Chapter 14 Quiz Corrections (Days 136-137)

According to the calendar posted about two months ago, today was originally supposed to be the monthly minimum day for April. But on Friday, we received the message that it's now a regular Monday. Just like the loss of Open House, this is caused by the two days of school cancelled in January. Speaking of which, you might be wondering whether we'll have to make up those days in June or not. As it turns out, both the county and the state must approve the waiver. While LA County has approved it, we still have yet to hear from California. I assume that the state is more likely to accept it if the district shows that we aren't too far behind in minutes -- hence the cancellation of the minimum days.

And of course, recall that I keep trying to time these quiz corrections to minimum days. If today were a minimum day, then we might as well spend it on corrections as there isn't much time for anything else. But if it's a regular day, then it would be more valuable as a teaching day. But unfortunately, I didn't know today was regular until it was too late -- I'd already announced it would be correction day in class, and so it's only fair to do the corrections.

So in Calculus, I allow the students to do corrections for the Chapter 6 Quiz. It was a difficult quiz since areas and volumes are a tricky topic -- but also, when I set the quiz on DeltaMath, I erred on the difficult side because I knew the students would be able to do corrections. (In other words, if I'd known earlier that today would be a regular day, I would have made the quiz easier and then allow no corrections.) During the corrections, we watch Starbird video #13, "Abstracting the Integral -- Areas, Volumes, and Dams."

For the Ethnostats quiz last month, I allowed corrections -- and at the time, I already told the students to expect corrections for this quiz as well. Many of the students, especially in fourth period, don't always do the chapter study guides, so I also give the incentive where students must have completed the study guide before I allow them to do corrections. Does this plan work? Well, most of the students who did the study guide earned 100% on their quizzes anyway, so there was nothing for them to correct. But the quiz was fair simple enough that many of the students who didn't complete the study guide earned B's. (Perhaps the VNPS Review that we did before the quiz helped them out.) So it's all about whether those students want to finish the study guide want to do corrections to improve upon their B's, or decide that it isn't worth it.

We don't have corrections in my Trig class. Instead, we proceed with Section 3.4 of the text, which is on lengths of arc and area of sectors. They will take their usual Tuesday quiz tomorrow.

Today is Saturday, the second day of the week on the Eleven Calendar:

Resolution #2: We are prompt & prepared.

I'd like to believe that most students today were prompt and prepared for their quiz corrections, but once again, many in fourth period aren't. But I will give that class another chance to make up their study guide and other missing assignments soon enough. Oh, and before you ask, I will still do a monthly "A Day in the Life" post for April -- it just won't be on a minimum day.

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