All of my students are so smart and creative! I had the honors classes write their own scripts based on The Great Gatsby and film the scenes for extra credit! I only got a few submissions, but they are all wonderful and most are very comedic! I attached the link of two submissions here because they uploaded their videos to YouTube. I can't upload the other video files onto here, but if I figure out a way to I will add them later.
I am so frustrated right now.
While teaching the argumentative essays, I went over and over how to cite sources and how to properly reference the authors in the essay itself. We had several discussions on plagiarism, and the students were surprised to learn that it was illegal and would get them expelled from college in the future. So I know that each student knew that it was wrong. Unfortunately, two students decided to completely ignore all of these warnings. One went on an essay writing website where it basically copied a Wikipedia article for him. The other copied and pasted several sentences and made a patchwork essay of her own words and several other authors' words. I hated to have to give them both zeros, but I had given them plenty of warnings beforehand so there was really no other choice. At least they will have several other large grades this semester so it won't completely ruin their gpa. Hopefully they've learned their lesson and realized just how easy it is for a teacher to spot this kind of behavior. It seems as if my whole life revolves around essays here lately. My honors classes wrote timed essays on two of Hawthorne's short stories last week, and I just finished grading all of them today (including the makeup ones). Also my standard classes are beginning a unit on argumentative writing, and the students got to choose their topics today. That was very interesting. Some of the kids were genuinely excited and practically started debating during class and some of the kids were completely uninterested and just choose a random topic off the provided list. There was really no middle ground. I'm excited that many of them seem excited though. Hopefully we'll get through this unit without too much hardship. But as soon as I get the argumentative essays graded, it will be time for me to grade my honors classes' characterization papers! Pray for me! 😁 |