Student "edition" found at {thoughts dot com slash typed no space out no space loud slash blog}.

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

In my astronomy classes for the past two days, I returned to them their first exam.

I told them that we will not stop with the exercises involving the calendar of constellations of the zodiac until everyone learns how to use them correctly, which was evidently not the case with that part of their exam with many getting low points.

For the umpteenth time, I wrote on the board the basic rules that don’t change regardless of the type of question: that the month is aligned with 6pm, the time is aligned with west or west plus one hour, and that constellation is aligned with the direction.

It was just a matter of what can be aligned first based on the question, and in what order.

I already promised both sections that it will still be part of their next exam.

Besides that, there were those who got low in the first exam that asked about how they could make up.

The best compromise I could give them, since I already started with having the total number of points in the exam more than what is considered the perfect score, is to increase that amount of “bonus” they could get.

In the first exam, it was only an excess of two points over one hundred given.

In the second exam, I said that I could bring that up to a hundred twenty points possible over a hundred.

This means though that the sixty percent that their exams will amount to will no longer be fifteen percent each, but will be the total over four hundred points.

Now I remember that before, all of these used to be just accumulation of points, including the exercises and classroom activities, and not a specific percentage.

But one major difference between then and now is that this new incarnation has a lab component.

Besides, from past experience with this generation of students, there really have to be gentle threats as to the very real possibility that they can fail in this subject.

Session 2541 is of course swayed by having known these students for years before becoming their teacher. Class dismissed.