Welcome to Semester 2 ... now tweeting homework! Feel free to follow me @HaroldTGoldfish
Sorry for not updating this -- been tweeting.
B - Fiction & Drama: Juror Commentary: 1. What's your reaction to your juror? 2. What is he most concerned with? 3. How does he speak - consider stage directions, volume, word choice/vocabulary/wordiness/quietness, politeness/rudeness, individuals/whole group Tonight: Act 2 & Questions
C - Fiction & Drama: Seniors: exam scores are posted by ID below and outside 607 Juniors - continuing with our story
D - English 10: 1. For Tuesday, please have finished The Old Man & The Sea and done the reading guide questions.
** A word on iParent, grade codes and updating schedules.**
1) Please ignore assignment dates in iParent. I do. Sometimes I input a term's worth of vocab quizzes on the same day as placeholders. Seriously, what kind of monster gives all 4 unit tests on the same day of the third week of September?
2) The grade code of NR = Not Received, which to me, means something different than a 0 that is earned (for lack of understanding or a lack of integrity)...
a blank space in both columns means simply that the assessment hasn't been done yet, or entered yet.
To be human and honest, I don't think people outside of my field always quite understand what an average means and what it doesn't mean. A stock ticker is sometimes a great analogy and other times completely wrong. Let's say the class has just started and has had one assessment and our imaginary student got a 100 on that first little quiz. The mathematical average for that student is currently 100. Is that student "an A+ student"?? (For that matter is anyone to be described by a grade? Really?) Should the people who are concerned about that student believe his/her average "falls" or is "slipping" when he/she gets an 85 on the next assessment? No, of course not. Likewise, if the student bombs the next assessment or chooses not to hand it in, the consequent average-tanking may not be remotely indicative of his/her ability or mastery in a subject.
A term average is intended to be an average of all the assessments undertaken in a term, which is a span of ten weeks. There will be times when we won't have a single assessment in a category, and that category may be up to 25 to 50% of the whole average.
In truth, the most useful piece of data is the category average. This will allow people to view trends - does your student consistently do great on written work, but has a string of zeroes on vocabulary? This is the thing for students and families to look in on and discuss together.
3) I'm trying hard to have a more regular update schedule. I keep a paper record, a personal Excel record and use iPass. Please know that students' work is being assessed, given feedback, and recorded ... but it might not make its way into iPass until I can find an uninterrupted half hour. In this past year, that has been increasingly difficult.