Our class period on Tuesday, October 16, asked you to choose between
- responding to the morning’s assembly;
- reading (again) a post about the end of the writing process;
- applying that post to your essay on education;
- helping a peer decode and respond to a college application prompt; or
- workshopping any or all of that with me.
You even got the seemingly-extemporaneous-but-actually-planned idea of looking into collective nouns and their origins. All that, plus a mention of PaperRater, a site that will give us another way to generate feedback — certainly relevant to our course, since you were also reminded on Tuesday to read (again) the instructional post on how feedback works in our space.
That makes at least eight possible focuses for a 40-minute period. Some options were obviously and explicitly tied into your grade abatement profiles, which take shape tomorrow, but every option would have contributed to your learning to some extent. You know this. You know that every choice counts and that your use of class time is essential to your success — and your grade, if it helps you to think in those terms.
Most of you responded to this freedom well, and I think you are starting to see what is possible in a makerspace. Some of you, on the other hand, made questionable choices. And in a space like ours, at your level, we don’t want to leave anyone behind. Your success is a shared success.
We are going to shift gears slightly next week and slow down this particular vehicle1 in order to focus on the concept of akrasia next week. This will keep us in our study of education. Before that brief unit, you need to reflect on Tuesday’s choices and every other choice you’ve made this month.
For some of you, this will validate your approach. It will illuminate the explicit link between insightful reflection and metacognition and a GAP score of 8 or 9 — which becomes that coveted 95 or 100, if it helps you to think in those terms.
For others, this will raise a lower score by honing your amenability and self-awareness. You will write about you approach this course and what you might do differently to find more success — and to improve your grade, if it helps you, again, to think in those terms.
Your Task
Look up the word provisional. Then look online at the provisional GAP scores posted for Q1B. They will be posted to Infinite Campus after this instructional post goes live.
The GAP report assignment for Q1B is also on Google Classroom. Head there next, load the form, and complete it. You have permission to do this a day early.
Finally, write about your provisional profile, unpacking the language into an honest and insightful essay. Delve into your choices over the last few weeks. Think about your use of this space. Contextualize your actions and reactions.
Do this, because you should always do this, and because doing this will raise that provisional score. What you are seeing, in those scores, is the profile that fits all current evidence. Today and tomorrow, you are adding to that evidence. Your efforts will change the profile you fit. And that gets to one of the most important elements of this kind of assessment: When you work hard, you are always moving forward, and your movement is about growth, aggregate success, and added value. You build toward a profile.
You can ask questions about this opportunity in the comment section below. You will also benefit from reading this:
Which is either a Rube Goldberg machine or a siege engine or a strange combination of both. ↩