Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Yesterday I returned the results of the first quiz to the students taking up TrigMat.

I had to lower the 60% passing from 30 to 25. The highest was 43 out of 50. But there were still some students who got only one digit scores, with half and quarter of a point added at that.

Not surprisingly, most of those who got low did not complain about their scores. In fact, only two students asked me about the way their papers were marked.

One of them was one of the five highest. He just wanted to clarify if the parts in his test paper that were encircled received points or not. i clarified for him that as long as there was a check mark beside it, regardless of whether there was also a frowning face next to it, it would be counted.

Later on he also asked me who got highest in the class. I told him that it was not my policy to divulge that, but he was free to ask his classmates if they were willing to share their grades.

The second person to approach me asked if some of his incorrect answers could be considered for partial points, because he was just a point or two shy of the 60% mark.

I had to remind him that just because he "failed" in this quiz doesn't mean that he will receive a zero for that when computing the final grade. All the scores are accumulated until the last week of classes, hopefully reaching around 400 points.

So performing better in the future 100-point exams will allow him to reach the 240-point "passing" mark faster.

In the end I told them that I was more lenient during this first test, giving them half and quarter points for solutions not shown completely, final answers not boxed or encircled, fractions and radical signs not simplified and decimal answers not rounded off. but I warned them that in the next 100-point exam in two weeks time, where the coverage of the quiz will comprise of a third of the questions, I would be stricter with the grading.

I also used the same tactic from my astronomy classes, where groups of students were asked to submit one large plastic envelope each for containing all their requirements for the term, which I will keep until they ask for it. This will ensure that all their papers are intact when we do compute their prefinal grade in nine weeks' time.

The groups were also asked to bring the protractor, string, tape and weight from which they could create the apparatus used for measuring the angle of elevation, part of our new topic on applications of right triangles.

The measuring of the top of the building that was a class activity last term is now an assignment. But I did not include the adjustment for the height of the observer, which one student asked. I told them that will be discussed on the next period, since I wasn't planning that they will only use the protractor for one meeting.