Chapter 5 Test (Days 36-37)

Today in Stats, I give the Chapter 5 Test on the stories that quantitative data tell. But unfortunately, due to a key error on my part, the test doesn't go as smoothly as it should have. Here's what happens -- I begin with the Warm-Up, as always. I try to give a question that will help the students on the test as well -- this saves time, since Warm-Up time also doubles up as test review time. I choose a homework question on stem-and-leaf plots, analyzing the margins of victory from Super Bowl I to XLIII for the median/quartiles.

But here's the problem -- stem-and-leaf plots appear on the Chapter 4 Test, not Chapter 5. In other words, I was looking at the wrong chapter! Moreover, in trying to draw the stem-and-leaf plot, I keep missing one of the data values, and so there are only 42 leaves instead of 43. I end up wasting time trying to figure out which value I'm missing -- all of this to solve a problem that has nothing to do with today's test.

This forces me to rush going over the homework and test review questions. My original plan is to give the students ten test questions, each worth ten points so that the test would be worth 100 points. The questions would come from the textbook online test bank -- the first test there had seven questions, and then I would add three additional questions to give a total of ten. Instead, I give only the actual seven questions given in the test bank -- and now it's up to me to figure out how to make seven questions add up to 100 points.

The best idea might be to keep the two multiple-choice questions at ten points and increase each of the five constructed-response questions to 16 points. After all, Illuminate -- the testing platform that I'm using for Stats -- is limited to a four-point rubric for constructed-response anyway, and four divides 16 evenly.

I'll grade the tests over the weekend. So far, I do know of one student who doesn't do well -- the one special ed student. His one-on-one aide notices that he struggles on every question. She questions the wisdom of placing him in Stats, especially considering that as a senior, he doesn't need math to graduate.

Meanwhile, I give the test in Calculus today as well. For their 100-point Chapter 2 Test, I choose 20 questions from DeltaMath -- although it takes me extra time to find 20 questions that make sense (the danger of using two different sources -- the main text and the online platform). Our school's DeltaMath license expires tomorrow -- the other math teacher says that she might pay for an extension herself rather than wait for the school or district to renew it. Thus I grade these tests right away to beat the expiration.

I'm particularly interesting in how a certain girl in my class performs on the test. She was absent on the days of the first test and the first quiz, but did well on the make-ups. So I was eager to see how she'd do on her first test on its actual scheduled day. Well, her score turns out to be zero -- "Not Started" -- because, as it turns out, she spent the testing time doing homework (also on DeltaMath) instead! (GoGuardian doesn't help me here -- it shows that she spends the whole time on DeltaMath as she's supposed to.) I'm not quite sure what to do here -- I'll discuss with my partner teacher tomorrow if I have time.

Tomorrow is a Twitter day -- Ethnostats will work on their Greta Thunberg essay/speeches. And Monday is a PD day with no students, and so my next post will be on Tuesday, October 5th.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Advisory in Review (Day 180)

Today is "A Day in the Life" for the special day "last day of school." It is the last day of final exams for juniors, with Periods 4-6 meeting today. But before we begin "A Day in the Life," I have much to say about today's schedule. First of all, recall that there are only two minimum days for finals this week instead of three -- one last effect of losing two January school days. (Something similar happened when I was a student teacher -- the school was short minutes and couldn't have three minimum days for finals. Instead, on the first day we have Period 1-2 finals for two hours each as usual, then it was Period 3-4 for 30 minutes each. The second day was similar, with Period 3-4 finals and short Periods 5-6. Only the last day was a true minimum day.) The juniors take their finals today, but not my Ethnostats juniors. Since seniors are a supermajority in my class, I already gave my juniors their tests on senior finals day. You may ask, what are t...
Read more

Chapter 15: Probability Rules! (Days 140-141)

Today in Ethnostats, we work in Chapter 15, on rules of probability. The students learn an addition rule where the events need not be disjoint, and a multiplication rule where the events need not be independent. In my last post, I wrote that I would give a 12-point assignment today. I end up assigning the questions at the end of the chapter, even though the Chapter 15 quiz is several weeks away. The students must answer the first 12 questions on that page -- in other words, it's a dozen questions for a dozen points. One of these questions asks about probability using playing cards. I've been meaning to give the students a playing card worksheet, and so I finally do this today. The students glue this into page 28 of their Stats Scrapbooks -- and as it turns out, the 12-point assignment happens to be Assignment #28. So the next few interactive notebook pages and assignment numbers will line up. Meanwhile, in Calculus yesterday, we moved on to Section 6.5, on average value of a fu...
Read more

Chapter 6: What's Normal? Continued (Day 42)

Today is Columbus Day, or Indigenous Peoples' Day. While California schools don't close for the holiday, some districts hold a PD day today. My district, of course, had our PD day a week ago. Today in Stats, we cover the next three pages in Chapter 6, on Normal distributions. Here the students learn about finding the area between two z-scores. On the TI-83, this is the invNorm function. As for the TI-84, invNorm is just like the normalpdf and normalcdf functions -- mu and sigma are entered. This lesson goes more smoothly this time, since by now I'm expecting the TI-84 version of invNorm to be beefed-up from the TI-83 version. The exception, though, is in fourth period Ethnostats. For most of Chapter 6, the lessons for general Stats and Ethnostats are nearly identical. But since fourth period is larger than either second or fifth periods, everything goes more slowly. This includes the Warm-Up -- I must keep telling the students to be quiet while I read about the Hispanic Her...
Read more