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I finished High School


Pierre the Great

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No good teacher is going to argue with you there. That is why good teachers hold higher expecatations that simply passing tests. Good teachers know that if they get kids to learn the information, they won't have any trouble passing the tests.

I usually grade on completion, of course I have students show work. If it's obvious they just copied answers, then they don't get credit. I also spend time going over questions students have on homework so they are better prepared for tests and quizzes.

good. Your teaching math the right way. All the crap I've been through because of a stupid math teacher. She was knew one of those white collar workers in their mid life crisis years thinking 'hey I can teach'. She thought the book was stupid and taught her own way. Well she graded for right answers on homework then with the 8 point grading scale I was screwed. I never got a B in math that year, it was just too hard.

I struggled every night trying to actually learn but was puzzled as to what the heck she was teaching that day. I never got answer right in any of the homework assignments. She wouldn't even give me a point.

So about around November of that year I decided that in order to save my grade from not failing and get a 70 and pass the class I had to cheat. I never did a home work assignment after that. Just took the answers in the back of the book because if I hadn't I would of failed. I somehow passed the first semester with a 70 D-.

Then in second semester she completely went off the map, and I became lost, I should of asked to be moved from the class. And by February she said "Pierce, you are going to fail, just quit now while you are ahead"

What a great teacher. :wacko:

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I haven't done math in years, but my Math 11 teacher would mark our daily assignments by two criteria: completeness (including showing your work) and correctness. We would also have a quiz once every week I believe it was to make sure that students knew how to do the questions.

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Then in second semester she completely went off the map, and I became lost, I should of asked to be moved from the class. And by February she said "Pierce, you are going to fail, just quit now while you are ahead"

What a great teacher. :wacko:

If your teacher actually said that in a basic math class (not an honors class where saying that equates to "you should drop down to the regular course"), then that teacher ought to not have a job. People like that are the same ones who use IEPs to hide students from disabilities from being reported for their district ratings for funding instead of usign IEPs to helpt the students succeed. You absolutely should have transferred to another teacher. I know firsthand what a difference teachers can make. I tried to take Algebra in 8th grade and the teacher was horrible, none of us knew what was going on. When I took it in high school, I had near perfect scores most of the year, and I was even graded for correctness on homework. Though, I think homework only counted towards 20% of the grade.

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What does Joe Montana getting drafted in the thrid round have to do with grades?

And how else do you want to tell if a student is passing? Just let the teacher subjectively say, "This student seems like he knows enough to pass."?

At Dayton did they have letter grades or not? most colleges now don't do grades.

Grading is being subjective.

And the analogy is that not everyone that pans out.

It goes for everything.

You know the old hare and the tortoise. Who won? The slower animal. Because the hare got cocky, did drugs, slept around, went to class drunk, and didn't give a darn and thought the world was handed to them on a plate.

Life is Darwinism. The strongest survive.

Basically the 'hare' in the analogy are all the people that I know that got an a 30 on their ACT. One got pregnant, the other was the head of his class got a 15 year old pregnant and now works at walmart, the other girl has a drug problem, the other girl took 6 years to get through school and went to class drunk. What do all these people have in common? They were rated better then me in school. But they lived in the fast lane. Yet the world opened up for them and they overdosed on it.

What does this mean to the system?

A kid like me, who struggled through school will end up with a better life then the fools above because they haven't changed and ruined their life. Somehow I beat the system. I was the lucky one. Kids are falling through the cracks too much and its the kids we want out in the world. The kids falling through the cracks these days are not the druggies but the smart kids who need help.

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I haven't done math in years, but my Math 11 teacher would mark our daily assignments by two criteria: completeness (including showing your work) and correctness. We would also have a quiz once every week I believe it was to make sure that students knew how to do the questions.

That's something I've thought about doing. Actually, that's why I started the mini-quizzes I mentioned. I didn't like that with the completion grade system, it wasn't hard for a student to show a bunch of wrong work and have all wrong answers. That student would appear to be doing fine, and I wouldn't know there was a problem until the student failed the quiz on that material.

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If your teacher actually said that in a basic math class (not an honors class where saying that equates to "you should drop down to the regular course"), then that teacher ought to not have a job. People like that are the same ones who use IEPs to hide students from disabilities from being reported for their district ratings for funding instead of usign IEPs to helpt the students succeed. You absolutely should have transferred to another teacher. I know firsthand what a difference teachers can make. I tried to take Algebra in 8th grade and the teacher was horrible, none of us knew what was going on. When I took it in high school, I had near perfect scores most of the year, and I was even graded for correctness on homework. Though, I think homework only counted towards 20% of the grade.

Yeah a friend of mine who was basically at the same level as me in math was in my math class first semester, got the same grade. Then his schedule switched him to this other teacher and he got a B. Meanwhile, I failed, and eventually dropped out because I was already failing my make up class. So I wasn't going to graduate regardless of what I was doing in my other classes.

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At Dayton did they have letter grades or not? most colleges now don't do grades.

Grading is being subjective.

I have friends at a lot of different schools and universities, and they all get grades. What other system are schools starting to use? I'd like to hear how anything is going to be more objective than percentages and grades.

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I have friends at a lot of different schools and universities, and they all get grades. What other system are schools starting to use? I'd like to hear how anything is going to be more objective than percentages and grades.

I've got a friend that goes to Reed College in Portland, she works on a nuclear reactor there. They don't have a grading system.

Oxford doesn't use grading scales.

Narrative evaluation is what they call it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_evaluation

http://planning.ucsc.edu/irps/Stratpln/WASC94/a/sec2.htm

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I've got a friend that goes to Reed College in Portland, she works on a nuclear reactor there. They don't have a grading system.

Oxford doesn't use grading scales.

Narrative evaluation is what they call it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_evaluation

http://planning.ucsc.edu/irps/Stratpln/WASC94/a/sec2.htm

So about a dozen colleges are confirmed to use it, hardly a lot. I think that kind of grading is ridiculous. It makes the evaluation totally subjective. I think it is a fine compliment to letter grades, but I don't like it at all by itself. I mean, the teacher still has to base the narrative on something, and I'm willing to bet a lot of them base it off of what the student would be getting if they had letter grades.

And then how is an employer supposed to deal with that system? Do they have to read all the applicants narratives in order to figure out that the person is similar to someone with say, a 3.0 GPA at a school with grades?

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well an explanation of the grade would be good. It would move away the obsession of just getting the letter grade and not learning the actual subject like they do now.

I think it is a fine compliment to letter grades.

But, if you have a grading rubric, then you ought to know very well why you are getting the letter grade you are getting. I mean, when you miss 5 problems on a 20 question test, you know why you got the grade. Unless you're getting a grade on a term paper and the teacher writes nothing but a letter grade, then you know why you got the grade you got. I've never had a problem understanding why I got a certain grade, aside from those rare situations where I got back a term paper with little or no comment.

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But, if you have a grading rubric, then you ought to know very well why you are getting the letter grade you are getting. I mean, when you miss 5 problems on a 20 question test, you know why you got the grade. Unless you're getting a grade on a term paper and the teacher writes nothing but a letter grade, then you know why you got the grade you got. I've never had a problem understanding why I got a certain grade, aside from those rare situations where I got back a term paper with little or no comment.

but do you teach them why they got the grade wrong. For me when it came to math just doing the problem on the board for grading does work for me. I have to look at the problem over and over again and the best way to do that is to show on paper what I did wrong.

Just marking the question down as wrong doesn't help me.

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but do you teach them why they got the grade wrong. For me when it came to math just doing the problem on the board for grading does work for me. I have to look at the problem over and over again and the best way to do that is to show on paper what I did wrong.

Just marking the question down as wrong doesn't help me.

Absolutely. I pretty much refuse to give multiple choice math tests because I don't find them fair. If a student does a 10 step problem and makes one minor error back in step whatever, they get the whole problem wrong. Unless a problem is one where you just have to look at it and give an answer, I make every problem worth multiple points. Like on a 4 point problem, I'd give 1 point for at least making a legitimate effort, two points for having the setup correct, 3 points for a small mistake, and 4 points obviously for getting the problem completely correct. In addition, I circle where they went wrong and at the very least give students a chance to ask about it.

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Absolutely. I pretty much refuse to give multiple choice math tests because I don't find them fair. If a student does a 10 step problem and makes one minor error back in step whatever, they get the whole problem wrong. Unless a problem is one where you just have to look at it and give an answer, I make every problem worth multiple points. Like on a 4 point problem, I'd give 1 point for at least making a legitimate effort, two points for having the setup correct, 3 points for a small mistake, and 4 points obviously for getting the problem completely correct. In addition, I circle where they went wrong and at the very least give students a chance to ask about it.

yup that's the way to teach math.

Sorry about me going off on you earlier. Part of it was venting and part of it was me just being a hard ass with the Joe Montana thing. My mom back in '85 applied for a teaching position from this one public high school here and the superindentant grilled her on everything. He even asked why she got an F in Piano as a summer school class. I guess he was trying to see how much she could take, because that's the biggest thing in teaching, you need a thick skull. She got the job anyway but a better public school also accepted her so she went their instead.

I don't doubt your teaching abilities at all.

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