Math Makes Sense Grade 2 Homework Book Pdf

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Kipa Crawn

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Aug 5, 2024, 2:12:44 PM8/5/24
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Possiblequestions to ask after your child has recorded their strategy whether they solved the problem correctly or not: (If your child has made a mistake they will often catch the mistake while explaining their strategy.)

Thanks for your comments, Jennifer. I am glad you found the list of questions useful! Even though we included an image from 3rd grade we really see these questions as useful across the grades and for most of the types of problems students are asked to solve.


However, I am not sure how easily families would be able to decide when to ask these questions. I would love to think about this further. Are there questions that you ask to help students stretch their thinking that families might be able to ask their children?


Thank you for your comments. The purpose of asking these questions as children do their homework is to support them in drawing on their own knowledge and understanding to solve problems. These questions are similar to those teachers might ask students as they are doing their work in a classroom. In Investigations the strategies students use come out of their own mathematical understandings. Students are expected to choose strategies that make sense to them. Parents can review strategies with their children and support them in choosing among them. One useful tool for doing this is the Math Words and Ideas. This digital resource gives parents the chance to learn about the ideas, problems, and strategies that students encounter in Investigations, and can give children an opportunity to review the ideas and strategies they have worked on in class.


I have a student in my course that does well on the exams, and his answers to the exam questions show a deep understanding of the material. However, this student has not been handing in the assigned homeworks and has a missed a few lab assignments, as well. I've been told by other faculty that he has a job which keeps him up late, and have noticed that he struggles to stay awake at times during the class.


Depending on how he fares on a project worth a large portion of his grade, and the final exam, the missed homeworks/labs could cause his grade to be below a C, which is the required grade that a student must receive if they are to advance to the second, more advanced course [and, a C grade is also needed to get credit for the course; otherwise, the student will need to retake it again on the next offering, which isn't until two semesters from now]. Further, this student is a senior, so a D grade would be a major setback for him.


During that private meeting, I will discuss his/her current performance in the class, and point out the likely consequences if he/she does not submit the required work. I will advise the student as to what he/she must do to achieve the grade he/she needs.


I strongly recommend you start with whatever the policy is in your syllabus. Most syllabi contain details about grading, points allocation, etc. By starting here, you can avoid any claims of "unique treatment", given that everyone received the same instructions.


That said, it sounds as though your student has a unique personal situation causing him to have difficulty completing all the material. In that case, I would follow the advice of ff524 and meet with the student privately to discuss. Simply bring the issue up and see what the student says. A comment of "I don't need to do your stupid homework, I'm good enough at the material without it" may deserve a different reaction than "I would love to do it but I simply don't have time with my other responsibilities".


But if some student did markedly better or worse on one aspect of the course, the professor would re-weight the grades 40% for the best aspect, 25% for the worst aspect, and 35% for the middle one. That way, each part of the course would have a minimum weight of 25% and a maximum weight of 40%, but students with skewed grades were given a benefit compared to the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3.


If possible you should communicate to the student exactly the precarious position they are in. Presumably this student is capable of completing the assignments and labs just like other students in the course. From the sounds of it, even doing an average to below-average job on these would substantially reduce the odds of a very negative outcome.


At that point the burden is on the student. You cannot make changes to the weighting of grades because of the external circumstances: this would really not be fair to other students. Presumably you have some notion of the percentage weights the various graded assignments are worth. Explain this, and make it clear that excellent performance on exams is simply not enough.


Of course, I would feel bad giving a D or lower to a student in this situation, but the grade must reflect the student's performance in the course as a whole. It is unethical to give a student a grade other than the one their coursework has earned.


What is the right measure of whether the student is mastering the material in a way that supports the follow-on classes? Ideally, you will design your syllabus so that the student's grade will appropriately reflect their level of mastery. In some courses, there is no real mastery without lab mastery. In others, textbook-based conceptual mastery would suffice. They are many reasons why the grade contract on your syllabus might be incorrectly formulated. E.g., you might be weighting homework heavily because that is the only reasonable way to get pass rates appropriate to your institution. That is, sadly enough, sometimes it is unavoidable to reward effort instead of mastery. You say the student shows "deep understanding", and if by that you mean that he will be well prepared for the follow-on courses, you might propose a fair replacement for the grade contract on your syllabus. Make sure you would be comfortable offering every other student the same option. Then consider whether the grade contract on the syllabus should be altered to include this option. If yes, then you have probably found a good solution.


One strategy I use in courses where the final exam provides a comprehensive test of appropriate mastery is to give an A grade to anyone who gets an A on the final. (Of course, this is inappropriate in many courses.) Perhaps this offers a helpful starting point for dealing with this student.


First, Universities usually have special attendance waivers for students who work aside their studies. Students have to declare this early to make university able to accommodate them, but it is always a good thing to let them know they should disclose their situation to the person in charge. Note that some otherwise mandatory requirement can be waived (e.g. some homework, some in-class evaluations) but that some cannot (e.g. practical work in experimental sciences are usually too important a part of the curriculum to be waived).


Second, the grading system is often only loosely defined, which makes one able to adapt it to the case. One should of course always be as fair and as precise as possible, to make the grade really reflect what it should measure.


Third, even if the grading scheme has been precisely established and cannot be changed at all, the end-of-year jury has complete power of changing grades. Be sure to attend it so that the student's case is treated appropriately. Short of that, make sure the case is known to all colleagues.


While it is important to try to be "consistent" with grades, I think we can mostly agree that the point of courses is to educate, rather than demanding compliance to (admittedly artificial, even if self-consistent) rules. If the situation described comes up in the middle of the term, it's awkward to accommodate, because suddenly declaring that students have the option of having their grade determined by just exams could be objected-to on the grounds that if they'd known that, they might not have done the other work... Hard to argue with this, even if we imagine that the intention of homework and labs is to help learn the material, etc.


In the past, I have bent my own rules and given grades based on performance on the final. By this time, I would arrange things so that I'd have less reason to do so... Altogether, out of perhaps 100 such cases in 40 years, I can recall at most 1 or 2 where students were genuinely successful in learning the material while being somewhat disconnected. So, in fact, although some students half-heartedly complained that they'd have not done the homework if they'd been allowed-to, not "allowing" it did them a favor.


So, by now, my default for undergrad courses is to "require" homework + for exceptions see me at the beginning of the term, not part-way through... explaining that changing things in the middle easily leads to unfairness... I do give examples of plausible exceptions (about skipping homework, especially, about missing a midterm, ... how can I demand that people not go ski-ing at Thanksgiving?...)


Summary: the goal is education, but/and a significant fraction of students will dis-serve themselves through naivete... But/and I no longer can stomach arguing that enforcement of artificial rules "makes sense". I strongly prefer more defensible positions. :)


That doesn't mean you're out of options though. Talk to the student and determine a minimum number of assignments that the student must complete in order to reach that C. Concentrate on balancing assignments that the student can complete, with assignments that you feel are especially important.


My school has a similar grade requirement for meeting the prerequisite for advanced classes, although a student will get credit for the current class with a D. When faced with similar situations I have on occasion recommended students be accepted despite their lower than typical grade. That has had mixed results, bending the rules too much for a student will not do them any favors.


First of all, let's dispense with the fantasy-world argument about the ethics of grading fairness and all that claptrap...The student's grade is the student's grade, and no other student has any standing to discuss it or even notice it, much less complain about it. "Objective" grading is a starting point. No more, no less.

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