Surprise A

On the penultimate day of summer school, I gave the students a figure-out-your-grade assignment. I wanted them to spend some time looking at how not doing the work (or doing the work) impacted their final point total.

Well, actually, I needed them to work on something while I was calling them up and individually having them do their post assessment reading. (Yes, I gave them busy work.) 

After everyone had done their reading, I went through the assignment to see what everyone had come up with. 

There was a note from Delilah. "I don't know if my grade is an A I don't think I added right?" 

I glanced at her totals. The A looked reasonable. She had turned in most of her work. 

After calculating their grade, I had questions for them to answer. First I asked if the grade surprised them and if they were happy with it. Delilah: "I'm happy about it but I don’t think I calculated right?". 

Then I asked what they could do to improve their grade. Delilah: "Calculate correctly, I think i'm just saying this because I never had an A in english!"

She did, indeed, have an A in English. (I double checked with a calculator while writing this post. Yup, it's an A.) 

Alas, we weren't assigning grades for the summer school. They got written progress reports. Having them calculate what their grade would have been was more so they'd get an object lesson in what doing or not doing their work nets them grade-wise. 

But they did get bragging rights. Delilah could totally tell her parents that she got an A in English in the summer. Just because it wasn't recorded anywhere doesn't mean it doesn't count. (It's not like middle school grades remain on their transcripts anyway.)