Book presentation

One of the "projects" Rachel has had to do this year is a presentation about a book she read -- an in-class, posterboard, stand-up-in-front-of-everyone-and-present thing. She was great about getting a head start on the work (with Drew's great encouragement and gentle pushing) and with only a few bumps at the end (she didn't appreciate having to correct her sentences after Drew and I copy-edited them -- a bad business, having a mom for an editor) she got it done.

I had a chance to look at some of the presentations earlier this week when I dropped by Rachel's class (more on that later) and my heart sank a little when I saw how creative some of them were: full-scale models of, say, trucks and figurines, and beautiful poster boards of "Amelia Bedelia" with sparkles and colorful lettering. Our philosophy on class projects is to let Rachel do most, of not all, of the work, with us being there for gentle guidance. (The same applies to Science Fair, which is this upcoming Thursday.) He thinks that many parents in Rachel's school do much of the work on projects for their kids (in fact, Billy, Ivy's dad, told us that Jenny is doing "most of the work" for Ivy and Liam's required Science Fair entry -- they're twins in fourth grade, so they don't have a choice of entering) and he doesn't want to follow that path.

So, it was nice to come home from work one day this week and see this from Rachel's teacher -- a "scoring rubric" for vocabulary, content, oral presentation and neatness/quality of work, with scores of 1 (needs improvement) 2 (acceptable) and 3 (exceptional).

Rachel got 3s in everything except for oral presentation; she got a 2 for "appropriate volume and rate of speaking." (Apparently her voice was a little soft).

She got a total of 11 points out of a possible 12 in the "exceptional" category. "Well done Rachel!" Ms. Burke said. "I love all the art work on your poster and you chose excellent vocabulary words. You spoke with confidence but next time, try to speak a little outer. But overall you did a wonderful job!"

I made sure to compliment Rachel not just on the work, but all the effort she put in.