I usually let my students keep their devices, but I had one student… I had asked everyone to write 5 sentences about a made up place. The kid was on his phone, showing things to his classmates while assuring me he was doing his work. Everyone finished but him, with nothing. I let every other student share their answers first to buy him time, then when it was his turn, nothing. I took away his phone and he had it done in less than a minute.
Sounds like you should have taken his phone away when everyone else had finished, or before that, since he was distracting others. Also sounds like the assignment wasn’t challenging enough for him.
You’re right on that I should have taken his phone away sooner, but he was the weakest student in class. Three of his sentences were the same sentence said more and more poorly each time. Not sure what he thought he was getting away with there. Of course I did a peer correction check of his presentation and had him do it again.
Technically, no. In fact, if you want to be a stickler for details, it was actually 8 sentences, not five, and it was absolutely longer than a minute, but I encouraged the class to help him. It’s a 1-2 week ESL program in the Mediterranean, and he was an Italian 12 year old who likely signed up for girls on beaches than speak English. The Italian government is apparently paying students’ ways into programs like the one I teach at in order to improve general English proficiency across the country, so we end up with a lot of kids who just come to party.
I usually let my students keep their devices, but I had one student… I had asked everyone to write 5 sentences about a made up place. The kid was on his phone, showing things to his classmates while assuring me he was doing his work. Everyone finished but him, with nothing. I let every other student share their answers first to buy him time, then when it was his turn, nothing. I took away his phone and he had it done in less than a minute.
Sounds like you should have taken his phone away when everyone else had finished, or before that, since he was distracting others. Also sounds like the assignment wasn’t challenging enough for him.
You’re right on that I should have taken his phone away sooner, but he was the weakest student in class. Three of his sentences were the same sentence said more and more poorly each time. Not sure what he thought he was getting away with there. Of course I did a peer correction check of his presentation and had him do it again.
Ouch. So he didn’t actually complete the assignment in a minute…
Technically, no. In fact, if you want to be a stickler for details, it was actually 8 sentences, not five, and it was absolutely longer than a minute, but I encouraged the class to help him. It’s a 1-2 week ESL program in the Mediterranean, and he was an Italian 12 year old who likely signed up for girls on beaches than speak English. The Italian government is apparently paying students’ ways into programs like the one I teach at in order to improve general English proficiency across the country, so we end up with a lot of kids who just come to party.