Policies

Your Attendance

Daily attendance in class is very important. Although unexpected absences can and do occur, the best opportunity for you as a student to learn the materials for your class and to show how well you understand the concepts is to be in class each and every day. 

If and when you do miss class, keep in mind that you are still expected to complete all assignments. Extended absences can make this difficult, so be sure to fill in an extended absence form if you plan to be gone more than 2 days. 

Your Work

►Written Work -- Assignments in this class often involve answering questions from texts, videos, group discussions, or from other study materials. When completing written work, you should show that you understand your answers by completely rephrasing ideas in your own words. Even if the answers are a result of group discussion, you need to put your own spin on the material to make it your own. And make sure you DO make it your own; the penalties for NOT doing so are severe: 

►Columbia High School Plagiarism Policy --Answers copied from the textbook, another student, the Internet, or another source are not acceptable unless the source is clearly identified and credited. This policy applies to AI/Chatbots too. The work you turn in must be your own.  
**A first offense may result in loss of credit for the assignment.
**A second offense may result in loss of credit for the course. 

►Academic Honesty --To make clear the importance of a student’s own work as a way to show learning and academic growth, this class will make use of an Academic Honesty Agreement (below) which students will be expected to agree to and follow. Instruction in properly showing sources of ideas will be a major part of this course. 

Academic Honesty Agreement 

1. My homework, quizzes, projects, and assessments will be my own work, unless the assignment specifically allows working with others.
2. When I do use the work of others in my own work, I will give credit to them through clear citations.
3. Failing to clearly and appropriately use the words and ideas of others can result in a zero for the assignment with no chance to re-do it, a lower course grade and/or disciplinary steps. 

►Late Work -- You should make every effort to complete work on time. Timely completion of work allows all of us to be prepared for the day's activities, and it helps build a valuable work habit. However, unforeseen circumstances can get in the way of even the best intentions. For this reason, late work is accepted up to a week late, but it will be recorded as late. NO LATE WORK WILL BE ACCEPTED IN THE FINAL WEEK OF A TERM. PLAN AHEAD!

*NOTE: Because meeting deadlines is an important leardership quality, late assignments in my Leadership class will be marked down 20% for being late. 

Your Grades

Assignments, activities and other work completed in this class will be evaluated to determine how well students understand important concepts. Different point totals for different assignments reflect a number of factors, including which key standards and important learning targets are being assessed, as well as the time and effort needed to complete assignments. Assignments also appear in Skyward in a few different categories: 

• Responsibility assignments are those where students simply earn full credit for completing the work. These include quick response surveys, handouts for signatures, etc. These are likely all or nothing scores; you either completed it or you didn't.  

• Formative assignments make up the bulk of the assignments. They are designed to introduce, work with, and reflect on new material. These include daily assignments done in class and/or for homework.

• Summative assignments are generally longer, cumulative assignments, where students show how all the ideas fit together for them. These include unit tests, projects, and other larger works. 

To determine overall grades in class, individual scores for assignments are combined and the percentage of total points possible generates the grade for the class, based on the following scale: 

A/A- (100-90%)      B+/B/B- (89.9-80%)        C+/C/C- (79.9-70%)        D+/D (69.9-60%)        F ( 59.9 and below)

With the exception of the course final, students are always welcome, encouraged, even expected to retake tests and quizzes, or to resubmit assignments, to improve their understanding, and improve their grade. Before resubmitting work, however, students need to do something to learn more about the original material. Procedures for completing retakes and rewrites will be covered in class.

With the exception of "Responsibility" assignments, I use a No Zero Policy (here are more details in written or video form) to remove the extreme grading penalty for missing work. Missing work will show up in Skyward and Google Classroom as "Missing" and be scored at 50%. 

QUIZZES 

Many times students will take an online quiz, reading check, or comprehension check to see how well they have identified and collected key information. These short assessments allow students to see how well they are doing. Like almost anything in this class, students can re-do them for a higher score, but they need to give themselves enough time to actually improve their learning, not just their score. So please keep this guideline in mind when retaking an online, self-scoring quiz or reading check.

Only the first score per day will be recorded in Skyward for any one quiz. If you would like to improve a score, use the email you receive to guide your review and further learning, but wait til the next day to retake the assessment. 

Extra Credit

There is no extra credit offered in this class. But remember that ANY assignment may be reworked and resubmitted within one week if students aren’t satisfied with their score. If students want to improve their grade, all they have to do is show how they've improved their learning and mastery of a graded standard. Because retakes/rewrite scores REPLACE the original score, students can improve their grade with a retake much faster than with an extra credit assignment or project. And students may retake an assessment more than once, so they are encouraged to work on it until they are satisfied with the score.