Chapter 7 Quiz (Days 55-56)

I'll begin with a description of today, in "A Day in the Life" format. This is for the special day "Parent Conferences Day." (By the way, in the original Tina Cardone blogging challenge, the special day she chose was "Parent Conferences," not Back to School Night or Open House.)

8:00 -- Unlike Back to School Night, we get a minimum day on Parent Conferences Day. The schedule is just like the monthly Monday minimum days -- in particular, all classes meet starting with first period. I, if you recall, don't have a first period class.

8:40 -- Second period arrives. This is the first of two Ethnostats classes.

I'm giving all of my classes a quiz today. The quiz for this class is on Chapter 7 of the text, which is on bivariate data, scatterplots, and correlation coefficients r. Just like the previous quiz two weeks ago, this quiz contains eight questions -- three multiple choice questions worth five points each and five free response questions worth 12 points each, for a total of 75 points.

Like my previous Stats quizzes, this one is on Illuminate. Thus I don't have the students draw any scatterplots at all -- instead, it's all identifying key features and matching scatterplots to r values.

9:20 -- Second period leaves and third period arrives. This is the AP Calculus class.

As is typical on minimum days, my blogpost is all about time management with short classes. My plans are always to give just a Warm-Up, quiz, and Exit Pass. This DeltaMath quiz is on derivatives (up to Section 3.6 of the text), and the previous quiz had eight questions, so I decided to try another eight questions today -- prepared, of course, to cut the quiz short if there wasn't enough time.

Well, there wasn't enough time. One girl -- the lone junior in the class -- finishes the first six questions, and so I declare that only the first six questions count as today's quiz. But a few students answer the questions out of order, including one girl who gets six questions correct -- a different six questions from the junior. I also have to figure out how to make the six questions add up to the stated 75 points I said the quiz would be worth.

Oh, and speaking of time, the dismissal bell after second period and the tardy bell to third period both ring two minutes early. And so I enforce some "broken bell rules" that I mentioned to them earlier this week (anticipating problems with bells on the minimum day) -- the students were dismissed from second period early, and so I must mark them tardy since the bell rang. Two girls become the first victims of my broken bell rules as I had to mark them tardy (including one of the perfect scorers).

So far, it appears that the students do well on the inverse trig questions (Section 3.6) and the poorest on implicit differentiation (Section 3.5).

Meanwhile, since tomorrow is an even block day, today is the last time that Calculus meets this week -- and before Halloween. Therefore my annual candy and pencil giveaway starts today. In addition, I bring some small bags of white cheddar chips for any students who earn a perfect score on the quiz. I give a bag to my junior (since I'm now counting her quiz as a perfect score). I don't notice the other girl who earns a perfect score until after I dismiss the class.

10:00 -- Third period leaves and fourth period arrives. This is the second of two Ethnostats classes.

Again, this week's bell schedule is weird -- just minutes after I say "Have a nice Halloween weekend!" to my Calc students (and collect their weekly Warm-Up/Exit Pass sheets), I see my Ethnostats kids for only the second time this week.

Meanwhile, this is the class with the guy who runs Cross Country. He was entered in the Riverside Invitational last weekend -- but unfortunately, he had to drop out due to an injury. And since this was his last scheduled race, it means that his XC career has concluded. It's a shame that he must end his senior season prematurely.

10:40 -- Fourth period leaves and fifth period arrives. This is the general Stats class.

My original intention was to give this class a slightly different quiz from Ethnostats -- but unfortunately I inadvertently post the same quiz to this Illuminate as Ethnostats. It also means that the lone guy in both second period Ethnostats and fifth period Stats takes the same quiz twice today. He doesn't mind -- and in fact, he's one of two guys to earn the bonus bag of chips today. The bonus bag is earned for getting all three multiple choice questions correct (since I haven't graded the free response yet).

11:20 -- Fifth period leaves. I don't have a sixth period, and so this concludes my teaching day.

During this time, I speak to the other math teacher next door to discuss parent conferences. I have three conferences scheduled for today -- two students with D's (one in Calculus, one in Ethnostats) and one student in my Advisory with two A's and four F's. My partner teacher asks me what grade this student is earning in my Advisory -- since, believe it or not, this class counts as a college prep class with its own letter grade!

I've had problems with grading non-math classes in the past. Back at the old charter middle school, first we had the music teacher needing to give grades for the first trimester. He ends up giving almost everyone an A, except for a few troublemakers who get C's. Then at the end of the second trimester, I suddenly was asked to give science grades (after not having to give them first trimester). I didn't have time to come up with enough graded work, and so I used the same strategy as the music teacher.

Thanks to these Parent Conferences, I know now that Advisory needs a letter grade. I do have a few assignments that can be graded -- a senior "brag sheet" that I gave early last month, and then an SEL lesson where I had the students turn in work on paper. This gives me time to establish an Advisory grade in time for the first "quarter" progress report that's coming out in a few weeks.

I haven't quite decided how the grades for this class will work out (and I admit that I write about Advisory less than any other class here on the blog). The idea is to rig the grades so that no one is earning an F on the progress report, since students (and their parents) will complain if they're suddenly failing after seeing no grades for two months. (That's why the old charter music teacher avoided F's in music, and I avoided F's in science.)

For example, I can make the Vanderwerf name tents that I assigned the second week of school be worth 60% of the grade -- and since everyone did the name tent, no one is getting an F. But a student who does no other work besides the name tent will earn a D -- and hence receive a progress report. And after I assign more graded work in November and December, the name tent will become less than 60% of the grade, and so the student who does no work will indeed fail the semester. I'll probably announce the grading scale to the Advisory class on Monday.

Meanwhile, notice that in my math classes, I have only two D students and no F students. This is a good time for me to evaluate whether I'm being too easy (or hard) on the students. For a long time, there was an F student in one of my Ethnostats classes, but then he moved to independent students. As long as that F was there, I thought I was grading fairly, but seeing no F there any longer, I'm wondering whether I'm too easy in the grading.

And as for there being only two D's, there were a few other borderline students earlier. But I kept pushing them to do more work and turn in late work in order to raise the grade to a C- and thus avoid the Parent Conference. Trying to avoid that parent phone call becomes a powerful motivator, and so only two guys (plus the Advisory guy) need a conference.

1:45 -- I make my first phone call, with the mother of the Ethnostats student. He is failing in some of his other classes, and she had already been trying to find out how he can make up work. I told her that he did make up some of the earliest (August and September) assignments a few weeks ago. He still scores low on quizzes (although a quick glance at today's quiz suggests he might be improving).

3:30 -- I make my second phone call, with the mom of the Calculus student. I inform her that while I haven't completely decided how to weight today's quiz so that it adds up to 75 points, so far DeltaMath shows that he received the lowest grade in the class. I tell her that he needs to work harder in this class if he expects to pass the AP in May.

So far, this Parent Conference seems to be effective. Since the conference ended, the guy has turned in a whopping six late assignments!

5:00 -- I drive home in time to do the last conference on Zoom. The mother of the Advisory student is a Spanish speaker, and so the school secretary joins the Zoom call in order to help translate.

I tell her that from time to time, there are study halls days in Advisory, and so he can use this time to make up work for his other classes. He is failing Precalculus, but this isn't required for graduation. So he should focus on his English, Economics, and Ethnic (Mexican-American) Studies classes that he does need to pass for graduation. Finally, I informed the mother that I'm way behind in grading my Advisory -- the grades will be ready in time for progress reports.

And so this concludes my Parent Conferences Day. I still remember Parent Conferences Day at my old charter school -- and I wrote about it on the blog (for Tina Cardone). That day, I had a morning conference with a sixth grade girl earning straight A's (as so often happens, it's the parents of the top students who eagerly attend conferences, rather than the parents of failing students). But I did eventually see the father of one of the troublemakers -- a seventh grader earning a C (gasp!) in music.

Talking with the parents helps me reevaluate my own teaching practices. I know now that I need to be much tougher with my students, especially in Advisory where I'm not even grading them -- but also providing them with the help they need to be successful.

Tomorrow is Halloween Adam -- the day before Halloween Eve, in turn the day before Halloween. (I often use "Adam" to refer to Friday school observances of Sunday holidays.) And so the celebrations will continue tomorrow -- in addition to passing out candy in my even-period Ethnostats classes, there will be trick-or-treating during Advisory. (This is why I'm not grading Advisory until Wednesday -- unless I'm going to grade their costumes.) Also, the Ethnic Studies classes will hold a Dia de Muertos celebration after school.

Oh -- and of course, it goes without saying what song I'd be singing in class if I were still singing -- Square One TV's "Ghost of a Chance." Probability, the topic of this song, is a Stats topic (though not until second semester).