Just Do the Regular Credit

It happens like clockwork - a sports season is about to begin or grades close in a few days - and here come the legion of requests for extra credit work. 

It often works like this:

A student slacks off, doesn’t do the work, skips multiple homework assignments, doesn’t study for tests and quizzes and, as a result has a poor grade in class. Then is faced with the prospect of not being able to play on a team and/or bringing a report card home with disappointing grades. 

Panic sets in.

This is when I end up with multiple students appealing for extra credit work or to make up work they didn’t do months ago. 

Homework and classroom work often has an expiration date. For example, in the genetics unit our 8th graders were asked to read an article about Sam Berns. We were working on genetic mutations and how they can affect people. The whole point of reading the article was to set the students up to watch a TED Talk Sam Berns recorded mere months before he died. It’s a hook to increase their interest in the topic and get them emotionally involved in what we’re learning.

We did this in January, and there is very little value in doing now. The unit is over. We watched the video. We learned about genetic mutations. Your understanding has been assessed. It’s done. We’ve moved on. We have plenty of current work to focus on.

I don’t generally do extra credit. Just do the regular credit and you’ll be fine. If you didn’t do the regular credit work, then you’re in a little bit of a pickle.

It can be a hard lesson to learn, but it’s better to learn it in middle school where the stakes are low, then in high school or college where the stakes can be much, much higher. 

Just do your work….it’s as simple as that. 

The Act of Writing Things Down

In the two years I teach you science, we will go through almost 200 vocabulary words. That’s 200 times you will write out the definitions, and add the word to the index of your science notebooks.

That’s a lot of words and a lot of writing. 

When I ask, that’s the number one complaint students have about my class - all the writing and note taking. 

I understand - many of you find it boring. I know some of you hate it, but, here’s the thing…It works.

Really, the act of writing these words and definitions down on paper helps cement it in your mind.

Recently, I ran a little experiment: 

In one class, I printed out two words and definitions and asked my junior scientists to paste them in instead of writing them down. The other class wrote out the definitions as usual. Over the course of the next week, I featured the words in several Do Nows, they were used in a chapter we read, and they were both included in a study guide.

On a recent assessment, I asked all students to write out the definitions of the words. Twice as many in the group that originally wrote down the words got them correct compared with the group that pasted them in.

I think this is a pretty clear indicator - writing these vocab words down has value. I think you learn them faster and better because you have written them. I guess that process of seeing the words and definitions, hearing the words and definitions and writing the words and definitions gives your brains a better chance of holding on to that information.

So, we’re going to keep writing them down. Sorry, if you don’t like it, but it does work. 

I know this would never, ever happen, but I can imagine a group of students who take that paste-in and never actually read the words and definitions - they just mechanically paste the little hand-out into their notebooks and ignore the words printed on that paper. 

Like I said, I’m sure that would never happen with my young scholars, but you never really know, do you?

Testing You - Testing Me

Last week, the eighth grade had a quiz about seasons. Tomorrow, the seventh grade has a test on the first part of Populations and Ecosystems.

Why do we have tests and quizzes?

Is it to torture you?

Is it because we’re supposed too?

Is it just something we do?

The answers are; no, no and no.

Teachers need assessments for two big reasons:

1. To assess whether you have learned the material,
2. To assess whether we have taught the material in a way that you can understand.

If everyone does well on an assessment, then we can safely assume that we have taught and you have learned the material. In this case, everyone goes away happy.

If most students do well, then we have some work do to with the ones who did not do well. Was it a failure in teaching? Was it a failure on the student’s part to learn the material or prepare for the test? In this case, most students go away happy and the teacher needs to figure out what went wrong. Some students may have some extra work to do to catch up.

If very few students do well, then we might have a problem with the way the material was taught.  Now, the teacher needs to dig in and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.  Sometimes we reteach the material, sometimes we conclude that the problem is on the student end and take appropriate action based on this decision.

I have had cases where I concluded I needed to reteach the content in a different way - like the extra work many of our eighth graders did after the seasons quiz. I have also had cases where I concluded that the students were not doing their work and were not even trying to learn the material, like our first test of the year in the seventh grade. 

One more thing, as much as you may dislike having to take a 30 minute test/quiz, your teacher has had to write that assessment, and then will have to grade 50+ copies of it. 

Trust me, the torture is not taking the test, it’s grading it!

The Peanut Butter Wars

There is a war happening in our classroom. 

Battles rage, unseen in the crevices and corners of our room. 

Most of the action happens at night or on the weekends but, even though we can not see or hear it during school, day-by-day the war proceeds.

My weapons are simple: Peanut Butter and traps.

So far the mice are winning, but they have taken losses.

Every morning I check my traps and, usually, the peanut butter is gone and the traps have not been sprung. Clever little rodents these mice are…

Every few days, however, the mice have another casualty - five at last count.

To be fair, the war pales in comparison to last year’s epic battles. During the 2017-2018 school year, I trapped 11 mice. If I sat in my room quietly, I would often see them scurrying between the lab tables. I even saw one as I was teaching a class. They were a brave lot.

It’s a never-ending struggle for supremacy. The humans bring tasty snack foods and diabolically simple, yet effective traps. The mice bring stealth and the ability to wriggle though impossibly small openings. 

As the weather warms, the mice will begin to migrate back outside where the hawks, owls, and foxes will pick up the gauntlet. Just one more reason to look forward to Spring, and the end of this dreadful conflict.

Red Ink

I order them by the box - twelve at a time. This year, I had to order a second box - and it’s only March!

I’m going through red pens at an alarming rate. 

Just to be clear, I don’t lose pens like you folks lose pencils, books, erasers, glue sticks and homework assignments, I use them up. I wear them out. I take all that red ink and push it onto your work. 

So many red pens. 

I sincerely hope you take the time to read my comments, questions and observations on your work, but I suspect most of you just look at the grade and nothing else. 

I think this because returned work goes into your hands and then hits the recycling bin at supersonic speed. 

Am I wasting all my red ink?

I don’t think so, I do see some of my scholars reading my feedback. 

Maybe my comments will make a difference. 

Maybe my questions will prompt some of you to think about your work a little more deeply. 

Maybe some of you will take your work home and show your parents what you’re learning in science. 

Maybe I should just have Amazon automatically deliver me a new box of red pens every three months.