Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Day 16: Unit 1 Quiz 3 & Review

Nothing major - simple 4 question quiz on solving systems of linear equations. My streak of "assessments without a typo" ended at 2, oh well. At least I caught it while they were still taking it so it was addressed in a timely fashion. 

I'm still amazed at the differences in behavior between the honors and regular classes. It's really the only major difference - racial & gender makeup is the same, they're almost all 10th graders, etc, but the regular Geo class just can't physically sit still, stop talking and pay attention. It's sad because knowing that, we still put 35 of them in a room. If some kids are more distractable than others, why don't we make smaller classes with more teachers for them? What? Distractable isn't a word? Psshaw.

We used the time after the quiz to go over some examples of S1.5 - writing the equation of a line parallel/perpendicular to another line, through a given point. 

I did try to emphasize that with SBG, you can't "fail" a quiz or a test. For starters, quizzes & tests don't get entered as such into ActiveGrade, only the standards go in. In my view, when I assess students, I'm asking to know where they're at. Maybe they're finished learning, maybe they're still at the starting line. If they're not done yet, that's ok - we're not even done with the unit yet. If they're still not done when we take the test, that's ok too, but the responsibility to continue learning will shift onto their shoulders at that point. Really, the only point at which they *have* to be done is the end of the semester. If nothing else, I really hope I can get students to think along those lines. 

Tomorrow is online practice with the Carnegie Learning Tutor and Friday is the Unit 1 Assessment. 

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