Lesson 2.5.2: Unit 2 Test (Days 41-43)

Today is Day 41. You might recall from previous years that the first semester is generally around 80 days, and so the first quarter is around 40 days. And so you might be wondering whether this is the end of the first quarter at my new school.

Well, yes, it's indeed the end of the first quarter. And today's Unit 2 Test for eighth graders is the last graded assignment of the quarter.

The other eighth graders discussed what to do in class after the test is over. We decided to have the students do a Desmos activity called "Polygraph: Lines." I've mentioned before that Desmos is one of the most popular websites among math teachers -- and with computer lessons becoming more prevalent during the pandemic, it was only a matter of time before I'd use Desmos in my own class. Here is a link to the activity that I gave them:

https://teacher.desmos.com/polygraph-lines

When I had yesterday's first period cohort play this game, a few of them enjoyed it and played it all the way to the end of the block, but some others tried it only once before playing loud music on their Chromebooks instead.

So today, I tell the students that they must win five games (that is, five checkmarks) before they can do something else. And this works -- there is no loud music. One girl wins as many as 27 games. And one guy wins five games before I notice that he still hasn't finished his Unit 2 Test on APEX -- the Desmos activity is only for those who finish their tests.

Thus for the most part, my first Desmos activity is a rousing success. Notice that most of the game is played with a partner, as each player describes a graphed line to the partner. Thus the two players are not opponents at all -- either both players win (if their line matches) or both players lose. And the activity teaches them to ask better questions (such as "Does the line pass through the origin?" or "Does the line have a positive slope?").

And so I'll definitely play this game with fourth period the rest of this week. Tomorrow is the annual Great California Shakeout -- recall the earthquake drill that occurs on the third Thursday in October. But due to the pandemic, it will be a short duck-and-cover with no evacuation. The drill will occur at 9:00, during second period -- a seventh grade class, and so it will interrupt a lesson rather than the test or Desmos.

But the big thing on my mind this week is the end of the quarter and grades. I believe that at middle schools in this district, each quarter stands on its own -- so the quarter grades aren't merely progress reports for the semester, but are grades that count. Except for 4 x 4 (or 4 x 3) schools, I haven't been at a quarter school since I myself was a young middle school student.

And thus, the usual rule that I can't give a student unless he or she has received a previous progress report of "in danger of failing." Usually, I'd refer to such a report as the first "quaver" progress report, having been given halfway through the quarter. But I just noticed a school calendar that shows that progress reports were sent out merely two weeks ago (yes, after my arrival at the school). I must check to find out whether any of my students received the "in danger of failing" progress reports.

I'll be working on these grades -- and figuring out how to submit them online -- for much of next week, so expect me to discuss grades in my next few posts.

Yes, today is a test day, but no, this isn't a traditionalists' post. I won't be having any traditionalists' posts during my long-term or full-time teaching assignments. But I will make this my next Eugenia Cheng post.

Chapter 2 of Eugenia Cheng's x + y is called "Difficulties of Difference." And here are the sections of this chapter:

• Are men and women innately different in some way? Cheng begins by wondering whether we're different enough to justify different treatment, but this question lacks a simple answer.
• Case study: Some people argue that men are better at "systemizing" while women are better at "empathizing," but the leap from here to "men are better at math" is an oversimplification.
• A theory of weak arguments: As the category theorist Cheng likes to do, she draws arrows to abstract these arguments, such as "men have quality Y on average" -> "men have quality Y."
• Problems with our observations: They are shaped, and hence biased, by our experiences. A truly unbiased experiment would require us to test babies, but this is difficult.
• Averages: Cheng reminds us of the three measures of central tendency -- mean, median, and mode -- but even these averages don't always tell the whole story.
• Shapes of distributions: We see many examples of distributions from statistics here, including the normal distribution ("bell curve") and log-normal distributions.
• The null hypothesis: Cheng warns us that the choice of null hypothesis ("there is no bias between men and women" vs. "there are no innate differences between them") determines what is "fair."
• Life is not a controlled experiment: Some students are self-confident ("dandelions," from an analogy of Thomas Boyce) while others lack confidence ("orchids") and need extra support.
• Different answers in different situations: In math, 1 + 1 = 2 for naturalss while 1 + 1 = 0 in the simplest field. So Cheng distinguishes between diversity (numbers) and inclusion (environment).

I decided that this is a good time for me to check out the gender breakdown in my classes, at least the ones that meet today. As it turns out, my first period eighth grade class is about 60% male, while my third period seventh grade class is about 60% female. I wonder what these means -- will my girls thrive better in seventh grade because they're in the majority, or will majority status affect them negatively?

In my fifth period class, boys are in the majority. But of the eight students in the Wednesday cohort, the four online students are all male, leaving one guy and three girls in the in-person class. We'll see what this means as I proceed in this class.