Scale and Scale Factor Quizizz (Day 84)

Yesterday was the one day that I didn't post on the blog this week. And I'm glad I didn't post due to the politically charged events that took place in our nation's capital. It would have been difficult to remain politically neutral as those events occurred.

While all of that was happening, this is what was going here. As I promised you in Tuesday's post, I chose a student from my fifth period Math Skills class to send to the department chair's room next door. In reality, I didn't "choose" at all -- there was only a single student in my class that day, so she ended up being the one by default. (That class has always been small -- the Wednesday/Friday cohort has only eight students with four of them opting out of hybrid. But the other three hybrid students were all absent.) She is enrolled in both Math 7 and Math Skills anyway.

So I walked with her to the class next door. When the department head saw the girl's computer, the teacher realized that the link on the weekly agenda was pointing to the file on the computer -- but that file has since been deleted (by either the chair herself or the regular teacher). She appeared to fix something so that the assignment finally appeared on the girl's computer.

But then after school, another student messages me to tell me that she still can't access the assignment. I inform the department head, who suggests that since I can see the file, I should make a copy and then send this second girl the link to my file. Yet when I got home and tried to do this, suddenly I couldn't access the file at all, even though I'd been able to all week!

Anyway, today my colleague informs me that she's come up with a new assignment to give the students today instead of the APEX quiz. It consists of a short Google slides file that reviews the lessons on scale drawings that they've seen this week. Then the students take a 13-question assessment on Quizizz that counts as a quiz grade.

I'll write more about this quiz in tomorrow's post. Here's what I will say, though -- the regular teacher is the one who set up the Quizizz, and so he's the only one who can see the grades. If I click on the link set up in the weekly agenda, then it automatically assumes that I'm a student and assigns me the quiz rather than shows me their grades.

Thus for my grand geometry week on the blog -- the week when I finally teach a geometry lesson and wish to see the grades so I know how well I'm teaching it -- suddenly I can't see the grades. One girl does brag that she earned a perfect score, and I think another guy said that he did well too. But still, I can't see most of the grades so I don't know the general trend,

There is also another worksheet for the students to complete. Fortunately, unlike Monday's troublesome worksheet, the students can actually access it. And so I tell the department chair that I plan on simply dropping Monday's worksheet altogether and only listing today's Quizizz and the new worksheet as the graded assignments.

For music break today, I sing "Draw a Map" from Square One TV. This song is highly relevant to today's seventh grade lesson, but for some reason I don't sing it often. Still, I'll post "Draw a Map" right here on the blog:

Draw A Map

Oh, whoa-oo-oh

I’m coming back to town; I’d like to see you
I know it’s been a long, long time
I don’t know how to get there, since you moved
But I have directions from a friend of mine:
It’s five miles right, then five miles left
Then a mile down the road
I come past a tree, and wait for a light
How I’ll remember this, I don’t know!

He said, I’ll draw a map so you’ll find me
I’ll put it in scale and you’ll find me
I’ll just make an inch stand for a mile
I can make an inch stand for a mile

So he drew a map, a small but good one
Marking in an inch for every mile
He put in all the trees, and lights and landmarks
And I knew it would lead me to him after a while
So a mile down the road was an inch on my map
He brought it down to scale
The map is the same as the route to his house
Just smaller … in every detail

He said, I’ll draw a map so you’ll find me
I’ll put in a scale and you’ll find me
I’ll just make an inch stand for a mile
I can make an inch stand for a mile

He said, I’ll draw a map so you’ll find me
I’ll put it in scale and you’ll find me
I’ll just make an inch stand for a mile
I can make an inch stand for a mile

Note: on the video, the singer performs this in the key of F major (with parts of the song in the relative minor key, D minor). I decide to convert this to the key of G major (relative E minor) -- and so in the last song I perform for this class, I finally get to use the EGCGAE tuning I mentioned on Thanksgiving:

EGCGAE tuning:

G: x02023

Em7: 002020

D: xx2202 (or D7 might be preferred here: xx2232)

C: xx0030

This song fits perfectly with today's Math 7 lesson on scale. Even in Math 8, this song about being far apart and needing a map to find each other reminds me of my completing this long-term assignment and being far apart from the students. It thus makes sense as a final song for the long-term.