When a Student Leaves

Recently, a popular young lady in my homeroom has left our school. She was popular not because of any clique but simply, I believe, she had a warm heart and a happy personality. She left for personal reasons and I wish her the best.

It'll be interesting to see any change in the class. Up until the last day, the excitement of giving themselves "permission" to express their joy about her friendship overshadowed any sentimentality. They shouted her name in to microphone and cheered her entrance and, eventually, her exit. Their giddiness nearly reached a point near delirium. The class chatter was at an all time high. That was Thursday. As a gift to her, I showed a powerpoint slideshow of her and her friends, set to fun music. Everyone enjoyed it very much, and I thought it was a nice way to happily reflect on all the sunny days she had given us. I made it a point to not allow the music to become too, too somber. That just isn't her personality.

Fridays are always hectic because it's a short day and there is no lunch. This afternoon, cleaning up after the students had left, I reflected on the waning of the chatter, the slow tidal turn of the class' emotion.

Eventually her departure will affect her classmates. Just how deeply is yet to be determined. I am aware that this may come has a slow motion shock to some of them. I am prepared to catch them.

I am looking forward to Monday.

Once again, Math Saved My Life

I remember for a long time PAINFULLY trying to make my 17 or 23 or 27 quiz questions equal one hundred points. The theory went that it'd be easier to translate to a understandable percentage.

Well.... DUH.

I don't have to do that. In hindsight, that was ridiculous. But a new teacher, under the gun trying to do everything ALL at once and everything the RIGHT way sometimes can't think too clearly. Or see the obvious.

NOW

No matter how many questions, I show a percentage correct (for communicating to students: "See, if you get only 15 correct out of 30, that's a 50%.... which is a FAIL..."). I divide the number correct by the number of questions on the test. DUH. DUH. DUH. You try it. What a simple relief. This will work for any number of questions.

Now let's talk about points.

I make the test and quizzes worth points and fairly close in point value. This is a better way to ultimately ensure an equitable representation or distribution of grading points. Depending on your philosophy. You might think the test is the ULTIMATE. So, you make it worth a 1000 points while your quizzes are worth 20. But huge swings of grades can degrade (pun intended) a student's desire to do well. A little like dating a manic-depressive. Ouchie. So for me, quizzes are 20 points while a test is worth 40 points. This helps those students who also put a huge amount of stress on THE TEST and freak out and have brain-freeze when it's test day. They do exist. If you do weekly quizzes like I do, then good quizzes combat the evil brain-freeze reaction....which, in turn, is a better representation of that student's ability in the subject. So I feel like I've done myself and the student a huge favor.

Anyway, I take my magical percentage and multiply that against the total points possible. Voila! I now have the points they earned on my quiz. They also have a percentage (due to years of social training), which is easier to understand than "You earned only 17 points on that last quiz. The whole quiz was worth 20 points." (That is gibberish to a student. They are wondering "DID I PASS? DID I FAIL? WHAT are you talking about?").

Hope this helped someone out!
Happy Teaching!

Update on grading Work Habits

Well, planning on percentages isn't going to work very well with the grading program I have.
I am forced to give it a point value for it to show up on the student report. Therefore I gave the prepartion or work habits assignment a low point value. You say I should give it a high one? Well I disagree. I intend to form good work habits, but I don't think I can actually motivate children by penalizing them against their grade for it.
The math of it didn't work for me. The logic of it didn't work for me. My primary job is to teach math and science. I didn't want work habits to take away their hard work (studying, asking questions, taking notes, turning in most of the work) in those core subjects. It can be impacted as a matter of course, by their slovenly work habits (has to borrow a pencil, paper; shares a book with a friend frequently; forgot last night's work).
If I were teaching a course in organization, then I'd weigh the preparation score much higher. Since it's a byproduct or... um, a small part of learning my material, I gave it a small score. Hey, it's only five points in a week. But it could be the difference between a B+ student and a A- student. For some of us, that's important. Low points also ensures that I don't A+ students who truly are C+ in knowledge of the subject. SOME kind of points gives value for the students' efforts in trying to keep it together. So ... I decided on one point per day, or five points per week. Not bad. To compare, my homework is about 20 points per week, and a quiz is 30 points.

Think about what you're doing: WHAT exactly is your job? It's a myriad of tasks, including teaching skills on organization, but the actual purpose is to teach the material so I can't defend giving "preparation" more value than 5 points per week. By being unprepared, the students' grades are impacted ANYWAY. My keeping points on their work habits just provides a graphic for evidence of the impact.

Happy Teaching!

Work Habits? What Does That Mean? How Can You Grade It?

Typically, in my middle school classroom, work habits has been based on consistent homework habits. An enlightening conversation with our school's computer teacher had me rethink my simplistic view: work habits is an entire schema, a broader range than simply turning something in. Is the work neat? Is it presentable? Did the student follow the rubric? Is the paper prepared correctly?

Further, work habits become also "preparation". Did the student arrive with the expected and required materials? Textbook, pencil, agenda? Notebook?

Work habits then broadened itself into "accountability". Did the student read the requested chapter the night prior?

Whew! It was overwhelming!

However, it's important. Although it is a basic to grade homework habits as equivalent to work habits, and probably easier than the alternative: grading these mentioned skills individually and then combining the scores into some quantifiable number, a teacher who seeks to pinpoint one or several of the mentioned areas is nurturing lifelong skills that will ultimately benefit the student and, in retrospect,by the very act of doing so raises the bar for the teacher as well.

Yet how? I chose to focus on 'preparation'. I chose that because being unprepared has been a thorny issue with my classes this year.

I've started to include the "supplies check" as part of a simple roll call. I require four things. Pencil, notebook, textbook, agenda. I ask for the student to hold up or lay on their desk the item as I walk up and down the rows. I do it slowly, deliberately, and one item at a time, to convey the seriousness of my task. Initially students were tittering among themselves as some students look aghast at being checked for (heaven forbid!) the correct textbook. It appears to work well to do this "supplies check" during their "warm up exercise", typically for my math class is about 20 problems. I save the agenda check for last. I request the students after the check to write down the homework since the agenda is now so conveniently in front of them. I pretend to eye their actions so it seems like students bend over their Agenda to copiously copy the homework. At least I think so.

It has taken so far about ten minutes of my time. I imagine as we get used to this roll call, it'll go faster. Already the second day into the program, I had a few students who had stacked up their items on their desk ready for my inspection.

What do I do if they don't have the supplies? Well, I mark it a zero. A complete whole zero? Yes. If they are missing one item, they get a zero for the day. I don't really tell them this. I think it will be demotivating. But I am overwhelmed at the idea of micro-managing this and instead focus on the general question, "Did they come prepared? or not?".

Well, that's terrible, you might say. No pencil and they get a zero! I can understand that point of view and thought about it for a long time. I've decided to include these scores with their homework scores. For example, I've created a seperate grading column in my computerized grading program and I call it "Work Habits". If they turned in most of their homework, and were mostly prepared, their total combined percentages should average on the higher end. For some schools, this is indicated by a G for Good. How it specifially works is if they are 80% on Work Habits, and 100% on Homework, I add the two scores (I can do this in the grading program... thank goodness!) and average them. The 80% and the 100% average to a 90% Work Habits score.

Part of my mission as a teacher is not only to educate my students about the subjects I teach, but also to prepare them to become responsible adults. I am hopeful that simply focusing on this one aspect will enable me to push forward toward this little goal.

Happy Teaching!

Weekly Math Quizzes: Reasons, Methods

A weekly math quiz is essential.

A quiz is about 1o or 15 questions. Anything longer constitutes a test. Imagine it takes 5 minutes to go over directions. Another 2 or 3 for students to find their pencil. That's about 8 minutes gone. If you have 40 minutes, you only have 32 minutes left. If you allow one minute per question, then you have room for either a 10 question quiz or a twenty question test with room perhaps for one or two written responses (as in social studies). You then need time to collect back and count your tests.

If you haven't already, have your students use a number along with their name. Make it their habit to number the upper right corner of the test with that number. At the end of the testing period, have a reliable student put them in number order. Missing numbers should be immediately accounted for. If the student is absent, write their name and the test date on the extra test. Pin it up over your desk on a corkboard or similar. This will help you remember to have them take their missing test. If you also make it a habit to copy exactly one test for every student and two extra, you will also have another way to ensure you have all the tests (see earlier test drama blogs). One extra is for your Answer Key. The extra-extra is for the odd mishap of a missing test or to use as master for photocopying at the office, using your assigned office monitor.

If you teach more than one math class (as I do) stagger your testing days. For example, sixth grade on Friday, seventh grade on Thursday, eighth grade on Wednesday. Some teachers use test days as the way to "end" the week and put all their tests on Friday. I think that's crazy. For older students, who usually need to study for multiple subjects (okay, let's pretend they do that), you're asking them to review four or five subjects on Thursday night. It's also crazy because it leaves the teacher (me) with over 100 quizzes to grade Friday afternoon. And that never happens. I don't have all the quizzes to review on Monday. Sometimes not even Tuesday. And a quiz without a review is losing of half of its power to teach and inform.

Well, what if you have the test over on Wednesday, what do you do after? Well, that'a review day. And a mini-lesson on the next topic. What if it's Friday and you don't have a test to "keep the kids on task"? After awhile the students will get used to it being a lesson day. If not, then it's a good day to do something different: fractal lessons, geometry puzzles, or, this works for some classes, jumping to the end of the book and doing stand-alone lessons on triangles, cubes, etc. or problem solving. (Why do they always leave the most interesting subjects until the end of the book?)

Happy Teaching!