[MOSAIC] Comprehension in general

[Eve]

This reminded me of Learning with Love and Logic (I know you don't 
want any book suggestions) which encourages allowing natural 
consequences to take effect.  If they were failing but allowed to 
pass into 8th grade anyway, then they may have gotten the implicit 
message that it doesn't matter what they do or how well they do 
because they're going to move on to the next grade anyway.  You may 
not have control over whether or not they pass into another grade--I 
don't know.  One of the examples in Love and Logic is about a teacher 
who put two baskets on his/her desk, one for work to be corrected, 
etc. right away since it was on time, the other for late work, which 
would be graded later (after school was out).  Therefore, students 
would end up with incomplete or failing grades as a result.  Maybe 
you don't want, or aren't allowed, to go that far, but this may be a 
place where learning about real-life consequences, and how people 
find what they learned in school valuable in their real lives, might 
help with motivation.  Then there are those programs where former 
prison inmates come in and tell about their experiences in order to 
get kids not to make the same mistakes they made . . .

Eve

At 02:02 PM 3/11/2007, Bill Roberts wrote:

>As I recall, there was some concern at the
>end of the year last year because over half the seventh grade was
>failing....