I wrote recently that I planned on using the same syllabus for students as I did for last year, and that would be enough. (Raise your hand if you also sang that in your best Eliza Schuyler voice!)
So, some of the things that were “enough:”
- My absent work policies
- How to meet with me (even though the times changed)
- My grading scale (ours is determined on a school/district level)
- My materials – all of these worked for me last year, though I used funding to get coloring supplies for each class, so I nixed that.
- Rules and consequences
- The general framework of grading/redos/incompletes
- Almost the entire second page (though I did delete a few topics we might not get to)
Things that needed changed:
- Updated room numbers, times that I’m free, and rewording of some general information
- The addition of the policy on translators – though not stated in the syllabus is that the first time (or, okay, two) it happens, they will be expected to redo.
- A general “redo” catch-all if the assignment is not up to the standards I expect.
- A window for assessment make-ups – anyone else have kids wait like a month to make up a missed assessment and wonder why their grade is so low?
- My sliding grading scale – this was a MUST for this year and I love the way it turned out.
- I ditched the parent/student signature portion – having kids turn in tiny slips of paper is what my nightmares are made of, and I never needed to reference them last year.
Where did I reinvent?
- If you can call it that, I needed to make a version for my AP students. This included most of the same information on the first page, but the Intermediate 4 information on the back, as well as the AP themes and a grading scale that isn’t my favorite, but will work for this class (I wish I could have done it without numbers, but we don’t do +/- at my school.)
You can compare to last year’s syllabus here, but here are the new versions:
French 1:
AP:
How are you making last year’s syllabus “enough?” I would love to see them! Feel free to link in the comments or share with me on twitter!
Can you please tell me what programs you used to create this masterpiece?
I used Piktochart – the free version!