L to J at Centennial
by Mrs. Hottovy
November 20, 2009
Epiphany.
Iambic
pentameter.
Genre.
Personification.
Motif.
Do you know what these terms mean? With the help of the LtoJ Process, Centennial’s high school English students are mastering these very words…and many more.
Created by Dr. Lee Jenkins, the LtoJ Process centers around a list of key concepts and terms that each grade level should master in English by the end of the school year. The freshmen list contains 155 concepts, sophomores have 100, juniors are working on 133, and seniors 130.
Each week (beginning with the very first week of school), students take a quiz over terms that are randomly chosen from the entire pool (the square root of the total number of terms equals how many terms students are quizzed over each week). The quiz lists the definition, and students must provide the term. As many students can tell you, scores on that first quiz are usually not too impressive – but that’s okay! Students usually make steady improvements on their weekly quizzes because they are exposed to more and more terms/concepts as the school year progresses.
If you would like to see what that weekly quiz looks like, ask your son or daughter to show you how they practice LtoJ on Angel (an on-line learning community similar to UNL’s Blackboard). Another study method for freshmen and seniors is to review their own set of LtoJ flashcards made in class, while sophomores might examine the word webs over each LtoJ term
Each student keeps track of his/her weekly progress on a graph. When we line those graphs up at the end of the school year, the process has been successful if we notice the data curve turning from an “L” into a “J.” School visitors might hear an old-fashioned teacher’s bell ringing in Ms. Hottovy’s room when students have reached an “all time best.” Sophomores and juniors are allowed to bring a soda to class the next day.
A very important part of the L2J Process is that students do NOT have permission to forget. Too often teachers and parents alike see students cramming to remember information for a quiz or test, only to forget that information soon after. The LtoJ Process requires students to continually build knowledge throughout the school year. This growth is expected to be demonstrated in quarterly exams. At the end of the first quarter, all students take a test on Angel. Students are expected to know 25 percent of the terms at the end of the first quarter, 50 percent at semester, 75 percent at the end of the third, and all of the terms by the end of the school year. Students can even practice the final exam on Angel as many times as they like, which is critical because terms must be spelled correctly on the Angel quizzes and tests.
This year’s students are right on track with LtoJ. The freshmen and junior classes scored 26 percent correct on the first quarter exam, sophomores scored 41 percent, and the seniors scored a whopping 48 percent! Keep encouraging your son or daughter to study his/her flashcards and practice quizzes on Angel in order to reach that 50 percent benchmark at the end of the second quarter.
The high school English department continues to be excited about how the LtoJ Process has positively affected our classrooms’ and students’ learning. We are having deeper conversations about the content we teach, and students are challenging themselves and each other to learn new information and perform beyond their own expectations.
