Go Formative: Unit 4 Test (Day 78)

Yesterday was my non-blogging day. My school followed Friday's block-hybrid schedule, and so I followed Friday's posting schedule -- I tweeted instead of blogged.

Today is an ordinary Tuesday. And so I'm following Tuesday's posting schedule -- I write on the blog about the seventh graders.

Originally, Math 7 was supposed to work on APEX Unit 5 this week. Unit 5 isn't really a unit -- it's more like a semester final. But earlier this month, the department chair decided to cancel Unit 5. She figures that there's no point in giving a semester final, since most of the students will fail it. Instead, she decided to expand Unit 4 an extra week, as the students definitely need it.

But even with the extra week, the students still struggle with this unit. No teacher at our school is enchanted with the way that equations are taught in APEX. While the Math 8 teachers gave the APEX Unit 4 Test anyway, the department head decided to write her own test for Math 7. Just like Math 8, the Practice Test is in Go Formative, but now the actual Unit 4 Test is in Go Formative as well. It tests equations much better than APEX. Still, the students are struggling. The test has 18 questions, and while a few students have succeeded, most students have single-digit scores.

Part of the blame goes to the Benchmark Tests. Once again, the schedule has us continuing to teach lessons after the Benchmarks are given each day. There are certain types of equations that the students are just barely seeing before the test (for example, equations with fractional coefficients) and there's no opportunity to practice them. APEX certainly isn't providing them with this practice.

In the end, the department head decided that the Unit 4 Test won't count. We're still giving the exams this week, but their scores won't be included in the second quarter grade. After second period yesterday, I was favoring letting the test scores count anyway. The top students did well on the test and will get at least an A- in the class, while for the weaker students, the test isn't hurting them and they're getting at least a C-. Part of this was because of multiple APEX retakes -- students couldn't advance unless they earned 4/5 on their quizzes. This boosted their grades enough so that this non-APEX test doesn't hurt.

But after third period today, I agree with the chair that they shouldn't count. Many students today simply did no work, period -- not even the Practice Test for which I was telling all the answers. Yes, yesterday's class worked harder even though they had more special ed students. But much of the blame here lays at the feet of the online students, including kids who are normally in person but stayed home today -- all but one of the students doing no work today was at home.

Instead, the last assignment that will count is the Solving Inequality activity (Google slides). I have the students work on this during tutorial. But this means that the students are spending 35 minutes on an assignment that counts and then 100 minutes on assignments that don't count. Struggling students who need to improve their grades might wish to get help on the activity, but instead I must go over the Practice Test -- they get confused, shut down quickly, and work on nothing.

Meanwhile, after long last, the missing Cosmos episode has finally aired. I was obviously hoping that this episode would air on a night when there was no school. But it originally came on National Geographic in March just days before the schools closed for the pandemic, and then it came on FOX last night just days before the schools close for winter break.

I'm adding the "Neil DeGrasse Tyson" label and summarizing the episode, as follows. Here is a summary of Cosmos Episode 2: "The Fleeting Grace of the Habitable Zone":

• In our galaxy there may be spaceships from other worlds, learning more about our planet.
• Venus was once in our solar system's habitable zone -- now our planet is in the habitable zone.
• Earth can remain habitable only if humans can stem the tide of global warming.
• The sun, now a yellow dwarf, will someday become a red giant, cooking our planet.
• At this point, the habitable zone will turn towards Mars, Jupiter, and the Jovian moons.
• Eventually we'll have to search for new worlds, which we can -- because we've done it before.
• The Voyagers of prehistoric China ventured from their homeland, heading first for Taiwan.
• For some reason, they left Taiwan and explored the mysterious unknown of the ocean.
• They travelled the Philippines, Indonesia, and ultimately Polynesia via nayar, or sail.
• Likewise, we will someday cross our interstellar ocean to new stars and planets.
• The sun can act as a gravitational lens to make a sort of telescope to magnify 100 billion times..
• We already have the technology to build it, and so there's no reason to start building it now.
• The nearest star, Proxima Centauri is four light years away -- 70,000 years at Voyager's speed.
• Instead, we will need a new sort of spacecraft that can be pushed by photons to near-light speeds.
• With a Alcubierre drive, we can exceed light speed and settle on an planet 100 light years away.
• A young Carl Sagan imagined a voyage to far-off planets and stars.
• To him, a trip to Proxima Centauri would change our species for the better.
• Beings are quarantined from one another, and traversing the stars lifts this quarantine.

Quarantine -- that's the last thing we want to hear about these days. But yes, we are quarantined on our planet until we gain ways to travel to other planets.

Tyson mentions Proxima Centauri b -- the habitable planet to nearest to ours. Chapter 13 of Ian Stewart's Calculating the Cosmos -- the chapter we were about to read for side-along reading until my summer abruptly ended and I took this long-term job -- is also about habitable planets, although Proxima Centauri b hadn't been discovered at the time Stewart wrote his book. (I'd already started typing the post at the time I found out about subbing. I might finally post that draft soon, especially now that I finally watched this missing episode.)

And with that, I finally finish my springtime project of summarizing Cosmos episodes, nine months after I began. It remains to be seen whether there will be a fourth season of this show.

For music break today I choose "Rudolph the Statistician," one of the Christmas parodies that I found on a website, but never posted on the blog until now:

https://musingsofamathteacher.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/funny-christmas-math-songs/

RUDOLPH THE STATISTICIAN
(Tune: “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer”)

Rudolph, the statistician
Sampled data everywhere.
Mean heights and heart conditions
Calculated with great care.

All of his population
Gathered from coast to coast
Sought out his information;
He would always give the most.

Then one foggy Christmas eve
Santa came to say,
“Rudolph, with your pencil write,
What gifts I should take tonight.”

Quickly he polled the children,
Then Rudolph shouted out with glee:
“Stats did provide the answer:
Give Nintendo and Barbie!”

I was considering doing Vi Hart's "Twelve Days of Christmath" -- or at least my version of it with "Gimme a high five!" (for the "Five golden rings!" line). But we can't give high fives during the pandemic -- and besides, a few eighth graders started singing Rudolph in the middle of class, so I humored them by singing this song.

Both "Rudolph the Statistician" for Christmas and "Ghost of a Chance" for Halloween refer to the last strand of the Common Core -- statistics and probability -- that the students will get with the regular teacher at the end of the year. I need to come up with some holiday songs that refer to units that are actually taught in October and December, instead of SP.

By the way, I never did formally assign the "Whodunnit" assignment on expressions, despite singing a song about it. (Then again, I'm not supposed to determine what assignments to give the students based on what songs I want to sing, as tempting as it may be.)

Now that we completed Unit 4, and since we won't do Unit 5, we should be ready to start Unit 6 after winter break -- the geometry strand at long last. But now the department head is considering doing one more mini-test for Unit 4 -- one that counts -- after winter break.

Recall that this long-term position lasts for only one more week in January, and then the regular teacher is scheduled to return. It was already planned for Math 8 to continue in Unit 4 through January, and so my only ticket to G, my favorite strand, was through Math 7. I was already considering blogging only Math 7 for that week in January (rather than both Math 7 and Math 8) in order for me to cover more of the geometry strand on this Geometry blog.

The chair says that she will discuss it with me and make the final decision on Friday (the day that there are no students, hence this week's schedule change). What I fear is that she'll say, "We'll prepare the kids for the mini-test on the Monday we return, give them the mini-test on their block day, and then we'll start geometry the second week." Yes, it's convenient to start a new unit with a new teacher (just as he himself left me to start with Unit 2) -- but I really want to teach our favorite strand, geometry, even if just for one week.

Then again, she's wondering what geometry will look like in a pandemic situation -- anything that involves shapes and graphs will be a challenge to teach when so many students are online.