Exit Card - February 4, 2012 (FedEx Day)

Exit cards are a type of quick little assessment tool teachers can use to check how a lesson went with their class. Pass out index cards, ask a short question, and give students a few minutes to answer at the end of class, collect as they leave. I want to do a week-in-review type post each week, but I don't want to call them Week-in-Review. So, I'll call them Exit Cards.

I learned about FedEx Days, in which students are given a day (or class period, depending) to research and develop some kind of work product around a topic of their choice. This idea came out of the business world, and the name is derived from the requirement that the product be delivered within 24 hours. (This is so cool!)

I learned that the Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent runs book clubs, and they aren't your neighborhood book clubs, either. These include the author of the book and a panel of teachers, as well as a large studio audience. To reach out even further, the book club uses Skype to reach a second location at a local bookstore, and they take questions from both audiences as well as Twitter and email during the live broadcast. I cannot tell you how cool it was to see that. I feel like we are living under a rock here in HCPSS-land.

I learned that since you can't be in two places at once, when push comes to shove a meeting about closing local pools and another about the future of fracking in Maryland draw far more people than the one and only chance to testify on the proposed HCPSS operating budget. Six people testified. The hearing took, at most, thirty minutes. Hmm.

I learned that when you assign a long-term project in the HoCo blogosphere, you get similar turn-in patterns as you do in high school English. Some kids turn in the project early, some turn in just in time, and some don't turn it in at all. Huge thanks to HoCoPolitico for being the first local site to get info out about most of our Board of Education candidates! Twelve candidate interviews are up - go read them! 

I learned that I can ask my kids what they did that shows that they are full of awesome, and they don't even hesitate to name something. Of course I think my kids are full of awesome, but it's really wonderful to know that when I send them out into the world for six hours a day, they still know it about themselves. (I love their school!)  

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