Success Journal 4 - 3/21

Something I think I do well is setting high expectations and challenging students to do their absolute best on their work. They have a book talk/presentation due tomorrow, so today some of my students asked me for advice or help with what they wanted to do. One girl is planning on making a book cover to represent her book. She wanted to know if she could just print out a picture of what she wanted and tape it to the "book cover" because she couldn't draw very well. I asked her what kind of grade she would give herself and if that method would be the best. Of course she said no, but she kept stressing the fact that she couldn't draw well. I called her over to the computer with me and asked her to print out a picture she wanted. When she did, I taught her how to transfer the picture to another piece of paper by coloring the back and essentially tracing it. The whole process took about 5 min. When she was done, she came over to me and said, "Wow! I am really impressed by this! It looks so nice. Miss Hirt, I'm like really impressed with myself." I just laughed and told her that I knew she could do it and that she should never settle for anything less than awesome. She ended up showing everyone in class what she had done and seemed very excited to finish it later.