Tag: horses to water

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Leveling Up: Level 2

  By Grade Abatement, Space Explainers, Triage

Grade abatement tracks your learning through profiles, which contain predictable and consistent language about universal skills, traits, and knowledge. Every three weeks, a profile score delivers an evaluation and a blueprint for improvement, and this is part of a much more robust and embedded form of feedback.

Each of those hyperlinks demonstrates the depth of the system. There are levels to this. The more invested you are, the more rewarding the learning is, as if a second course was contained within the first one.

That first course sometimes requires old approaches. It sometimes becomes necessary to track the value each of you adds to or subtracts from the learning environment on a moment-by-moment basis, and we will do this through the gamification of in-class choices.

TL;DR, or the gist of this shift:

  1. You must meet a goal of almost 100% focus when you are in the physical classroom.
  2. If you are off-task or unfocused, you trigger negative consequences.
  3. If you are on-task and focused during class, you will be successful.

This is your space, and you are old enough not to blame others for how it functions. Learning to own your choices is part of the curriculum. You can read the full version of this post to understand more:

Each day, you should go out of your way to appear focused. If you actually are focused, you don’t have anything to worry about. The work is robust and responsive enough to take care of your learning. Otherwise, you might want to fake it, as the second excerpt in this handout explains:

You have been given the tools to be productive — or, at least, to fake productivity long enough for a few positive benefits. Log into your school-issued Chromebooks, for instance, and know that the school’s 1984-inspired Securly software will monitor your focus. These reports can be run at any time to identify if you’re treating the space as a study hall.

That’s the digital trail. You can also use the physical space effectively by choosing a different seat at the start of class or by organizing your workspace deliberately to minimize distractions.

You must focus, in other words, and be obvious and even ostentatious about focusing. If it looks like you’re focused, you are. If it looks like you’re not focused, then you’re not.

For more on why “focus” is an essential skill for all citizens, read below:

When we track your choices, good and bad, any mention of tally marks is conceptual or metaphorical. If it helps to literalize it, however, you can:

Positive contributions correspond to upper-tier profiles: galvanizing actions, creative collaboration, insightful self-assessment, that sort of thing. Doing more than just what’s required boosts your learning, the learning of others, and the products of the space.

Here is a partial list of what triggers a metaphorical red mark:

  • Inability to sustain focus
  • Inability to think critically
  • Inability to self-direct
  • Inability to self-assess

We could also pull a representative list from the essay excerpt on Occam’s razor and faking it. Those metaphorical tally marks indicate

  • watching sports highlights;
  • scrolling through social media;
  • completing a Social Studies presentation;
  • researching prom dresses;
  • looking up dirt bikes;
  • playing a game on your phone; or
  • having an in-depth but off-task conversation.

As you rack up poor choices, you’ll eventually tip the scales. You’ll go go from non-heap to heap, and then there are repercussions. These have already been established as separate from GAP scores. Some repercussions happen in class:

  • Assigned seat
  • Restricted access to technology
  • Additional daily check-in
  • Individual work contract

But if you’re wasting time in the workspace, you must pay back that time. You’ve cost yourself. Again, the TL;DR or gist of this shift:

  1. You must meet a goal of almost 100% focus when you are in the physical classroom.
  2. If you are off-task or unfocused for a significant percentage of class time, you trigger negative consequences.
  3. If you are on-task and focused during class, you will be successful.

You have to make up the time you waste, not just to insure you’re getting the work done, and not just to insure that you are ready for the future, but because you owe the space that time. This, too, is mostly metaphorical, but it can become literal. In that case, you may have to pay back the time wasted.

Again, this is all designed to promote your learning. Here is a partial list of what can happen:

  • Interventions or meetings with Guidance
  • Interventions or meetings with administration
  • Mandated one-on-one conferences before or after school
  • Schedule change: SSH → Study Hall
  • Schedule change: SSH → tutoring in Learning Center

You don’t need hundreds of metaphorical tally marks for us to justify helping you; you need only to have demonstrated that you are struggling with the skills and traits required in a learning environment.

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October 11, 2019

  By 2019-2020

WIP GAP: Today’s the Day

Today is the de facto date for progress reports, so you have been asked to complete a work-in-progress grade abatement profile score report — what you now should recognize as a WIP GAP report. The guide to these scores is available here:

WIP GAP Explained

The form you must fill out is available here: https://forms.gle/FM5aZbDR8Stgfk6v8. You’ll need to be signed into your Brewster account to access it. What you’ll find is a stripped-down version of the formal GAP report.

As always, this kind of self-assessment requires you to weigh evidence honestly and objectively. It is “collective human judgment informed by evidence,” as Tony Wagner calls it: a collaborative effort to validate your progress, hold you accountable for any missteps, and give you direction moving forward.

You can mark the assignment on Google Classroom as done when you’ve completed the report. Alternatively, you can create a document there to start a discussion about your progress. That is strongly encouraged! The more you invest, the more successful you will be.

In fact, you are also strongly encouraged to ask questions here, in the comment section of this post, about your progress. Those questions will benefit others, and what benefits them will also help you.

It might be most helpful to read some of the testimonials about this makerspace that are available online:

This makerspace approach to your learning is highly effective for 95% of students, but 100% is more than possible. If you find yourself in that 5%, start a discussion. Ask questions. Invest in the space, and it will pay off, because it always does.

Remember that a lack of communication and honesty is what kills any relationship. Your integrity is as much a part of your learning profile as any other skill or trait.

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Data, Data Everywhere [English 10, 2/25/19]

  By English 10 Regents (2018-2019)

Schedule time before March 1 to read this post and apply its data and feedback to yourself. Think of it in terms of interstitial awareness: When and how will you be able to read this most carefully?

Ask any general questions in the comment section at the end of the post.

GAP Q3A Scores

It is critical that you first read this post on pre-GAP triage:

GAP Score Triage: Overview

Then you must find your set of GAP Q3A data in the following spreadsheet:

You can also use type the URL directly: https://tinyurl.com/gap-triage-218. Scores for Q3A will be posted in the morning on February 25.

New Hall Passes

On Friday, February 15, one of the bathroom passes for Room 210 was found on the floor of the cafeteria, which is, as you may have noticed, not the bathroom. We’d already lost a pass or two this year to that sort of abuse, so you’ll now be signing out and back in every time you leave the room.

If you take too long, go too often, wander down to the cafeteria, or in any other way abuse the privilege, you lose that privilege.

No More Phones

December saw the first moratorium on phones:

Moratorium

Phones can be learning tools, though, or so the thinking goes. In January, we went back to student choice and self-control (again), and you were allowed to use phones and other personal devices in the makerspace.

Starting February 26 — on Tuesday, so you have Monday to make peace with the change — you’ll be prohibited from using your phones in the makerspace. The negative impact on your learning far outweighs the benefits.

You might want to read this to understand why the ban is necessary:

I will sort out individual access as necessary. Anticipate putting your phone in the holder in the corner, or accept that one of your teachers will take the phone to administration.

Spreadsheet Specifics

You should read the triage post and look over the spreadsheet first.

Total Check-In %

These numbers are based on the maximum possible “Daily Check-In” responses from November 17 through February 14. Absences and individual circumstances were taken into account after the fact on a case-by-case basis.

These percentages also ignore the content of those responses; instead, we are using them as reference points for habit-building and compliance. They are part of a bigger picture, like everything else.

Learning By Doing

This will get its own lesson, post, and discussion at some point.

The basic idea is that the more you, the student, do on your end, the more you learn. The work teaches you without the need for constant correction and redirection. When the assignments, texts, questions, etc., are done sincerely and thoughtfully, the doing is often enough. Hence the 0/1/2 scale on a triage spreadsheet like this.

That scale is there to tell you, after the fact and in conjunction with a GAP score, “No, you didn’t do enough.” Find the folks who wrote a lot for the ETA podcast assignment, for instance. Their work taught them through the way they did it. Others would be recorded as a “2” mostly out of kindness, but they definitely didn’t learn a lot from the writing — it’s a couple of sentences, if that, and obviously not enough to construct real meaning.

You get out of this what you put in. That’s the key to learning. You are given lessons that teach you by making you the agent of change. It’s not just about being corrected and redirected and so on. You explore and think in writing, and while helpful correction always comes in person, in class, in face-to-face meetings, etc., the habits and understandings that last longest happen through the work itself.

It’s a better form of feedback. When you don’t complete the assignment sincerely and thoughtfully, it doesn’t work. For you. It’s on you, then, to put in your best effort each time.

Update: Reading Calendar [Assignment Notes]

This assignment is on the post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet as “Update: Reading Calendar.” It required only a single click. You had to indicate that you read the update by marking the assignment as done. Look at the directions in Google Classroom: “Let us know that you read the post.”

That’s it. Click a button. Let us know. Look at the spreadsheet, and note how many folks didn’t do that. Whether it was an oversight, an indication that they didn’t read the update, or disengagement, the takeaway is the same: You have to get better at organization. You might want to revisit that unit from the beginning of the year:

Organization: Getting Things Done

Regents Students: Overall Feedback on Q3A

https://tinyurl.com/gap-anchors | Load that document. Review at the descriptions on pages two and three. When you’re done, look at your assignments on Google Classroom for Q3A.

Here is a comment that could have been applied to many students:

Read both the student’s thoughts and my response. Then read a similar exchange with a different student:

Both students feel that directions, deadlines, and expectations are unclear. That feeling is important, because we need to work together to alleviate it. It is not a feeling based on fact, however.

There absolutely are deadlines. They are clear and consistent deadlines. Here is a student from the same Regents class as the previous two:

 

Note the time stamps for my responses. My feedback for these three students was within the same ten-minute window on Saturday, February 16. Here is another student in the same class, less than ten minutes later:

This student is using the idea of “External Artifacts” to take responsibility for missing work, because they know how clear and consistent the expectations have been. Rather than make excuses, they’ve embraced the empathy and flexibility at the heart of the course.

It’s also important to note that you have several days to write a paragraph like that about some element of your grade abatement profile. Here is what is possible in just 25 minutes of focused writing:

Again, read the student’s response and my feedback. This is a student is “focused and productive,” despite “a very large class with the potential to distract”; since every Regents class in the space this year is large, that could be said for all focused and productive students.

This student’s response is also honest. That’s why we focus so much on the Dunning-Kruger effect and the fear of being honest that holds students back. That last student has the following row in the post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet:

That is exactly what they describe in their paragraph. That’s why they are a 90 in Infinite Campus: self-awareness, amenability, integrity, and overall consistency.

Practice Regents Exam (Aug. ‘16) [Assignment Notes]

First, a review of how we got here. On January 3, you were given this post:

Regents Exam Practice: August, 2016

On January 7, through Castle Learning, you were assigned the following:

  1. 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage A
  2. 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage B
  3. 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage C
  4. 8/16 Practice: Part 2
  5. 8/16 Practice: Part 3

We dedicated class time to each assignment, and then extended the deadlines for each section of the exam to February 15, which was the day before your February break.

The metacognitive or reflective prompts attached to each section of the exam were generously assessed as sufficient or insufficient according to this standard:

Insufficient vs. Sufficient Work

We left feedback where and when we could, prompted you repeatedly to return to incomplete assignments, and so on.

Load the GAP triage spreadsheet, and scroll over to the English 10 tab. The practice Regents Exam has its own section in your sheet. Before I paste in a copy of that spreadsheet, two note:

  • Part 1 multiple-choice scores with yellow shading reflect incomplete task (questions left unanswered), not a total score.
  • Essay scores of 0 in red reflect missing work (no attempt at a response at all), not a low content score.

As we explained in class, the least important part of exam prep is your score; it’s far more important that you understand how to improve, how to help others, and so on.

Here is a screenshot of roughly half of the total students in English 10:

Let’s talk about what this means.

Rewards and Incentives

If you earned an 85 or higher on the practice Regents Exam we did between January 7 and February 15 — five weeks or so — and you did the majority of the all-important metacognitive analysis, then congratulations are in order: You don’t have to do any more Regents Exam prep this year.

That includes the otherwise required work on exemplars and rubrics, all of which will be assigned in late February and March. You did well enough with the test and the required self-analysis that further test prep is not necessary.

If you earned between a 70 and an 85, you’ll be asked to redo the section with your lowest score. It will depend also on how much of the all-important metacognitive analysis you completed. You’ll also need to work on some, if not all, of the exemplar and rubric assignments.

If you’re below 70, you need practice, either in following directions and meeting expectations, or in the core skills of the test itself.

Depending on how low the score is, we’ll be folding in lots of exam-related practice to boost your skills. You’ll definitely be completing all of the exemplar and rubric assignments — that’s a great way to see what the state expects, and one of the fastest ways to improve written responses. Otherwise, we are going to individualize the work based on your scores and the quality of your self-analysis.

A scale score of 65, for instance, might just mean that you need to redo the section with your lowest score. You might need extra attention on the exemplars, and we’ll look closely at the quality of your metacognition.

Failing scores, of course, indicate the need for more support. Don’t worry! Again, the least important part of exam prep is your score; it’s far more important that you understand how to improve. We have plenty of assignments that will help you. We’ll make sure you do lots of self-analysis and reflection, too, including a special focus on the rubrics and exemplars.

For those students who really struggled and have scores at the bottom of the scale — 31, 27, 6, and so on — there is obviously cause for concern. Don’t beat yourself up, though. Test-taking is a skill. You’ll just need to keep practicing.

Fortunately, we’ll keep giving you chances to improve. That might mean that you have to give up a Pareto Project Friday or in-class reading day to finish another practice test, but the Regents Exam is something you must pass to graduate. That was the purpose of this diagnostic — to show us where the greatest needs are.

GAP Q3A Starts the Ending

With all that in mind, you have to start thinking in Regents English about getting credit for the year, passing the final exam, etc., because some of you are closing in on the point of no return.

We’re going to try to slow down. You’re still going to have to make good choices, pay attention to directions, etc., but we’re going to go as slowly as we possibly can. You must

  1. follow all directions exactly;
  2. meet all deadlines, unless explicitly told otherwise;
  3. use all individual and general feedback to improve; and
  4. stay focused each and every day in class.

If you don’t know what to do after reading this post, start with a review of what it means to do enough work to get credit:

Insufficient vs. Sufficient Work

Ask general questions in the comment section below.

No comments

Data, Data Everywhere [English 11, 2/25/19]

  By English 11 Regents (2018-2019)

Schedule time before March 1 to read this post and apply its data and feedback to yourself. Think of it in terms of interstitial awareness: When and how will you be able to read this most carefully?

Ask any general questions in the comment section at the end of the post.

GAP Q3A Scores

It is critical that you first read this post on pre-GAP triage:

GAP Score Triage: Overview

Then you must find your set of GAP Q3A data in the following spreadsheet:

You can also use type the URL directly: https://tinyurl.com/gap-triage-218. Scores for Q3A will be posted in the morning on February 25.

New Hall Passes

On Friday, February 15, one of the bathroom passes for Room 210 was found on the floor of the cafeteria, which is, as you may have noticed, not the bathroom. We’d already lost a pass or two this year to that sort of abuse, so you’ll now be signing out and back in every time you leave the room.

If you take too long, go too often, wander down to the cafeteria, or in any other way abuse the privilege, you lose that privilege.

No More Phones

December saw the first moratorium on phones:

Moratorium

Phones can be learning tools, though, or so the thinking goes. In January, we went back to student choice and self-control (again), and you were allowed to use phones and other personal devices in the makerspace.

Starting February 26 — on Tuesday, so you have Monday to make peace with the change — you’ll be prohibited from using your phones in the makerspace. The negative impact on your learning far outweighs the benefits.

You might want to read this to understand why the ban is necessary:

I will sort out individual access as necessary. Anticipate putting your phone in the holder in the corner, or accept that one of your teachers will take the phone to administration.

Spreadsheet Specifics

You should read the triage post and look over the spreadsheet first.

Total Check-In %

These numbers are based on the maximum possible “Daily Check-In” responses from November 17 through February 14. Absences and individual circumstances were taken into account after the fact on a case-by-case basis.

These percentages also ignore the content of those responses; instead, we are using them as reference points for habit-building and compliance. They are part of a bigger picture, like everything else.

Learning By Doing

This will get its own lesson, post, and discussion at some point.

The basic idea is that the more you, the student, do on your end, the more you learn. The work teaches you without the need for constant correction and redirection. When the assignments, texts, questions, etc., are done sincerely and thoughtfully, the doing is often enough. Hence the 0/1/2 scale on a triage spreadsheet like this.

That scale is there to tell you, after the fact and in conjunction with a GAP score, “No, you didn’t do enough.” Find the folks who wrote a lot for the ETA podcast assignment, for instance. Their work taught them through the way they did it. Others would be recorded as a “2” mostly out of kindness, but they definitely didn’t learn a lot from the writing — it’s a couple of sentences, if that, and obviously not enough to construct real meaning.

You get out of this what you put in. That’s the key to learning. You are given lessons that teach you by making you the agent of change. It’s not just about being corrected and redirected and so on. You explore and think in writing, and while helpful correction always comes in person, in class, in face-to-face meetings, etc., the habits and understandings that last longest happen through the work itself.

It’s a better form of feedback. When you don’t complete the assignment sincerely and thoughtfully, it doesn’t work. For you. It’s on you, then, to put in your best effort each time.

Update: Reading Calendar [Assignment Notes]

This assignment is on the post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet as “Update: Reading Calendar.” It required only a single click. You had to indicate that you read the update by marking the assignment as done. Look at the directions in Google Classroom: “Let us know that you read the post.”

That’s it. Click a button. Let us know. Look at the spreadsheet, and note how many folks didn’t do that. Whether it was an oversight, an indication that they didn’t read the update, or disengagement, the takeaway is the same: You have to get better at organization. You might want to revisit that unit from the beginning of the year:

Organization: Getting Things Done

Essay Writing: Five Prompts (Process) [Assignment Notes]

Go back to Google Classroom and read the directions for this assignment. Here is the second-to-last paragraph:

It’s also a test, again, of your ability to read directions carefully: You should attach evidence of your writing process here, but that evidence will vary from person to person. Anything from brainstorming to reflections on the process to a final essay would be evidence. You’ll need to work with your teachers in class to figure out what works for you.

You had to attach something here. Something. “Anything from brainstorming to reflections on the process to a final essay would be evidence.”

Here from one of your peers is an actual essay that works as evidence: https://tinyurl.com/y4mx634q.

Here is an essay that came from an individualized prompt: https://tinyurl.com/y3rqpkcg. That works, too.

The point is that the directions tell you what to do. They aren’t open for interpretation. You can’t replace them with your own assignment unless you have explicitly and individually been told otherwise.

Essay Writing: What’s In Your Name? [Assignment Notes]

Go back to Google Classroom and read the directions for this assignment. You’ll be told to read the instructional post, and when you do, you find this:

The prompt for this writing assignment is simple: Write an essay about your name. The trick is unpacking that prompt and finding an interesting approach to the subject.

That was posted January 31. We talked a lot in class about this essay as an alternative to the “five prompts” essay, so you might not have finished it. That would be fine, but finishing is obviously different from starting. You had to do something over the three weeks this was an assignment, and it needed, to some extent, to reflect your understanding of the writing process:

The Writing Process

In other words, if you don’t have anything here, and you don’t have anything submitted for the “five prompts” essay, what did you write? Where is the evidence of three or four weeks of makerspace work?

For the most part, if you did anything here, it “counts” for the post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet.

Regents Students: Overall Feedback on Q3A

https://tinyurl.com/gap-anchors | Load that document. Review at the descriptions on pages two and three. When you’re done, look at your assignments on Google Classroom for Q3A.

Here is a comment that could have been applied to many students:

Read both the student’s thoughts and my response. Then read a similar exchange with a different student:

Both students feel that directions, deadlines, and expectations are unclear. That feeling is important, because we need to work together to alleviate it. It is not a feeling based on fact, however.

There absolutely are deadlines. They are clear and consistent deadlines. Here is a student from the same Regents class as the previous two:

 

Note the time stamps for my responses. My feedback for these three students was within the same ten-minute window on Saturday, February 16. Here is another student in the same class, less than ten minutes later:

This student is using the idea of “External Artifacts” to take responsibility for missing work, because they know how clear and consistent the expectations have been. Rather than make excuses, they’ve embraced the empathy and flexibility at the heart of the course.

It’s also important to note that you have several days to write a paragraph like that about some element of your grade abatement profile. Here is what is possible in just 25 minutes of focused writing:

Again, read the student’s response and my feedback. This is a student is “focused and productive,” despite “a very large class with the potential to distract”; since every Regents class in the space this year is large, that could be said for all focused and productive students.

This student’s response is also honest. That’s why we focus so much on the Dunning-Kruger effect and the fear of being honest that holds students back. That last student has the following row in the post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet:

That is exactly what they describe in their paragraph. That’s why they are a 90 in Infinite Campus: self-awareness, amenability, integrity, and overall consistency.

GAP Q3A Starts the Ending

With all that in mind, you have to start thinking in Regents English about getting credit for the year, passing the exam (final or Regents), etc., because some of you are closing in on the point of no return.

We’re going to try to slow down. You’re still going to have to make good choices, pay attention to directions, etc., but we’re going to go as slowly as we possibly can. You must

  1. follow all directions exactly;
  2. meet all deadlines, unless explicitly told otherwise;
  3. use all individual and general feedback to improve; and
  4. stay focused each and every day in class.

If you don’t know what to do after reading this post, start with a review of what it means to do enough work to get credit:

Insufficient vs. Sufficient Work

Ask general questions in the comment section below.

No comments

Data, Data Everywhere [AP English, 2/25/19]

  By AP English Language & Composition (2018-2019)

Schedule time before March 1 to read this post and apply its data and feedback to yourself. Think of it in terms of interstitial awareness: When and how will you be able to read this most carefully?

Ask any general questions in the comment section at the end of the post.

GAP Q3A Scores

It is critical that you first read this post on pre-GAP triage:

GAP Score Triage: Overview

Then you must find your set of GAP Q3A data in the following spreadsheet:

You can also use type the URL directly: https://tinyurl.com/gap-triage-218. Note: Profile scores for Q3A will not be posted for AP students. See one of the later sections for an explanation.

New Hall Passes

On Friday, February 15, one of the bathroom passes for Room 210 was found on the floor of the cafeteria, which is, as you may have noticed, not the bathroom. We’d already lost a pass or two this year to that sort of abuse, so you’ll now be signing out and back in every time you leave the room.

If you take too long, go too often, wander down to the cafeteria, or in any other way abuse the privilege, you lose that privilege.

No More Phones

December saw the first moratorium on phones:

Moratorium

Phones can be learning tools, though, or so the thinking goes. In January, we went back to student choice and self-control (again), and you were allowed to use phones and other personal devices in the makerspace.

Starting February 26 — on Tuesday, so you have Monday to make peace with the change — you’ll be prohibited from using your phones in the makerspace. The negative impact on your learning far outweighs the benefits.

You might want to read this to understand why the ban is necessary:

I will sort out individual access as necessary. Anticipate putting your phone in the holder in the corner, or accept that one of your teachers will take the phone to administration.

Spreadsheet Specifics

You should read the triage post and look over the spreadsheet first.

Total Check-In %

These numbers are based on the maximum possible “Daily Check-In” responses from November 17 through February 14. Absences and individual circumstances were taken into account after the fact on a case-by-case basis.

These percentages also ignore the content of those responses; instead, we are using them as reference points for habit-building and compliance. They are part of a bigger picture, like everything else.

Learning By Doing

This will get its own lesson, post, and discussion at some point.

The basic idea is that the more you, the student, do on your end, the more you learn. The work teaches you without the need for constant correction and redirection. When the assignments, texts, questions, etc., are done sincerely and thoughtfully, the doing is often enough. Hence the 0/1/2 scale on a triage spreadsheet like this.

That scale is there to tell you, after the fact and in conjunction with a GAP score, “No, you didn’t do enough.” Find the folks who wrote a lot for the ETA podcast assignment, for instance. Their work taught them through the way they did it. Others would be recorded as a “2” mostly out of kindness, but they definitely didn’t learn a lot from the writing — it’s a couple of sentences, if that, and obviously not enough to construct real meaning.

You get out of this what you put in. That’s the key to learning. You are given lessons that teach you by making you the agent of change. It’s not just about being corrected and redirected and so on. You explore and think in writing, and while helpful correction always comes in person, in class, in face-to-face meetings, etc., the habits and understandings that last longest happen through the work itself.

It’s a better form of feedback. When you don’t complete the assignment sincerely and thoughtfully, it doesn’t work. For you. It’s on you, then, to put in your best effort each time.

Update: Reading Calendar [Assignment Notes]

This assignment is on the post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet as “Update: Reading Calendar.” It required only a single click. You had to indicate that you read the update by marking the assignment as done. Look at the directions in Google Classroom: “Let us know that you read the post.”

That’s it. Click a button. Let us know. Look at the spreadsheet, and note how many folks didn’t do that. Whether it was an oversight, an indication that they didn’t read the update, or disengagement, the takeaway is the same: You have to get better at organization. You might want to revisit that unit from the beginning of the year:

Organization: Getting Things Done

No Q3A Scores

Bolded to help you find it: There will be no scores in Infinite Campus for Q3A. You’ll get a six-week score at the end of Q3B1.

Look again at the spreadsheet for your course:

Look at the entire class. Many of you are expecting an 8 or 9 for work that objectively cannot fit those profiles. That’s on the basic level of sufficient work, which you’d do well to review:

For Honors Students: Sufficient vs. Insufficient Work

You have the rest of this panel to live up to what you’ve given yourself for Q3A. If don’t, your six-week score will reflect that lack of amenability and self-awareness.

This is about preparing you for the future. You have to be aware that you or some of your close peers are cutting corners, self-sabotaging, making excuses for poor work, etc., and you have to help each other to be better.

Here is a paragraph written on February 15 by a student whose body of evidence for GAP Q3A actually fits a 9:

One of the interesting things I have noticed particularly about the Tier 4 Group 9 students is how it relates to self-awareness. One of the main aspects that helps a student categorize themselves into a Tier 4 Student is their ability to be self aware of their work. When filling out a GAP report, it is almost entirely reliant on a person’s ability to be self aware for them to be able to judge themselves. If I am attempting to grade my work over the past 3 weeks, I must have a good enough understanding on how I work, and the level of the work I have done. However, when filling out the report and being self-aware about one’s self-awareness, it almost creates a paradox. If a student fills out anything lower than a 9 for self aware, the student has automatically proven themselves wrong by showing they are aware enough to know their work isn’t up to standard. And if a student is blindly filling out the form, putting 9’s because that is the grade they want, are they really being self-aware and looking at themselves from an objective microscope? It is interesting to be able to have such a high level of self awareness, because if you are aware of the fact that you do not know self-awareness, then you are self aware of what you know and what you don’t know. At some point by the 4th Quarter, I would like to be able to gain a better understanding of this concept, so I can be objective not just when scoring myself on GAP, but when looking at all my work in general. I believe gaining this knowledge would be beneficial to me not just in AP Lang, but all other classes, and many other places in life as well.

You can test yourself immediately: Did you read that closely? Did you think about its purpose within this lengthy, ameliorative feedback post? Or did you skip over it?

Draw your peers back to that paragraph. In our post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet, that student has nothing but twos. They are solidly effective, too, not barely adequate. Point out that fact to folks who don’t read this post closely.

Here is what I wrote back to that student on February 17:

This is a great answer to the prompt, but it’s also a great starting point for a necessary discussion in class. You have peers who lack that self-awareness, and by default, that means they aren’t the 8 or 9 they *think* they are. You, however, are a 9; your work is consistent, thoughtful, thorough, etc., and all the feedback you get reflects that.
The discussion is about how to help others *be* an 8 or 9, not just *want* an 8 or 9. What tone does the course need to strike? Does the feedback need to be harsh or kind? Do these folks need multiple chances without the penalty of low scores?

Think about those questions. These are essential questions to all of you, whether you deserved a 9 or not. These are questions that inform how you are taught and how you learn. Offer some of your answers in the comment section below.

While you’re there, consider what another student with twos across the board of our post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet wrote on February 15:

I also believe I displayed the characteristics of a fourth tier student through my feedback and peer collaboration. I have sought feedback in a variety of ways. Whenever I am unsure of an assignment or what a prompt is asking, I reread instructional posts, utilizing this source of online feedback. I also ask for my peers’ feedback frequently. Just for one example, when writing my response to prompt #1 for the essay writing assignment, I read my response to [a peer]. I was unsure of a few of the things I included in my piece, so I asked for her opinions. [They] advised me to add a few sentences to improve the piece, which I ultimately did. Further, I think I reach out for teacher advice frequently, asking questions or asking for a piece to be given feedback on.

Perhaps the biggest difference between an accurate end-of-panel justification and one that is just wishful thinking is specificity. The students who work backward from the high score can only repeat the language of the profiles, if even that; they haven’t actually done what they should have. Folks who have met the criteria can reach into almost any lesson, day, week, etc., and talk about specific evidence.

But I empathize with you. I know exactly how hard it is to untangle the way you think about grades. I know this feeling:

The rest of my comment:

This is worth unpacking, so I invite you to write about it. The number is what trips you up, not the self-awareness. It’s an unavoidable part of a system built on grades: We can’t untangle their connotations easily, even when that’s the healthiest and most productive thing to do.

This student is one of many who would be a 90 or 95, if I didn’t decide to forego scores until the end of Q3B. They all know, to some extent, what their evidence deserves, but they can’t reconcile that knowledge with what a 90 or 95 does to their overall GPA.

This is a reflection of a broken system. It’s no one’s fault. But if the system is broken, we have to be better than the system. Not by floating the standard2, but by gutting the machine and rebuilding it. The chassis can’t change, but everything inside can.

Individual Exemptions and Exceptions

On the subject of empathy: Zeroes in any post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet have to be considered in context. Missing work goes in as a zero; that’s how the formula works. There are often individual exceptions or exemptions, however.

The point of the spreadsheet is to draw your attention back to specifics. If you didn’t negotiate the requirements of an assignment or communicate clearly and explicitly what you were doing, that’s a problem.

There’s a reason that communication is before writing in our set of universal skills and traits. When in doubt, you need to communicate.

Essay Writing: Five Prompts (Process) [Assignment Notes]

Go back to Google Classroom and read the directions for this assignment. Here is the second-to-last paragraph:

It’s also a test, again, of your ability to read directions carefully: You should attach evidence of your writing process here, but that evidence will vary from person to person. Anything from brainstorming to reflections on the process to a final essay would be evidence. You’ll need to work with your teachers in class to figure out what works for you.

You had to attach something here. Something. “Anything from brainstorming to reflections on the process to a final essay would be evidence.”

Here from one of your peers is an actual essay that works as evidence: https://tinyurl.com/y4mx634q.

Here is an essay that came from an individualized prompt: https://tinyurl.com/y3rqpkcg. That works, too.

The point is that the directions tell you what to do. They aren’t open for interpretation. You can’t replace them with your own assignment unless you have explicitly and individually been told otherwise.

Essay Writing: What’s In Your Name? [Assignment Notes]

Go back to Google Classroom and read the directions for this assignment. You’ll be told to read the instructional post, and when you do, you find this:

The prompt for this writing assignment is simple: Write an essay about your name. The trick is unpacking that prompt and finding an interesting approach to the subject.

That was posted January 31. We talked a lot in class about this essay as an alternative to the “five prompts” essay, so you might not have finished it. That would be fine, but finishing is obviously different from starting. You had to do something over the three weeks this was an assignment, and it needed, to some extent, to reflect your understanding of the writing process:

The Writing Process

In other words, if you don’t have anything here, and you don’t have anything submitted for the “five prompts” essay, what did you write? Where is the evidence of three or four weeks of makerspace work?

For the most part, if you did anything here, it “counts” for the post-panel proof-of-process pre-GAP spreadsheet.

Moving Forward

With all that in mind, you have to start thinking about the end of the year.

We’re going to speed up. You’re going to have to make good choices, pay attention to directions, etc., because we will be balancing exam practice with the usual reading, writing, and problem-solving we do.

Remember that you are in a college-level class, not just an AP class, and college is all about making good decisions. Use the space.

Ask any general questions you have in the comment section below.

  1. The only potential exception to this is giving students whose body of evidence fits a 9 profile the 100 they earned. My fear is that this would still create, through the lack of scores for other students, a kind of Pavlovian panic or self-doubt in those other students. ↩

  2. I’ve linked to this before, so I’ll bury it in a footnote:

    That essay will ring true to most of you. We have to better than that floating standard. We don’t have to be cruel, however, to do it. It’s not just about grit; it’s about empathy, too. We can use our profile system to walk the line. ↩

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Lights and Tunnels: RE10, Part 2

  By English 10 Regents (2016-2017)

Part 2 of a two-part series that probably isn’t going to be renewed for another season. Low ratings, naturally.

RE10 Final Exam Work

The final exam for this course will be given on Monday, June 19, at 8AM. (You can see the rest of the final exam schedule by clicking here.) It is a two-hour exam. Room assignments will be made closer to the exam date; we will post locations in class and on Google Classroom as soon as they’re available. The exam itself will have two parts: timed multiple-choice questions and a timed essay.

Each of the subsections below is a required assignment that will prepare you for the exam. We will also tie that test-centered work to metacognition, collaboration, organization, and most other GAP skills and traits. You will need to read directions closely, work steadily, and ask questions as you go. Your final two GAP scores depend on this work, as does your final exam score.

When you practice, you will need to take Part 1 silently and individually, using your computer only to enter your answers when you get to the step that requires Google Forms. We have to invoke the cemetery rows of traditional testing in order to get the most accurate data.

You will also need to take Part 2 silently and individually, writing by hand first, and then using your computer only as necessary to access backup copies of materials, including any required GARAS lessons. Note that these GARAS lessons are hyperlinked below, but the link goes to a scanned copy of the textbook; the printed, collated packet is much easier to use, so you will be asked to work offline whenever possible.

This instructional post is a checklist, too, when it is printed. Each of the Unicode boxes next to a bolded term or phrase is meant to be checked off as you complete a section of the exam prep. Monitor Google Classroom for deadlines and submission requirements.

☐ Part 1: August ’14

This is the multiple-choice section of the August ’14 ELA Regents Exam. There are three passages and 24 multiple-choice questions. Here is the section in full, followed by the required steps you must take:

 

☐ Practice the Multiple-Choice

  1. Read and annotate ☐ Passage A.
  2. Answer the multiple-choice questions for ☐ Passage A, circling your answer in the exam packet.
  3. Repeat Steps 1-2 for ☐ Passage B and ☐ Passage C.
  4. Enter your answers for all 24 questions in the Google Form below.

☐ Complete the Google Form

☐ Complete the Metacognition

  1. Get the correct answers for all 24 questions from the Google Form.
  2. For ☐ Passage A, write a metacognitive breakdown of your work, including both correct and incorrect answers.
  3. Work with peers and your teachers to ☐ develop that metacognitive breakdown into an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses on this type of passage.
  4. Repeat Step 2-3 for ☐ Passage B and ☐ Passage C.
☐ Part 2: August ’14

This is the source-based argument prompt from the August ’14 ELA Regents Exam. Here is the section in full, followed by the required steps you must take:

 

☐ Practice the Source-Based Essay

  1. Read and annotate the ☐ Directions, ☐ Topic, ☐ Task, and ☐ Guidelines.
  2. Read and annotate each of the four sources: ☐ Text 1, ☐ Text 2, ☐ Text 3, and ☐ Text 4.
  3. Write an ☐ essay response to this prompt in the provided Regents booklet.

☐ Copy the Exemplar Essay

  1. Read and annotate the ☐ rubric for Part 2, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  2. Copy by hand the entirety of ☐ Anchor Paper – Part 2 – Level 6 – A, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  3. Read and annotate the ☐ state’s scoring explanation for Anchor Level 6A, which immediately follows the model paper itself.
  4. Repeat Steps 2-3 with ☐ Anchor Paper – Part 2 – Level 6 – B and the ☐ state’s scoring explanation, both of which can be downloaded by clicking here.

☐ Grammar as Rhetoric and Style

  1. Identify ☐ examples of the GARAS lessons in your own essay by annotating and analyzing the effect of any or all of the following:
  2. Identify ☐ examples of grammar as rhetoric and style in either of the anchor papers (6A or 6B) by annotating and analyzing the effect of any or all of the following:

☐ Complete the Metacognition

  1. Outline a ☐ metacognitive analysis of your own essay, using details from the rubric for Part 2, the two anchor papers, your understanding of the four GARAS exercises, and the state’s scoring explanation for both anchor papers.
  2. Work with peers and your teachers to develop that metacognitive outline into a ☐ response that explores your strengths and weaknesses on this type of essay.
☐ Part 1: August ’16

Note: You will complete Part 1 of the Aug. ’16 exam when you finish Part 1 and Part 2 of the Aug. ’14 exam. Depending on how long the Aug. ’14 exam takes and your own needs, you may skip Part 1 of the Aug. ’16 exam to practice Part 2.

This is the multiple-choice section of the August ’16 ELA Regents Exam. There are three passages and 24 multiple-choice questions. We will complete this practice on an individual basis or if it is otherwise necessary for us to complete it. Here is the section in full, followed by the required steps you must take (which are identical to the steps for Part 1 of the August ’14 exam):

 

☐ Practice the Multiple-Choice

  1. Read and annotate ☐ Passage A.
  2. Answer the multiple-choice questions for ☐ Passage A, circling your answer in the exam packet.
  3. Repeat Steps 1-2 for ☐ Passage B and ☐ Passage C.
  4. Enter your answers for all 24 questions in the Google Form below.

☐ Complete the Google Form

☐ Complete the Metacognition

  1. Get the correct answers for all 24 questions from the Google Form.
  2. For ☐ Passage A, write a metacognitive breakdown of your work, including both correct and incorrect answers.
  3. Work with peers and your teachers to ☐ develop that metacognitive breakdown into an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses on this type of passage.
  4. Repeat Step 2-3 for ☐ Passage B and ☐ Passage C.
☐ Part 2: August ’16

Note: You will complete Part 2 of the Aug. ’16 exam when you finish Part 1 and Part 2 of the Aug. ’14 exam. Depending on how long the Aug. ’14 exam takes and your own needs, you may skip directly to this essay practice.

This is the source-based argument prompt from the August ’16 ELA Regents Exam. Here is the section in full, followed by the required steps you must take:

 

☐ Practice the Source-Based Essay

  1. Read and annotate the ☐ Directions, ☐ Topic, ☐ Task, and ☐ Guidelines.
  2. Read and annotate each of the four sources: ☐ Text 1, ☐ Text 2, ☐ Text 3, and ☐ Text 4.
  3. Write an ☐ essay response to this prompt in the provided Regents booklet.

☐ Copy the Exemplar Essay

  1. Read and annotate the ☐ rubric for Part 2, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  2. Copy by hand the entirety of ☐ Anchor Paper – Part 2 – Level 6 – A, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  3. Read and annotate the ☐ state’s scoring explanation for Anchor Level 6A, which immediately follows the model paper itself.
  4. Repeat Steps 2-3 with ☐ Anchor Paper – Part 2 – Level 6 – B and the ☐ state’s scoring explanation, both of which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  1. Identify ☐ examples of the GARAS lessons in your own essay by annotating and analyzing the effect of any or all of the following:
  2. Identify ☐ examples of grammar as rhetoric and style in either of the anchor papers (6A or 6B) by annotating and analyzing the effect of any or all of the following:

☐ Complete the Metacognition

  1. Outline a ☐ metacognitive analysis of your own essay, using details from the rubric for Part 2, the two anchor papers, your understanding of the four GARAS exercises, and the state’s scoring explanation for both anchor papers.
  2. Work with peers and your teachers to develop that metacognitive outline into a ☐ response that explores your strengths and weaknesses on this type of essay

Pre-AP Work: AP11 Summer Reading

Note: This is the required summer reading for students moving into AP11 next year. If you are not taking AP English Language and Composition as a junior, you can ignore this part of the post entirely.

The Reading

The summer reading for AP11 is taken from the beginning of a college-level textbook on reading, writing, and rhetoric. This textbook, The Language of Composition, gives the background necessary for the work we’ll do next year.

Each of the first four chapters has been scanned and archived below on the BHS server. You can only access these chapters through your Brewster account, just like you can only access hard copies of the textbook in our classroom. Photocopies of these chapters will be made available, and you can sign out a copy of the textbook for a few days at a time. If you’d like your own copy, here is the link to buy it on Amazon.

Note: The glossary is also being included this year.

The Thinking and Writing

As you read, take notes. Make observations. Connect what you learn to yourself and your environment as often and as authentically as possible. The terms you will encounter are important, but always less important than the ideas. To quote another introduction to rhetoric:

Don’t be scared of the intimidating detail suggested by the odd Greek and Latin terms. After all, you can enjoy the simple beauty of a birch tree without knowing it is Betula alba and make use of the shade of a weeping willow without knowing it is in fact Salix babylonica. The same is possible with rhetoric. The names aid categorization and are more or less conventional, but I encourage you to get past the sesquipedalian labels and observe the examples and the sample criticism (rhetoric in practice). It is beyond the definitions that the power of rhetoric is made apparent.

That is from the Forest of Rhetoric, a site that could teach you nearly as much as The Language of Composition, if you allowed yourself to spend some time studying its many branches. You could also learn nearly as much by reading the excellent Thank You for Arguing, by Jay Heinrichs, which is on Amazon here. Heinrichs’ book used to be the required AP summer reading. There are certainly many other introductions out there.

The point of that last paragraph is that the basics of rhetoric and argument and logic are timeless. These are the bones of discourse and understanding in life. You never stop learning them, but you need some sort of substructure before you can experiment, build, and iterate, which are the goals of the Humanities makerspace in Room 210.

As always, I’m your expert and mentor, so you should ask questions and seek advice as you get going. You’ll notice that you have nothing due — no journals, no impending tests, no deadlines. The most I will ask you to do is to register for the course through Google Classroom. The work is due, in the sense that anything is due, on the first day of school, but the work will continue through the last day. Everything matters, not just those soritical moments of summative assessment.