I’ve played games with all 3 of my classes I’m absolutely exhausted. It is so hard to reign the students back in once they get going. Anyway my point is is that I like to do fun activities in class but I need to figure out a better way of facilitating it.
Moving on…..I just completed teaching my work sample to a 7th grade class that I started to teach 2 weeks ago. I really don’t have any relationship with them yet. On Tuesday I gave them the post-assessment for the unit. I had to give 4 students detention for cheating. I was so disappointed. The students were talking to each other and one students scooted his test to the side of the desk so another student could copy his answers. I couldn’t believe it. I was pissed. For some reason I felt like it was a personal insult. So I decided to give a little speech to the class about integrity and cheating. Even as 7th graders they only care about the grade. It is so frustrating. Thanks for reading.
One response so far
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I caught one of my favorite students cheating! I agree it feels really personal and disrespectful. Today I showed students what it should look like when they take a test (both hands on the desk, head down, paper in the center of the desk) and told them that if it looks differently, it looks like they are cheating and will be handled as such. I think for some of the kids, cheating has become a habit and they honestly dont realize when they are doing it some of the time! I caught one kid looking at anothers test and it was so engrained that thats how he found answers he didnt even think about it any more!