A Comment about Grades (Spring 2016)

Dear CHAT Writing 2 Students & Parents,

I've just finished calculating the grades for the Spring semester, and you will be finding them in your inbox by the end of next week.  As tutors, these are suggested grades for you as homeschooling families to consider.  

For those who are new to my classes, let me share my thoughts on grades.  As I homeschooled, I didn't give my children grades.  I felt that grades were far too subjective.  I taught my own children for mastery.  We didn't proceed with a topic until they were ready no matter how long that took. 

Letter grades are a funny thing.  For some students, it becomes the only motivation for doing well.  For some, it becomes a measure of their worth as a person or as an academic learner.  I personally don't like these "side effects" of the grading system.  On the other hand, grades can be a valid reflection and reward for working hard, being diligent, and understanding the materials.

When teaching students to be good writers, I give a lot of consideration for growth and improvement. Each student has a starting place; over time I look for him or her to learn the mechanics of grammar, good writing techniques, and analytical thinking skills.

For this class, I gave points for attendance, participation, short assignments and longer essays.  We also did a few grammar exercises.  I tend to be an "easy grader" and like to see my students encouraged to do their best.  For this class, the final drafts were graded using a rubric that divided the papers into the following categories:  focus, content, organization, and mechanics.

About the Categories and Percentages
When you look at the division of scores for you students grade, remember that the quantity of points is significantly different between categories.  The "Assignments" section includes Quick Writes for a total of 70 points.  The "Writing" section has 290 points.  The "Grammar" section has 217 points.  Finally, the "Literature" section has 272 points.  In other words, you can't average the percentages from the 4 areas to get a score.  Engrade takes the total number of points to get to a whole class percentage.  The value of breaking down the class into sections is that you can see that a student might have struggled with grammar but did really well in literature or writing.  You get a more holistic picture.
 

Each student (and parents) will receive an e-mail with percentages and suggested grades for this semester.  I’ve seen each student improve with each paper.  Good Work!

Blessings,

Tammy Prichard

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 15 (May 12)

Greetings!

We've done it!  We've reached the end of the CHAT school year successfully.  I know that these great students learned a lot -- just compare their first essays with their final ones!

For the first time all year, we did not start the class with a Quick Write.  Don't worry, we did pray, though.  I was concerned that we might run out of time for our other activities.  They've been such good sports all year long writing about whatever prompt that I give them.  They have also bee great about sharing their thoughts with the rest of the class.

I handed back the last of the homework in my folder and collected  the Final Writing Exam and the Reflection Papers.  I appreciate the thoughts that they shared in their reflections about Writing 2.  I've tucked away a few good ideas for next year.  Unless I hear from a student, I will not send back these assignments.

And then it was time for our Poetry Jam.  We proceeded to the Play-Offs.  Team Too and Team Fore! were in our Play - Off Round, leaving Team Juan and Team Tree to be our illustrious judges.  (By the way, the students named their teams, not me.)  

Team Too (Nick, Danielle, Corey, Luke, and Darren) gave it their all with a score 7.966, but Team Fore! (Shay, Cassie, Megan, Rachel, and Katelyn) took it away with a final score of 8.291.  We were fortunate to have 2 panels of judges:  Team Juan (Andrew, Hannah, Jack, Christopher) and Team Tree (Anna, Abby, Ian, Ted).

Finally, we had our Final Exam for the class.  Rather than looking like a Bingo game, it was a Jeopardy game.  The class was divided into 5 teams and answered questions from the following categories:  Grammar Terms, Writing Terms, A Connecticut Yankee, Sherlock Holmes, Short Stories and Poetry.  (You can go here and see the game.)  They did pretty well, and had some fun in the process.Every year I hit up the huge Northfield Hospital Auxiliary Book Sale and pick up books to use as prizes, so it looks a little bit like Christmas on this last day of class.

I'm pretty proud of these kids.  They've written well, engaged well in class discussions, worked hard on homework, and been generally great all-around kids.  We had a marvelous year reading and writing!

I have a few late bits and pieces of homework that have come in from students.  (If anyone has anything they haven't handed in, please get it in by next Thursday.)  Once those have been graded and I have everything entered in Engrade, I will get the grades sent out.  My goal is to have them done by next Thursday.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!

This week's links:

Class Notes

Jeopardy Final Exam

Have a great summer!

Mrs. Prichard

Spring Writing Test

I.      Correct the faulty parallel construction in the sentences below.  (2 pt. each)

1.           Yesterday I cleaned the bedroom, the living room, and baked pies.

2.           Jared hates broccoli, taking baths, and to write essays.

  

3.           Mrs. Jacobson stayed home to clean her house quickly, carefully, and in a complete manner.

  

4.           The dictionary can be used to find these: word meanings, pronunciations, correct spellings, and looking up irregular verbs.

5.           To run and weight-lifting are important physical exercises. 

6.           Katie had to go to school, her job, and run errands.

7.           This spring I plan to rake out old leaves, dead growth, plant flowers, and vegetables.

II.   Fix the following incomplete, run-on or comma splice sentences.  Some sentences may need to be split, and some may need combining.  (2 pt. each)

1.      When the baby noticed me.  He smiled and giggled.

  

2.      Even though the baby did not know me.  Reached out to grab my hand.

3.      The old grandmother laughed.  Her eyes shining brightly. 

4.      They quickly became friends.  Which was only natural.

5.      My friends come with me everywhere I go we like to hang out together.

  

6.      My writing improves if I work hard do the assignments corrections.

7.      Those in Minnesota are glad that spring has come the Narnians were also waiting for the snow to leave.

III.             Rewrite the following sentences to get rid of the passive “there is/are/will be/was, etc.” construction. (3 pt. each)

1.       There are some new books in the library.  The school bought them because there was more money in the account.

  

2.      Last year there were six students who wanted to be the lead in the school play.  Not all of them were good actors.

  

3.      Because there are many frozen pizzas in the freezer, we will have friends over after school.

  

4.      There is another storm coming.  We must get to the store to stock up on junk food.

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 14 (May 5)

Greetings!

One more week.  Some students will be done for their 2015-2016 school year and others will still have work to do, but summer vacation is nearing for all of us.

Our Quick Write today was in recognition of two important items for May 5:  Cinco de Mayo and the National Day of Prayer.  Some students wrote about prayer, and the others either wrote about their favorite Mexican food or wrote about the most unusual food they had eaten.  Most of us have not been too adventurous.

Our Words of the Day were related to "linguistic faux pas."  

mondegreen -- a misunderstood word or phrase as a result of mishearing words spoken or sung.  This word itself represents this faux pas.  Originally, a line in a poem, "Laid him on the green" was misheard and then reprinted as "Lady Mondegreen."  

spoonerism-- a verbal error of transposing sounds in a word.  Named after William Archibald Spooner who was notorious for these mistakes, spoonerisms can be a great source of mirth/fun.  For example, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" becomes "Loldigocks and the Bee Threars." The story of Cinderella becomes Rindercella who slopped her drippers. Or we might pray to the Lord who is a "shoving leopard" instead of the "loving shepherd."

malapropism -- using a similar but incorrect word.  This type of faux pas is also called a Dogberryism, named after the Shakespeare character from Much Ado About Nothing who continually mixes up his words. One of my favorite examples is the day my daughter began an announcement at the dinner table:  "Ok everybody, embrace yourselves."  Or the time she told us that she wanted a "monk bed."

Following this opening part of our class, which also included handing back homework and fielding questions about the essay re-writes, I gave the students their Final Writing Exam.  Unlike a test to see if they've accumulated a certain body of knowledge, this test is to see how they can edit and fix some bad sentences.  They've been doing this all year in the context of their essays.  Every time they revised the rough drafts for the final drafts, they were learning strategies for correcting common errors and how to write stronger sentences.  This is a Take Home Test due in class next week.

In addition to the Take Home test, students are to write a Reflection Paper about their time in this class.  Those who study education have research that supports the value of looking back and thinking about your learning; this takes the learning to deeper levels.  (I have a link at the bottom of this e-mail to a related article.)  In these short responses, I would like the students to address what they have learned this year, what they feel they take away from the class, what worked well, what didn't work so well, and what they would change.  They can also include comments about their favorite assignments/essays, their favorite pieces of literature, their thoughts about the amount of homework.  These reflections are helpful to them and are valuable feedback for me.

Students handed in the haikus, cinquains, and diamantes that they were assigned to write.  I will be adding these to the blog this weekend.  Look forward to being amazed by the creativity of this group.

And now ... the Poetry Jam.  A good bit of time to explain the logistics.  I've been doing this for a few years, and every year I work more kinks out of the scoring portion.  The students did a wonderful job reciting their poetry.  We finished just as the as the alarm for the class went off, so they left not knowing which two teams were in the "Play Offs."  Below are the scores:

Team 1 (Team Juan)  -- 7.47 points

Team 2 (Team Too) -- 7.97 points

Team 3 (Team Tree) -- 7.4 points

Team 4 (Team Fore!) -- 8.29 points

Teams 2/Too and 4/Fore!  should come to class ready for Round Two.

Next week we will finish with our Poetry Jam and have a final Literature Exam (a.k.a play Jeopardy as teams with questions related to our literature readings.)  I will bring brownies and prizes for our last week together, and students are welcome to bring treats to share.  

And, finally, I will have Missing Homework Reports out on Monday so that all work can be handed in on our final week.  If anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me.

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Take Home Writing Exam

-- Reflection Paper

Links for this Week:

Class Notes'

Spring Writing Test

The Value of Reflection

Have a marvelous weekend.  Happy Mother's Day to all!

Mrs. Prichard