Final Boost

Because the special ed math class had been through so many subs (the students tell me the total count is four), I figured that a final exam cobbled together in a couple days would not have been a worthwhile endeavor. So, I came up with a different solution. 

Instead of a test, I gave them a "project" where they were to find me completed problems from their various assignments, ones that they thought were "easy" or "hard". (I ran this by a couple other special ed teachers, and they found this approach acceptable.) 

So as not to catch them unprepared on the day of their final, I made up "review" assignments where they were to go back through their assignments from the semester and find problems they could use for this "final". Alas, many of them chose not to do this. 

On the day, I went through an example I had created to demonstrate what I was looking for. Then I had them get to work. 

Many of them did exactly as I asked, and they got full credit. 

Jonah "finished" his final quickly. As I was doing with all the students, I graded it immediately. (If I marked points off for something, they then had time to fix the issue and resubmit. Those who did resubmit generally then got the full points.) 

Jonah gave me three complete problems of the same type. (They did a chapter on statistics, so all three problems were where he found the mean.) But I had asked for a problem that he found easy, a problem he found difficult, and a problem he found interesting. I can see two of those being the same, but not the third. 

Deep sigh. 

I returned the final to him, telling him what I thought. (I know he heard me as he was in the classroom with me, one of two students who were in person for that period.) I told him he could fix it. He went back to watching the video on his computer that he had started as soon as he submitted his final. 

Ah well. If he's good with not the full points... 

As it was, he ended up with a B- in the class, which was very good considering where most of their grades were. So many of them didn't even bother to do the final. This was unsurprising as they hadn't done any of the work in about two months. 

Those who did the final did see a benefit. I noted that pretty much everyone who turned in the final boosted their grade for the semester by one letter. 

Assistance

Last week I started covering a different class. A math class this time. One of my priorities was getting their gradebook in order. 

I had to figure out what had been graded, what hadn't, and what was in the gradebook. 

My next step was to grade all the ungraded assignments. (At the same time I was, you know, teaching the class. I mean, I had some time while the kiddos were working on their own, and there was time before and after school, of course.) It was doable. But it felt like so much.

But then I realized that the class had an instructional assistant... 

The instructional assistants (IAs) haven't been input into Google Classroom, so they can't actually access the students' work. But in normal times they would help out with the grading. And I wondered if the class' IA would be willing to try grading in Google Classroom.

So, I asked her. And she was willing. I input her into Google Classroom (I'm not sure if this was technically permitted, so don't tell anyone), and I gave her a brief overview of how to access their work (it's pretty simple once you figure out how to navigate it). 

Since the IA had worked with the teacher for a few years, she knew how Ms. F liked things graded. She knew just how strict to be, just how easy to be. 

And she finished the grading backlog (of two to three months' work) in two days. 

Such a relief. Suddenly, I had one less thing to do.

The New Mess

Transition time. 

There are two weeks left of school. (Actually, by the time you read this, there will be two days left. I'm always writing about last week.) The previous Friday was my last day in the eighth grade English long-term assignment as I had reached my maximum. For the last two weeks of school, I took an assignment in a high school SDC math class that had had a succession of subs for the last two months.

So going in, I knew things were going to be a bit of a mess. 

And it was as bad as advertised. 

But I chose this class deliberately. (I had a choice of four assignments.) I figured I could do the most good here, getting things organized before the end of the school year. 

On top of the whole lockdown/distance/hybrid learning thing we've been doing all year, these kiddos haven't had a steady teacher since February or March. (It was hard to tell.) 

Once I got their lesson plans sorted (at this time of year it's just prep for a final, but their final is going to be a bit different due to their circumstances), it was time to tackle their grades. 

They had been getting assignments. Those assignments were in their Google Classroom classwork feeds. Alas, no one had been grading those assignments or inputting them into the gradebook. It took a while to figure out what was in the gradebook and what wasn't. 

One class had a month-long gap of assignments graded. (Things were graded for the beginning of February and then the end of March, but not the month or so in between.) Two classes only were missing grades for April and May. 

(Oh, and then once I got that sorted, I accidentally added the math assignments to the English class. Those had to be deleted, deleting the assignments from the math class in the process. But that's a whole different story.) 

Surprisingly, it only took about a week to sort things out. Well, mostly. I can't give the students this past semester back.