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Example of a Penrose staircase.

Back to Basics: Why Basic Assignments Matter Most

Perhaps the most notable similarity between a GAP score of 8 and a GAP score of 4 is the emphasis on basic assignments. If you complete these basic tasks, a final grade of 90 is likely; if you don’t, a final grade of 70 might be the highest you can go.

Tier Four: “Required Assignments”

Tier Two: “Basic Requirements”

In terms of skills, let’s use the metaphor of steps:

You’re asked to climb. If you skip the first step, you can probably stretch and get to the second. Some of you can take two steps at a time to get where we’re going.

But if you stop climbing, or if you refuse to take the majority of those first steps, you don’t move up.

You also can’t start at the top of the stairs, or even halfway up them; you have to take those first steps first.

GAP Triage

When you load the relevant spreadsheet file, you’ll find color-coded feedback arranged by period and student number.

Before you do that: Do not read this mathematically. Do not compare different rows. These data are part of a larger narrative, and you will absolutely get that narrative wrong if you go looking at other people’s feedback.

There is no efficient way to flip teacher notes to you than what I’ve done here. This alone takes the better part of a weekend. Do not mistake this for anything but part of the larger narrative.

Note, too, that this includes only basic assignments. You had many more assignments over the last month:

• “Why Read?” Response
• Response to WIP GAP: 10/11
• Goodreads Response
• River Essay #1
• Ongoing Pareto Projects

Discrepancies in final GAP scores are a result of these assignments, which were given feedback separately and constitute the more meaningful and personalized parts of the course.

Triage, as we’re using the metaphor here, is about showcasing for some of you where the damage is. It’s about treating those wounds.

The following post explains how to read these spreadsheets. This is required reading if you’d like to make sense of those zeros, ones, and twos:

GAP Score Triage: Overview

Understand that this information is being shared to help you understand the need to complete basic assignments. That’s the goal: to run triage for as many students as possible as efficiently as possible.

These data should also help you see the repercussions of good and bad choices. It will put it, as that post argues, into Skinner-box triggers anyone can understand. This is not the usual way to share feedback on your progress.

It is also always relevant that posting grades online is destructive to your learning:

It’s not enough to disseminate grades more efficiently — for example, by posting them online. There is a growing technology, as the late Gerald Bracey once remarked, “that permits us to do in nanoseconds things that we shouldn’t be doing at all” (quoted in Mathews, 2006). In fact, posting grades online is a significant step backward because it enhances the salience of those grades and therefore their destructive effects on learning.

Posting these zeros and ones in Infinite Campus would be detrimental to you. It would also communicate absolutely no new information at that time. It would warp and disrupt the learning process.

Again, this is explained in the post on GAP triage. You must read those directions before reacting limbically to these numbers. You should absolutely not compare your row to anyone else’s. You would be operating without the information you need, and you’d be learning the wrong lesson from these data.

In brief: If you are missing work, that is obvious; if the work is insufficient or incomplete, that, too, is obvious:

Insufficient vs. Sufficient Work

All assignments can be easily checked through Google Classroom. You should also have notes on face-to-face feedback, plenty of typed feedback through Google Docs and Classroom, etc.

So these are the basics. These are the first steps. The spreadsheet, again, doesn’t include any of the larger responses, like your river essay, because those bigger assignments can only be assessed effectively after you’ve done these basic assignments.

That’s how you need to read this triage spreadsheet. It shows the basic, simple, easy stuff that you have weeks, sometimes, to finish. Doing these simple tasks allows us to apply a makerspace mentality to your more elevated writing, reading, and so on; not doing them prevents you making any real progress until you do complete them.

Note that this will be a live link on 10/28:

• Spreadsheets for All Classes: GAP Q1B Triage [PDF]

A copy of that PDF will also be sent to you through Google Classroom. Below is a brief description of each assignment in the order they are listed in this triage spreadsheet.

Final GAP Score | What’s now posted in Infinite Campus. Unpack it with the profiles, skills and traits, and GAP guide. Ask for clarification.

WIP GAP Score [9/27] | See the post from October 2, 2019 and the explanation of WIP GAP scores.

Self-Reported GAP Score | If you don’t communicate where you think you are, no one can redirect you, validate you, conference with you, etc. If this number is off by more than one profile from your actual Q1B score, schedule a conference. See this year’s organizing post.

Self-Analysis ¶ | The self-reported GAP score is useless without this. If you don’t communicate why you selected a particular score, you might as well be guessing. Note, too, that if you don’t write enough to provide insight, this paragraph is a nonstarter.

Daily Calibration Check | This is required. I looked at a day when most students were present and had many ongoing assignments to work on.

In-Class Rubicon [10/7+10/8] | Two days considered together. See the post on October 8 for more. If you aren’t using class time well, you can’t expect to do well.

In-Class Rubicon [WIP: 9/27] | You especially can’t expect to do well after being warned, again and again, that you have to be on-task in class.

Guided Analysis: Graham | These are the traditional analysis questions that allow you to write freely on different subjects with that universal writing process guide. There probably isn’t a more important assignment from Q1.

Edpuzzle: Question 5 | This was a five-minute video accompanied by five questions. These are the basic questions that let us study literature without quizzes, traditional tests, etc. After the analysis of Graham, there probably isn’t a more important assignment from Q1, and the most important question is this one, from the end of the video.

Summer Reading Form | You could do this in two minutes, if you didn’t read. If you did read, this became the basis of the next week’s more in-depth writing response. Either way, it’s a simple form.

Note on Late Work

In many cases, assignment deadlines are waived, at least in terms of meeting those “basic requirements.” If you get it done, it still has value, so it counts.

The lateness counts, too, however. if it takes you weeks to finish something, you still have all the other steps to take. You’re now behind. You have to work faster to catch up.

There’s also a point after which the feedback you could have gotten is no longer possible. That’s why you might have completed something after the deadline, probably after the end of the Q1B panel, and not see it reflected here. We can “fix” that, by which I mean that we can adjust your profile, if possible, by meeting to go over the evidence.

The more important consideration is why you’re getting any work in so late that it isn’t reflected here. Of course we should get you the credit you deserve; the greater concern, however, is that you’re not meeting deadlines, even when those deadlines are flexible.

To use the metaphor of steps again: You can’t sprint up the steps at the last second without the risk of tripping, stumbling backward, and landing back at the start.

Note, too, that your teachers are always here to help you get to the top of those metaphorical stairs. We’re with you, as you walk, to the extent you need us. There even are escalators for some of you to use.

Ask questions below.