What's Your Sign:

The purpose of these reports is to provide a weekly progress report that students/families can act upon. The action points that we recommend families take upon review of this Aeries report are:

* If all Practice is complete, student should definitely be congratulated and possibly rewarded! Don’t take good habits for granted! Positivity and affirmation are currencies that we all understand and need.

* If Mastery Check-In scores or Fix-It scores are solid and reflect appropriate learning, your family should definitely throw a party for the student! That means that thinking and learning are happening! Evidence of learning and progress are absolutely worthy of celebration!

* If there is Practice missing, parents should encourage students to complete the work over the weekend. Don’t worry, I’ve spoken to all students and have been assured by them that they will dutifully comply with any and all parent requests, math related or not. No worries about assignments being late because work is accepted at any time, there is no late penalty. We just want to see students get in some good practice of the concepts that we are learning.

* If Mastery Check-In performance is not up to the potential of the student, student should be encouraged to review concepts and apply for the Fix-It. Our goal is student learning. If the Mastery Check-In shows that there is some concept that the student is having trouble learning, our motto is: “Re-learn and then show us that you’ve mastered the concept!”

A couple of points that you should be aware of as you mull over the report (these points are also usually Frequently Asked Questions that families have upon inspection of the report):

* Grades may not change much (or at all) from week to week. Some weeks we just have lessons for the entire week and no new grades are entered into Aeries.

* Grades may change a LOT from week to week. If there are a lot of scores going in that particular week, there may be dramatic swings in the grade. If it is near the beginning of the quarter, there are fewer grades in the gradebook and subsequent grades can have a drastic impact on the grades. It’s a math thing… :)

* Grades will change! This is merely a snapshot, a moment frozen in time. No need to panic about getting extra credit (there is none available), but you can take the action points noted above in order to “do something” about improving the grade.

* All this being said about grades, our hope is that student focus is not on grades, but on learning instead. Students need to understand that better learning = better grades! In my estimation, focusing on grades is just a meaningless pursuit of points, like playing a game. School is supposed to be about learning, not grades.

* The Practice score reflects Practice completion, not the percentage of problems correct. Thus, a low Practice Stamp Sheet score indicates that there are missing assignments, not incorrectly done problems on the Practice or a lack of understanding. If a student decides to do missing work, the Stamp Sheet grade will be raised. Practice can always be made up! Reports are sent out on Fridays so that students who are missing work can take the time to do it over the weekend. There is no reason that the Practice Stamp Sheet score shouldn’t be 100%.

* When there are low test scores (or missing Practice), please check in with your student first. Resist immediately replying to the teacher email because most of the answers to your questions will lie with your student. Encourage (coerce!) your student to complete missing Practice, review concepts they are having trouble with (use Power Up! Zone), and take the Fix-It. Students have full control over their grade in this class. As they increase their learning, their class grade will reflect that. Also, encourage your student to be a self-advocate in their education. They should be encouraged to bring concerns and ideas to their teacher so the teacher can work with them.

* Student is eligible for a Fix-It if:

• They have completed all Practice for the chapter.

• They have thoroughly corrected their Mastery Check-In.

• They fill in a Fix-It Ticket and submit it with corrected Mastery Check-In & completed Practice Stamp Sheet by deadline.

• Student will only Fix-It on questions for which they scored a non-passing score (0,1,2).

* There are no retake opportunities for Critical Thinking Challenges. There will be other opportunities to raise student’s performance task average, but it’s too difficult/complicated to reasonably recreate the unique problem solving situation presented with each Critical Thinking Challenge problem.

OK, that was a whole lot to digest! You should be proud of yourself if you read all the way to the end. I am hopeful that the weekly progress report will help families to stay updated with progress in our class and also serve as data that students can act upon to improve their learning in this class.