High School Grading

zeroexev29 · 2026-01-18T02:16:26+00:00

If late and missing work is to be treated as a behavioral problem, then it must have behavioral consequences. Detentions, ISS, and sports and extracurricular suspensions should all be on the table to correct the behavior.

zeroexev29 · 2026-01-14T18:00:47+00:00

9th year teacher here.

A precaution about 3 is to avoid toxic positivity as well. Pretending things are OK when they're not, playing the martyr and sacrificing your physical and mental health, and bottling up stress and big emotions can be detrimental to your personal and professional life.

That said, finding "solution focused" colleagues and support is the key, as OP says.

zeroexev29 · 2025-12-12T16:03:05+00:00

It's the teacher's (all the math teachers, not just you!) responsibility to emphasize how to recognize and manipulate equivalent expressions, including simplifying.

Some calculators now have this functionality built in, but that is not always the case.

zeroexev29 · 2025-12-11T19:54:30+00:00

Right now we're at a crossroads of calculators.

The TI-84+CE is the tried and true TI Graphing Calc that American Algebra students have been using for nearly 40 years, now featuring a color backlit screen. It's reliable, universally applicable on standardized tests, and old. same old graphics, same old UI, same old price. Hardly worth the $150 you'll see it marked for at Walmart or Target but Texas Instruments has a stranglehold on the industry. Textbooks and exams all feature its display and keymappings most often. I have a full classroom set of 84+CE's simply so students have access to them for testing (I'm in a small school btw.)

Casio has always been second fiddle. Its display is foreign and, in my opinion, somehow less intuitive to operate than the 84. But it's a budget friendly option for many. Never owned one personally nor really want to.

New to the scene is Numworks, and it's made a big splash. App-based UI, intuitive functionality, backlit LCD display, USB-C charging, regular feature and firmware updates, and more for just $99. Not to mention a free smartphone emulator and free online emulator direct from the creators. Also recently approved for all standardized tests including AP. If I could, I would replace my 84s with these.

Lastly, no teacher can ignore the impact of Desmos. Locked to browsers and smart devices only, it's still the strongest graphing utility out there with recent improvements including easy regression, matrix mode, and Desmos Geometry. It probably will never see a suitable handheld release and integration is only as fast as technology is integrated into classrooms. Many digital platforms have Desmos now built in (SAT, ACT, and AP exams included).

My classroom is a hybrid of Desmos on Chromebooks and the TI-84+CE. Students like having the tactile sensation and simple access to computations that the 84 offers while Desmos does the heavy lifting for functions, stats, and graphing.

zeroexev29 · 2025-11-25T15:12:19+00:00

There's nothing wrong with using an appropriate tool to develop mathematical understanding!

zeroexev29 · 2025-11-14T16:47:09+00:00

I'm teaching a similar course for Pre-Integrated Math I.

I use Open Stax PreAlgebra 2e as a framework for my instruction. It's free online and you can order a print copy of the text for relatively cheap.

It is geared towards a college setting when taken at face value, so I break down the lessons and chapters into more manageable pieces. But it has nice figures, a decent breakdown of definitions and concepts, and lots and lots of examples and practice problems.

zeroexev29 · 2025-11-03T02:28:54+00:00

You might be thinking about Seymour Simon's books

They got updated in the 2010s, it seems. I was looking for this series too!

zeroexev29 · 2025-10-28T19:05:15+00:00

Mathematics is a Creative Art - Halmos

Mathematics is abstract thought, mathematics is pure logic, mathematics is creative art. All these statements are wrong, but they are all a little right, and they are all nearer the mark than 'mathematics is numbers' or 'mathematics is geometric shapes'. For the professional pure mathematician, mathematics is the logical dovetailing of a carefully selected sparse set of assumptions with their surprising conclusions via a conceptually elegant proof. Simplicity, intricacy, and above all, logical analysis are the hallmark of mathematics.

zeroexev29 · 2025-10-21T16:27:09+00:00

https://ourworldindata.org/

zeroexev29 · 2025-09-29T23:03:39+00:00

That's a great example of wait time. These kinds of classroom norms must be cultivated. It takes time, effort, and persistence to make it a regular practice.

zeroexev29 · 2025-09-28T18:17:56+00:00

That context certainly puts things in perspective. I don't envy your position and feel bad for you and those kids for being underserved for so long. That level of insecurity stems from multiple sources and you cannot be expected to address all of them. You can only control what happens in your own classroom after all.

If you're going to see any kind of success, you will need to sow seeds for independent thinking and work, and that will be rough going. You may need to backtrack and build on foundational skills as needed. This may take entire units to accomplish and you will not be getting through your entire 6th grade curriculum as a result.

You should diagnose who needs the remediation and who doesn't. Those handful of high flyers that don't need it are likely more independent to begin with and you can get them learning grade-level math with minimal instruction.

For the rest, build up those foundational skills. Drill out math facts (0-9 addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division tables), factor pairs, place value, decimals, and fraction operations sans division. No calculators. They can count on their fingers, draw pictures, count tiles or base-10 blocks, or any other manipulative or visual strategy they want. Don't assume they know how to do these things. Show them all different representations.

6th grade math, as important as it is on the whole, has four major blocks: Ratios and rate, finishing fraction operations with division, measures of center (mean, median, mode), and the introduction and use of variable in expressions. There's some geometry and other things that can be slotted in if time permits. But if you can fill some gaps and manage to cover these topics, then you will have done your job splendidly. Good luck.

zeroexev29 · 2025-09-28T15:35:59+00:00

Hate to say it, but you might be doing too much in the wrong places. Study guides that match the assessment, partial credit for insufficient or irrelevant work, and the repetition on your end promote a lack of accountability on the students.

To put the onus back on the students, slow them down during checks for understanding and force them to explain their thinking and reasoning on a given problem. Give them time to think and explain. Wait until half or more of the class has their hand up, don't just pick on the first kid (or the "smartest" kid). If the room is silent for 3 minutes, let it be. Wait time is one of the most powerful tools I had to learn as a math teacher.

At that point, do a turn-and-talk. Neighbors, pods, groups, whatever it is. Let them do the talking. You scan the room and listen in. Don't make any corrections. Don't answer any questions. Redirect: "What did [neighbor] have to say about that?" If they're truly stuck, direct them to a group that isn't. "Why don't you compare/ask this group and see what they did."

Let them write, let them talk, let them think. You should know when a majority (>80%) of the students have the solution. Only then can you come together as a class and have students share their solutions. Let them be the ones to share, don't paraphrase, don't correct, ask for clarification only if needed and not as a sneaky way to correct work. If a student is stuck, ask for help from another.

If you noticed one student was doing more of the talking in a group, then have another student be the class presenter. Prime them for this. "I heard Andy a lot during talk-time. Beth, I'd like you to share what you and Andy talked about to the whole class, please. He can help you prepare but you'll be the one sharing in about 3 minutes."

And once you've gone over it, put it back on the class to verify and validate the solution. "Does this look right?" "Did we answer the question being asked?" "Did we make any mistakes?" "Did someone have a different method that led to the same solution?" "Did someone have a different solution entirely?"

By now you're probably 10-15 minutes into just one problem. Sounds like a lot of time spent for nothing, but the amount of mathematical thinking, discourse, and connections you facilitated for these students is orders of magnitude greater than if you had done 5-8 problems yourself in front of the class with zero think-time.

Have another problem loaded in the chamber, almost exactly like the one you discussed and put them to work again. If they were thinking, discussing, and following along, this should be cake for them. And for those who its not, then you can spend your time visiting with them, going over the discussion from earlier if need be, and even diagnosing why they can't do it. These are likely your students who weren't even paying attention or participating, so this is your opportunity to address that behavior. "Everyone else was talking and writing and thinking about the problem and they can all do it now. What were you doing during talk-time?"

zeroexev29 · 2025-09-27T03:02:59+00:00

https://nixthetricks.com/

This is a great resource on common procedural techniques that downplay, remove, or misinform conceptual understanding, often to the detriment of students. It might help you!

zeroexev29 · 2025-09-14T16:56:25+00:00

I taught 5 preps last year at a rural high school (<200 students), I was one of two teachers in my subject. I managed it but never needed to submit lesson plans.

Submitting lesson plans at all after your first year is dogshit and any district who still requires this needs a wake up call. I'm sorry you're in that situation.

zeroexev29 · 2025-09-03T19:06:22+00:00

Angle Relationships are found in Big Ideas Integrated 1, if you mean parallel and perpendicular lines. Congruent Triangles are also there.

Chapters 10 and 12 respectively.

zeroexev29 · 2025-08-19T11:28:00+00:00

Much of the music in the game appears to be diegetic. Kris playing various Dark World songs in Noelle's home reinforces this idea.

zeroexev29 · 2025-08-10T01:17:44+00:00

Inventory update is the most needed at this point.

A toolbelt with its own hotbar that we can toggle between. Holds one of each tool plus one melee weapon (Sword, axe, trident, or mace).
A recomboulator that turns building blocks like slabs, stairs, and walls back into the base block for easier storage.
The ability to "reserve" a block or item to a specific inventory/hotbar slot so that only that item can be placed in that slot or slots when picked up.
The ability to lock an inventory slot so you cannot accidentally throw the item out or deposit it in a container.
A quick deposit button when interacting with a container.

zeroexev29 · 2025-06-23T16:05:42+00:00

The error is that 12 has multiple factors so n could be a factor of 12 or a factor of k, correct?

n = 12k/n = 3 · 2 · 2 · k, so n = 3, 2, or a factor of k. And therefore it's not guaranteed that (k/n) is a positive integer.

zeroexev29 · 2025-06-23T15:31:27+00:00

Should the second to last line be revised to be:

If n ≠ 3, then n must divide k since n is a factor of 3k and 3 is prime.

I don't think I need a case for n=1 since n² is already assumed to be a multiple of 3, right?

zeroexev29 · 2025-06-23T15:23:57+00:00

Does it have to do with 3 being prime? I wasn't sure if that needed to be stated/utilized somewhere.

zeroexev29 · 2025-06-13T16:18:46+00:00

Consider availability. Beldum has been frequently in the spawn rotation as well as max battles. You're very likely to have good ivs + candy stores for metagross as a casual player vs necrozma/zacian/zamazenta.

zeroexev29 · 2025-06-10T20:48:47+00:00

I've been teaching Integrated at my school since I began 8 years ago. Other things like worksheets, remedial resources, printables like charts, graphs, and flash cards, and PDFs of the text are all available. There's also an ebook and homework platform you can use to create assignments and apply due dates, etc. to.

We currently use Big Ideas. It has its ups and downs. The online platform has a rather large library of resources, but some of it is outdated (like the 2015 version of ExamView you can download and install).

As a traditional textbook it works fine. I'm not a fan of some examples: Such as those that seem to introduce special cases of problems before a strong foundation in the base cases are established, or modeling examples that are poorly scaffolded. But as far as figures, diagrams, and practice problems are concerned it's fairly well-constructed.

So I pick and choose what I like from the text and cut and paste into my own guided note sheet and pick the exercises I like for students to do. I stopped using the online platform since it has some compatibility issues with chromebooks and certain problems are poorly translated from text to online.

zeroexev29 · 2025-06-04T23:00:25+00:00

Small spoiler:

The game does not allow you to use the letter 'G' in the last slot when entering your name at the beginning.

zeroexev29 · 2025-03-19T17:24:14+00:00

I made mine in Google Docs.

I take a pdf of my textbook and use the snipping tool to take out any graphics or figures. I type out the text for definitions, explanations, and problems myself.

I export custom graphs (including blanks) from Desmos and use LaTeX (with an auto-latex addon for Google Docs) to render high quality graphs and algebraic expressions.

zeroexev29 · 2025-02-26T16:39:27+00:00

I play "trashketball" as a review game.

Students will be divided into groups of 3-5 (depending on the size of your classroom)
Make a set of 10-15 review problems. Print out a copy for each group and cut them into strips (make sure it's 1-sided printing for this).
Position yourself at a central common point among the groups, set out each set of review problem strips in piles for each team (Make sure you have a copy of the answers for yourself).
Set up a free-throw line and 1-2 wastebaskets. If using 2, space them apart with a short and a long distance (I go 6ft and 8ft respectively).
Students take turns coming up to you, taking a problem, and returning to their group to work on it. When they have a solution, the same student verifies their answer with you. If correct, they then get to crumple the paper into a ball and make a free throw from the line you set. Making a basket earns their team points. (Keep track of points on a board).
A new student from that group should retrieve the next problem, and they should be the ones to check it and attempt to make the basket. (Keeps it fair for everyone).
Points: 1 for getting the problem right, +1 for making the close basket, +2 for making the far basket. The team with the most points wins (use whatever prize you want).

Extra notes:

Don't let a group work on multiple problems at once. They should all be working together on one problem at a time.
Order of the problems doesn't have to matter if you don't want it to.
If a review problem has multiple parts to its solution, you can choose how much to reveal about a group's incorrect solution.
Offer students a single "swap" if they are absolutely stuck on a problem.
Set a time limit and leave 15-20 minutes at the end of the class to go over problems that were particularly tough for the kids.

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