Dear Families,
Just a mid-week check in to let you know what's what and what's what.
Math
Yesterday students took a quiz on box plots (also called box and whisker plots).
I am experimenting with using a different way of assessing and I want to explain to you about the quiz and its "percentages" because these percentages don't work the same way that percentages worked for most of us in school for establishing "grades".
The quiz contained 10 questions.
- Six of those questions were basic to solid "level 3" questions. That means I anticipated anyone who had mastered the at-grade level understanding should get these completely right and to build in some "wiggle room" I decided that with these first 5 (50%) or 6 (60%) correct, a student could demonstrate to me that they are at-standard (level 3).
- This is important to understand. 50% or 60% means that the student demonstrated grade-level understanding to me 5 or 6 times. I feel this provides me enough evidence to determine that someone is at-grade level.
- Two harder questions were still grade-level, but required a more thorough understanding of the grade-level ideas. If students demonstrated the equivalent of ALL level 3 and at least one of these questions, I marked their quiz as Level 3.5 (70% or 80%).
- Two questions, in my opinion, extended beyond what I would expect students to be able to answer after learning this material. If students demonstrated the equivalent of ALL of level 3 and ALL of level 3.5 and at least one of these questions, I scored them as a Level 4 (90% or 100%).
Today in class students began a reflection letter that they are going to share with you this evening. They need to have that letter signed and I will check that in tomorrow for homework.
I will also offer a make up quiz tomorrow for anyone below a 3 so that they can improve their score. To prepare for that, students should revise their quiz from yesterday.
Science
In science we have been watching a video called "How the earth was made" [
link] I asked students to simply watch and we talked about what was shared throughout the video to help students build an image of how the grand canyon was formed. A super simplified outline:
- 1.7 trillion years ago, successive layers of sediment were laid down on a crustal plate by successive rising and lowering ocean levels.
- The crustal plate was lifted up, forming a mountain range similar to that of the Himalayas.
- The mountain range was weathered/eroded down into a more-or-less flat plateau and the Colorado river fed into a gigantic lake that was located on top of it.
- About 5.5 million years ago the lake over-flowed and spilled westward over the edge of the plateau. At the edge of the plateau it formed a huge waterfall that soon eroded a canyon backwards to the lake bed.
- The Colorado then could flow into the canyon the way we now recognize it... more or less.
- More recent volcanic eruptions (within the last few hundred thousand years or so) spilled lava into the canyon, forming rock dams that created lakes behind them until the lake's pressure tore them down and eroded them away.
Tomorrow we will be doing a sequencing activity to try and match up these major events with the evidence that was presented on the video.
I hope you have a great evening!
Warm regards,
Brian MacNevin
