The progress report that is posted on Edline does not give as much insight into the story of your performance as does your progress on ActiveGrade.  If you are interested in working towards a better grade by the semester's end, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Any letter grade is achievable, no matter what letter grade is currently reported in the interim progress report.  The larger the difference between the current grade and your target letter grade, the more you will have to make a change to the way you study and participate in this class. For example, you can achieve an "A" by semester's end, if you are willing to put in enough strategic, persistent action to improve. Please stop in and talk with me if you need some direction on what to do.
  
• The final letter grade is determined by two criteria. You must achieve strong enough in BOTH criteria to achieve your target letter grade.  The two criteria are: 
  

(1) consistent completion of assignments on time, i.e. your unit packet scores (measured with goal S.P.02); and
(2) average mastery of concepts, i.e. your average assessment scores (the average of all other learning goals).

• The rubric for translating the criteria to letter grade is as follows:
  

• You can improve your scores by re-assessing past learning goals. You can use the worksheet link here to determine what goals you wish to re-assess, then make an appointment with me to re-assess your learning goals.
  

As always, I am available to help you achieve the success you choose to work for. Please contact me with any questions you have moving forward.

Last week quarter grades were posted on your report card.

It is important to understand some things about our class when deciding what to do moving forward.

• First, the grade comes from skill level, not points. When looking on Active Grade, read the numbers as such.
• Second, each skill level score updates based on the latest assessment, not averages with the old score(s).
• Third, the semester grade comes from your cumulative scores for the whole semester. It is not the first quarter averaged with the second quarter. The permanent grade you get out of this class is the semester grade.

These three facts provides you some unique opportunities. 

• One opportunity that you have is to re-assess your goals. This is the way to raise your grade. You can re-assess with an after-school appointment.
• Another opportunity is to learn from your mistakes. You can learn from your old assessments to get better for your future assessment.
• Yet another opportunity is to learn at your pace. You can re-assess learning goals from past units when you finally achieve mastery. This includes ALL goals from the beginning of the year.

When you choose to take advantage of these opportunities, your semester grade will reflect your perseverance, latest understanding, and mastery without being "dragged down" by past performance scores. Said another way, there is no obstacle preventing you from  achieving an "A" (or "B" or whatever grade you choose) by the end of the semester. Your choice is simply, "how willing am I to do what's necessary to get this grade?"

Moving forward, you will decide what action to take based on your quarter grade report. If you are unsure what those actions are, please allow me to make a few suggestions. You could:
- look on ActiveGrade to find the learning goals that are less than "3" level.
- identify what assessments scored you on those goals.
- review your mistakes and corrections from these assessments.
- practice each goal with more examples.
- set an appointment with me to re-assess.
- re-assess old learning goals and see your current grade go up.


I look forward to great learning as we march toward the end of Semester 1.
Make it a great day!

Physics 1 Students,

Remember that your ramp lab assessment evidence is due to be turned in on our new Schoology class.
If you have not signed up yet, go to schoology.com and join a course with the following access codes.
1st Hour Class: XPRXX-SV5SG
2nd Hour Class: 7RFCF-ZFQXJ

(for more detailed info, see the schoology.com student sign-up tutorial)
Once you have created a username and have access to our course, look for the assignment entitled, “Ramp Lab Assessment”. Upload a photo of your group’s whiteboard, and a photo of your individual notebook. Then write a reflection justifying how your photo evidence shows your skill level for S.P.04, S.P.05, and S.P.06

Greetings Introductory Physics athletes,

We are more than half-way through the first quarter, and we now have some evidence to begin tracking your learning progress.  Remember, we use the ActiveGrade system to keep track of your skill level from assessments, assignments, and lab activities.

A walkthrough presentation of ActiveGrade and the tips to succeed in this system can be viewed at the following link:
http://goo.gl/3VJ8yp

The main ideas to keep in mind about our system of feedback and grades are:
- This is a rubric system, not a point system. You don’t “lose points” nor “make up points”. You can simply show that you are getting smarter on subsequent assessments.
- Assessments determine your skill level relative to the skill rubric discussed in class.
- Your most current scores (your latest assessments) matter most.
- You achieve the best grade by actively learning from your past assessments.
- You are also assessed on the consistency of your homework. Keep up with your assignments.

Are you receiving the reminders for our class? If not, please sign up at
https://www.remind.com/join/dannugip

Your achievement is the goal of everything we do in this class.  Our assessments and feedbacks are also designed to increase your achievement. On any particular assessment, you will receive multiple scores; one for each learning goal that appears on this assessment.  We will use ActiveGrade to keep track of your scores, and your learning progress. 
This class only has four grades: 1st quarter, 1st semester, 3rd quarter, 2nd semester.
All other scores are your most current feedback related to specific learning goals.
At the end of each grading period, the average of your most current scores will translate to letter grades.

Refer to ActiveGrade to view your most current progress in achievement.

We use rubrics scores (not points) to give you feedback on your assessments. The scores communicate your skill level with each learning goal, not the assessment as a whole. I would like to describe our rubric scores in more detail.  The main idea behind rubric scores is to show you your level of science skill and understanding.

• At level 4, you understand the important information and skills accurately and in detail. You can apply the important skills without error and with fluency, and can also explain them in such a way to teach another these same skills and information.
• At level 3, you understand the important information and skills accurately but not in detail. You can apply important skills without significant errors, and can also explain them in a knowledgeable, but superficial way.
• At level 2, you have an incomplete understanding and/or have some misconceptions about the important information and skills; however, you know enough to have a basic understanding of the topic. You make some significant errors when applying the skill but still accomplish a rough approximation of the process.
• At level 1, you have so many misconceptions or your knowledge is so incomplete that you do not demonstrate an understanding of the topic. You make so many error in applying the skill that you cannot actually apply the skill.
• A score of 0  indicates that you provided little or no information with which to make a judgement.
  

As you receive feedback from all our assessments, please keep the Stockdale Paradox as your guiding perspective:
you must retain faith that you will prevail in the end and you must also confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.

When you receive your assessment scores, you can choose to learn from them.  Here are some ways you can learn from your assessments:

• Choose not to get discouraged. Remember the Stockdale Paradox.
  
• If the scores you receive are surprising to you, reflect on what you assumed you could do, and what the feedback really communicates.
  
• Compare your assessments with exemplary examples, with the goal to identify the differences between your work and the exemplars. You can interview your classmates with level 4 work. They are here to help you acheive learning. Ask them, "how did you approach this?" rather than "what did you do?" or "can I copy your work?"
  
• Compare your assessments with the solution key. Again, approach it with a learner's eye. What is written out in the solution that you didn't write? What is explained that you didn't explain? If you need more help identifying the differencese between your work and the solution, don't hesitate to talk with me. I am here to coach you through the learning process.
  

If you choose to use your assessment scores as learning opportunities like I outlined above, you will go a long way forward to achieving the two goals of our class: (1) to prepare you with science knowledge and skills for the next step in your educational career, and (2) to prepare you to be a resilient, growing learner for the rest of your life.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Make today great!

Greetings physics student/athlete!

As you receive progress reports from your teachers, you may or may not be motivated by your current performance. In our class, the feedback/grade system is designed to help you have a clear way to advance your learning if you choose to engage with it.

In our system, your feedback is rubric-based, not points-based.  Therefore, when you see your progress report grade, it is most helpful to look a bit deeper and examine the learning goal skills demonstrated on your most recent assessments. You will find your current standings on ActiveGrade (https://activegrade.appspot.com/DannugPhysics).  When you see the current bar charts of your skills, remember what each number means on the rubric:

4 - shows Advanced skill with this learning goal
3 - shows Proficient skill with this learning goal
2 - shows Developing skill with this learning goal
1 - shows Beginning skill with this learning goal

In class, we developed descriptors for the levels of each skill level. Refer to your notes about that discussion.

As you take time to reflect on your progress, here are some beneficial questions to ask yourself:

1. What made my response on the last assessment show the level that is given as feedback?
   
2. What is the difference between my response and a response one level up?
   
3. What action(s) will I do to learn and practice so that my response on the next assessment will be one level up?
   

As you reflect with these questions, keep in mind that you have many resources available to you. Your classmates can help you become clear about the level you currently demonstrated; additionally, the students whose feedback is one level higher than yours would be great peer-coaches to help you know how to respond better next time. Talk with your classmates.  Also, I am always available by appointment after school on certain days; set up an appointment to go over concepts with me.


Reflecting in this way will help you actively prepare for the next assessment, where the skill-rating scores you demonstrate will take the place of your current scores.

Greetings physics athletes and parents,
The beginning of the school year is always a little unsettled. What is this class like? Who is in the class? How will you participate/engage in the class this year?

This year, your physics learning will involve more of yourself than you may have experienced in previous science classes. You will discover important content and learn how to apply them through practice, unlike other science classes where you are presented with the important content and instructed how to apply them.  I will coach you and guide you through structured inquiry activities and discussions and giving you coaching feedback on your skill of science investigation, science thinking and science discussion.

It is said, "Education is what others do to you. Learning is what you do to yourself."  In this class, you will spend most of your energy doing the "learning" side of this quote, and a little energy doing the "Education" side.  One implication of this quote is that you will be actively engaged in all activities, over the whole course. Another implication is that I will be coaching you on what you *do* in the class. I will be closely watching the "how" of your learning as much as the "what" of your learning.

How will this work out as we learn physics?
Our learning of each physics concept will progress through the following learning cycle: Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration, and Evaluation. In each of these steps of the cycle, you will be working with your classmates to construct a mental, graphical and mathematical model that explains the concept. I will be carefully questioning, probing, providing feedback and resources, and evaluating your explanations.
By the end of the process, you will have built an understanding model that you will be able to confidently use to solve physics problems. I will coach you through your problem-solving application *while* you engage in it, not before. Like a coach with his athlete, I work with you as often as you need until you are confidently applying what you've learned.

Our approach to learning physics is commonly referred to as "Modeling Instruction". As you may understand from the above description, this is an active learning environment. You may still have the question, "how will I participate in this class this year?" I ask you to consider the following suggestions.  As a learner, you will benefit by:
- choosing to put forth effort in doing new things. The thinking and discussion and knowledge construction I ask you to do may involve ways of learning you have not done before.  You will benefit by pushing past the discomfort and try it.
- choosing to have confidence that you *will* learn. This learning cycle has been demonstrated to be effective in producing student learning with more than 20 years of research, practice and solidification. You will benefit by choosing to believe that you will learn about physcis and science regardless of any temporary feeling of confusion or "not getting it".  Those feelings will come and go. You, your classmates and I will work together to ensure your confusion will not stick around, but will be replaced by understanding.
- choosing to be a learner in everything you do. Unless you have already learned physics to a post-graduate level, you will inevitably face challenging learning situations in this class. You will benefit by choosing to learn from every challenging situation and choosing to learn from every learn from every feedback you get ("good" and "bad") while you exercise your learning.

I hope this description helps you have a better sense for what to expect and what is expected in this course this year.  If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

Greetings Physics student and parent,
 
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to Physics 1 / Introductory Physics. My name is Christopher Dannug. I have been teaching physics and math for fourteen years at Troy High School. In the last three years, I have been training to coach physics learning in a more effective, more sustainable way. As you embark with us on this journey of learning physics, know that our learning will strengthen your success as a learner and allow you to understand physical phenomena more accurately. By the end of this course, you will gain understanding of physical concepts. Of equal importance, you will gain a working skill of science, a better mindset for learning, and preparation for the next step in your educational career.
 
We will learn physics from an “experiment first, concept second” approach this year. By this, I mean that you will be engaged in the scientific process as your path to building your understanding of the underlying concept.  This is a minds-on, hands-on way to learn.  This is an active way to learn, where you are expected to be actively thinking and participating rather than waiting for the “lecture and notes” to start.  I will coach you through your process of experimenting, making sense of data, and coming to scientific consensus with your peers. I will help you exercise your thinking and evaluation.
 
Physics is the study of interactions in our physical world. In this class, we will study interaction through experimentation and analysis.  In these first few weeks, we will learn and use the learning tools necessary for the rest of the course. With these tools, you will learn and apply tools of observation, scientific thinking, and discussion to build your personal understanding. By establishing an effective WAY to learn, we will give ourselves the opportunity to make the learning of physics content more quick, more understandable and more permanent.
 
I am excited to start this learning journey with you, and coach you through the learning process.  With my guidance and support, you will build your strong understanding of physical interactions that will last.
 
Remember, if you have not filled out the student survey, please complete it by next wednesday at the following link: http://goo.gl/i2ia35
 
If you have any questions or comments, please contact me immediately.  I am available to you in the following ways:
email - cdannug2@troy.k12.mi.us
twitter - @DannugPhysics
in-person after school - Monday, Wednesday, Friday (1 hour); Tuesday, Thursday (30 minutes)
 
I also send out occasional reminders over text using the “Remind” service. If you would like to sign up to receive texts, please visit following website:
https://www.remind.com/join/dannugp1
https://www.remind.com/join/dannugip
 
I look forward to our year together!
Christopher Dannug
Physics Teacher
Troy High School