Planning and Streamlining

Today is the final day of preparation before the start of class. We went through all of our Google Forms and Docs, making sure than the right people can open and/or edit them. We are using Google Forms for student surveys at the beginning of the year as well as the Retake request form that I mentioned in the previous post. We also spent a lot of time streamlining the Google site and linking it up with Google Drive, where the students will be able to access all handouts, worksheets, and forms.

We also spent time in our team (5 teachers) planning and walking through what to cover on the first day, which was incredibly helpful for me, as well as two other teachers (one new teacher and one long-term sub). We spent a lot of time on grading policies, described in the syllabus. The emphasis is always on learning, never on "points," which is why we allow retake tests and tests make up 60% of a student's grade. Another 25% is formative checks, which are made up of Progress Quizzes, Reflections, and Audits. The quizzes provide immediate feedback because they are always reviewed immediately after they are taken. By the time the student leaves the classroom, they know whether or not they understand the material and what they missed. We also wrestled with the flexibility of grading the quizzes, since they are very short (about 3 questions) and decided to use "Rate Your Understanding" as a general guide, rather than being strict about points when grading. Even if the students get every question wrong, they still receive a 5/10 because they were there to submit evidence. A 0/10 would mean that no evidence of their learning was received. Zeros skew the grades too much to be used on a 3 question quiz.