First period. I have one student. (Well, I have two on the roster, but the second student hasn't yet shown up to school.)
For the second hour of class, I have Anson working on the computer program Odyssey. The continuation high school has been using it for years, so I'm familiar with many of the issues the kiddos can run into.
Anson finished an assignment, but it was telling him he got a zero. He informed me that the program wasn't working.
I had him pull up the assignment. The section he was on was about writing a report. The particular assignment gave him a topic, and then he had to choose whether the topic was more suitable for a report or an essay.
(Like, for example, "the history of the railroad", or "my matchbook collection".)
We looked at his first answer. He had answered "essay". The topic was "history of the railroad". His reasoning was something about the length. I explained that reports were factual while essays were more of a personal explanation for things.
So, it turned out that Anson got a zero because he got every single question wrong. All he had to do was reverse every single answer, and he got 100%. (He gets three tries on the assignment, so he was able to try again.)
Clearly Anson got the idea, he just had the words reversed. That's an easy enough fix.
Glad he got the idea!
ReplyDeleteWhoops, the spammers got you again. I think that one got my blog a few weeks ago.
ReplyDeleteI quickly read the page the link you gave for Odyssey and the blog post from 2016. So, this is an online supplement to education you and other district teachers provide, which can be customized to each students needs? I assume your district pays in full for this? Interesting.
ReplyDeleteYes, this is a district thing. It's used mainly for credit recovery, which is when the student has already taken and failed the class. The program can be used as their do-over.
DeleteAnson learned. Good job, teacher!
ReplyDeleteI don't think I can really take credit for that.
DeleteIt's interesting how changing one's perspective can make such a profound difference on scores.
ReplyDeleteI bet that was a much easier fix than you were expecting. And good on Anson for trying his best - it's all you can ask.
ReplyDeleteSomeone (you) are willing to work with him.
ReplyDeleteCoffee is on and stay safe
When you wrote that all he had to do was reverse the answers and he would have gotten 100%, I thought he cheated and marked the answers down in the wrong.order .
ReplyDeleteJust to let you know your Thirteen Thursday link didn't go to a post.
ReplyDeleteSurprising that he had ALL the answers reversed! Good job by the way to help him
ReplyDeleteI am very glad I'm not teaching school during this pandemic. All teachers are heroes in my book!
ReplyDelete