Exam Day 2 - Wednesday

Today, everyone took their multiple choice exams at the times mentioned in the schedule. Unfortunately, Leily did not share with me that she had piano lessons and could not make the usual exam times, meaning that she did not come to the exams. Had she mentioned it, I would have found a more suitable time, but she did not, and so I will have to talk to Mr Moore about her. Most likely, she will be getting zeroes in any exams she misses.


Besides that, everything is going well so far, and only the timed essays to be taken tomorrow are left.


Below are some photos of the students taking their multiple choice exams.

Caitlin taking the SuperQuiz

Sophie taking the Language and Literature Test

Exam Day 1 - Tuesday

Both Caitlyn and Abigail took their timed essays with the first set of prompts. I have not yet seen either of the essays yet, as if I did, I would know which two numbers the two of them were. I will receive the essays once everyone has done them, on Thursday.

Schedule for This Week's Exams

Here is an individual schedule for each person competing for a place in the team. There were many complications as a general time could not be found, and the schedule reflects these problems. These times were emailed and texted to everyone.  


Samantha Rasin:
Multiple Choice Exams from 2:30 to 3:45 in 1.03 on Wednesday
Essay from 3:45 to 4:45 in 1.03 on Thursday

Leily Radseresht:
Multiple Choice Exams from 13:45 to 2:30 in the Library and from 2:30 to 3:00 in 1.03 on Wednesday
Essay from 3:45 to 4:45 in 1.03 on Thursday

Sophie Bodanis:
Multiple Choice Exams from 13:45 to 2:30 in the Library and from 2:30 to 3:00 in 1.03 on Wednesday
Essay afterschool on Monday the 5th of December.

Abigail Jean-Baptiste:
Essay from 3:40 to 4:40 in 1.03 on Tuesday
Multiple Choice Exams from 13:45 to 2:30 in the Library and from 2:30 to 3:00 in 1.03 on Wednesday

Caroline Nutter:
Multiple Choice Exams from 12:15 to 13:00 and from 13:45 to 2:30 in the Library on Wednesday
Essay from 3:45 to 4:45 in 1.03 on Thursday

Caitlin Pley:
Essay from 2:40 to 3:40 in the Library on Tuesday
Multiple Choice Exams from 2:30 to 3:45 in 1.03 on Wednesday

Edoardo Cimatti:
Multiple Choice Exams from 2:30 to 3:45 in 1.03 on Wednesday
Essay from 3:45 to 4:45 in 1.03 on Thursday

Lucas Hoffman:
Multiple Choice Exams from 12:15 to 13:00 and from 13:45 to 2:30 in the Library on Wednesday
Essay from 3:45 to 4:45 in 1.03 on Thursday

Darius Khosrowshahi:
Multiple Choice Exams from 2:30 to 3:45 in 1.03 on Wednesday
Essay from 3:45 to 4:45 in 1.03 on Thursday

Language and Literature Test

I have finished writing the Language and Literature Test. It is shorter than the SuperQuiz test, most likely because the booklet is also much shorter. This means that the test will only require 30 minutes. I suppose I could have written more questions, but the girls who have to go to choir only have one hour and fifteen minutes to do the tests, so the fact that one of the tests is shorter means they will not have to miss maths or choir. I will be printing the exams out later today, and on Monday I will give them to Mr Moore for safekeeping. 

Revised To-Do List

1. Make interview and speech timetables.
2. Book rooms for the interviews and the speeches.
3. Make a final check on whether the newest exam times work for everyone.

Room Problems for Wednesday the 30th of November

Strangely, due to the staff meeting on Wednesday, my room booking for 1.03 seems to have been deleted. I spoke with Ms Joshi, and we are trying to find a fix. I will be trying to speak with Ms Moran tomorrow at school to see if it would be possible for me to book a regular room for the exams. I will post any room change on this blog.

Proctoring Problems

Unfortunately, Ms Joshi is not available for the Language and Literature and SuperQuiz tests on Wednesday the 30th of November. Due to this, I have emailed Ms Saleh, asking her to proctor. When I receive her reply, I will post it on this blog.


Postscript:
It turns out that on the day of the exams, there is a meeting that is mandatory for all staff, so none of the teachers can proctor. Ms Saleh suggested that we ask Mr Sterling to hire a substitute teacher to come in and proctor for the exam. We sent Mr Sterling an email, and he said it would be fine. I will be meeting the substitute teacher at 1:30 in the library to prepare for the exam, which will start at 1:45.

Language and Literature Practice Test

Today everyone took a practice test, and I have analysed the results. The scores were not very high, but I did not expect them to be, because the test was very hard and contained a lot of unknown vocabulary. Once the team has been chosen, we will definitely need to learn about more literary techniques to prepare for this exam.


In any case, here are the statistics from the results of the students.


Minimum - 2 out of 15
Mean - 4.7 out of 15
Maximum - 9 out of 15


Also today, I took the SuperQuiz test that I wrote, and I got a score of 68 out of 70. Therefore, I have not had to delete any questions due to their difficulty or ambiguity.

Difficult Questions on SuperQuiz Practice Test

These are the questions that nearly no one answered correctly. Under the question, the correct answer is written in green.


 - Which of the following, according to historian Daniel Hendrick, was the MOST important thing that prevented Europeans from fully exploring Africa before the mid-nineteenth century?

1. Lack of interest.
2. Inadequate maps.
3. Native hostility.
4. Disease. (2 students got it right)
5. Difficult terrain.

- Although John Cabot sailed for England, he was not English. Which city was he from?

1. Amsterdam.
2. Lisbon.
3. Genoa.
4. Venice. (3 students got it right)
5. Granada.

- Which country did the Philippines belong to before being transferred to the United States in 1898?

1. Germany.
2. Japan.
3. France
4. England.
5. Spain. (only 2 students got it right)

- What did the Indian practice of ‘sati’ involve?

1. Widows burning themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres. (only 1 student got it right)
2. Sacrificing newborn infants to the Indian god Trimurti.
3. Men taking multiple wives, often against their will.
4. An inflexible caste system akin to slavery.
5. Stoning to death those that violated Indian law.

- Which of the following colonial powers of the late nineteenth century unified into a nation-state last?

1. Belgium.
2. Spain.
3. Germany. (no one got it right)
4. The United States.
5. Japan.

- What did the nations that met in the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 officially decide to do with regard to the issue of slavery in Africa?

1. To allow slavery and the slave trade to continue.
2. To abolish the slave trade, but continue slavery.
3. To ban slavery, but allow the slave trade.
4. To ignore the issue of slavery and the slave trade.
5. To abolish both slavery and the slave trade. (only 1 student got it right)

- What was the term ‘Maroon’ in reference to in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?

1. A Dutch colony.
2. A tobacco plantation.
3. A runaway slave. (only 1 student got it right)
4. A gold coin.
5. A Spanish pirate.

To-Do List For The Next Two Weeks

1. Finish Language and Literature test.
2. Make sure new essay times work for everyone.
3. Print the L&L practice test for Thursday.
4. Post answers to the questions that only a few people got right on the SuperQuiz practice test.
5. Make a schedule for the interviews.
6. Book rooms for the interviews with Ms Moran once the schedule is done.

Interview Judges

Today, Mr Moore and I talked about possible judges for the interviews and he recommended that I ask Mr Hemmens whether he could do it. I have e-mailed him and I will post his reply on here as soon as he answers.


Postscript:
He has answered that he would enjoy helping, and so I have to find ways to match  his schedule to the schedules of all the students. To do this, I will be asking everyone to e-mail me their free periods and afternoons where they are free to do interviews.


Once I have completed an interview schedule for the week between the 5th of December and the 10th of December, I will post it here.

Essay Date Change

The date of the timed essay that the students will be taking has had to change due to a Science field trip on Friday the 2nd of December.


- Students who are not in the school play will be taking their essay afterschool on Thursday the 1st of December for 1 hour.
- Students who are in the play will be taking their essay afterschool on Tuesday the 29th of November.
- Caitlin, who is not available at either time will take the essay during her Period 7 free period on that Tuesday.


I will therefore be making two different lists of prompts.

Language and Literature Practice Test

During Thursday's session the students will be taking a Language and Literature practice test with 15 questions. It should take 10 minutes at most, and the questions are very different from questions that I would ask you. 


They are very difficult and require a large range of vocabulary covering literary techniques that we will have a lesson on in preparation for the actual USAD competition.


Due to this, as well as the overall difficulty of the questions, I do not expect for everyone to do well in the test. However, they should all get some more experience in doing multiple-choice exams.


On another note, one of the students has chosen to quit the competition. Luisa Runge will no longer be taking part in the competition that I have designed.

SuperQuiz Test and Language and Literature Test

Over the weekend I have worked very hard to meet the deadline I set for the completion of the SuperQuiz test. The final test has 70 questions and all of the answers can be found in the USAD Resource Guide.


I will be doing the test myself later on in the week to see if there are any questions that should be taken out because they are too difficult.


Hopefully this will make the test easy enough for the students, as long as they study the booklet by simply reading through it.


Moreover, I have nearly finished writing the Language and Literature Test. It is shorter than the SuperQuiz test, most likely because the booklet is also much shorter. This means that the test will only require 30 minutes. I suppose I could have written more questions, but the girls who have to go to choir only have one hour and fifteen minutes to do the tests, so the fact that one of the tests is shorter means they will not have to miss maths or choir. I will be printing the exams out in the week before the exams.

SuperQuiz Practice Test - Meeting on Thursday the 17th of November

Today the students had a 15-minute practice test for the SuperQuiz and the results were not as good as I would have expected.


There were some questions that everyone or nearly everyone got wrong, and I will be posting these questions and their correct answers on this blog at some point on Monday. Some of them were really not very difficult to guess as most of the other possibilities could have been eliminated through common sense. Moreover, I think that a reason for some of the wrong answers was that the students may have misread the questions.


In any case, I have calculated the average score and I have noted the minimum and maximum, all of which are below.


Minimum - 5 out of 20
Average - 8.7 out of 20
Maximum - 13 out of 20


During next week's session, we will probably be going over the answers, and I will e-mail each person's score to them over the weekend when Mr Moore presents me a list with names and scores. Since we wish to avoid any suspicion of me marking unfairly and showing favouritism, each student was issued a number from 1 to 10. This means that I do not know which student's paper I am marking.


I am contemplating whether we should have a practice test for Language and Literature during next week's lesson as well, and I will post whether or not this will be happening on Monday when I can speak to Mr Moore.

Meeting with Ms Johnson - Discussing AoI's

Before school today I met with Ms Johnson to talk about the correct Area of Interaction (AoI) for my personal project. I had earlier asked her to consider three possibilities - Human Ingenuity, Approaches to Learning and Community and Service. 


She advised me to pick Community and Service because it is connected to my project more than the others are. For Approaches to Learning to apply, I would have to study different learning styles and create a test format based on that research. This was not possible for me because the tests I design have to be multiple choice. For Human Ingenuity, I would have to show more creativity.


Community and Service does apply because I identified the problem that our school did not perform well at the United States Academic Decathlon (USAD). I then took action to help by choosing to make a smaller competition within the school, so that the best possible team could be assembled for the official USAD competition. 

To-Do List For The Week

1. Talk with Mr Moore about finding judges for the interviews and speeches. 
2. Finish SuperQuiz test and give it to Mr Moore.

3. Make a SuperQuiz practice test which the students can take during Thursday's meeting.

4. Reschedule meeting with Ms Johnson because of Grade 10 Learning Day on Tuesday.

5. Talk to Mr Moore about also conducting a Language and Literature Practice Test.

Meeting with Mr Moore on the 10th of November

In today's meeting with Mr Moore, we discussed more about my problems with my area of interaction. Through this discussion, we found that Community and Service may also be a possibility and that it might be the AOI that best suits my project.


We also talked about the SuperQuiz test that I have been working on, and we decided that the whole test should be due on Friday the 18th or Monday the 21st of November.


Another due date that we had to discuss was about the draft of my personal project report. Since the given range for this due date - 30th of November to 2nd of December - is in the week where all of the USAD testing will be taking place, Mr Moore said that he would ask Mrs Johnson if my draft could be due a week later, on Friday the 9th of December.


I feel that this should be a possibility because my project has been on a different timescale to the other personal projects - I started it earlier and it will be finished by January, giving me a large amount of time to work on my report.


Once I have met with Mrs Johnson on Tuesday, I will start writing the goal section of my report, and I hope to have this finished by Monday the 21st of November.


During next week's USAD session, the students will be sitting a 20-minute practice test with 30 or so questions that will come from the official USAD Practice Tests Booklet. I will have to decide on the questions and print out the tests.


It is a possibility that during our next session I will not be in school, because Thursday the 17th of November is the date of the City of London School for Girls' Interviews, and I hope to be invited to these.


If this is the case, I will organise everything and leave the tests with Mr Moore so that he can run the quick practice test.

SuperQuiz Test

This afternoon I have been working on the SuperQuiz Test and I have managed to write the first ten questions of the test. The test so far has been sent to Mr Moore and we will discuss it in our meeting tomorrow.


We will also be discussing the due date of the draft of my Personal Project report and my meeting with Mrs Johnson next week.

The Area of Interaction

Unfortunately, I am having some trouble with determining my area of interaction. It could be approaches to learning because I am helping the students study and prepare for the exams. However, it could be human ingenuity because the reason for me doing this project is that I want to improve our school's performance in the competition for the better. This means that I am trying to improve, and that I am taking the initiative.


I have talked about this issue with my supervisor, Mr Moore, but we were not able to decide. I will be meeting with Mrs Johnson next Tuesday at break to discuss this issue.

Essay Topics

I have decided upon the three prompts for the essay with the help of my English tutor, and instead of having two prompts about Heart of Darkness and one about the SuperQuiz booklet, the Timed Essay will be made up of three prompts about Conrad's novella.


I feel that this will be better because often prompts about novels incorporate more of the individual's thoughts and ideas.


I got inspiration for these prompts from the York Notes for the novella, and from the Language and Literature Resource Guide. The prompts are not too specific and there is no right or wrong answer. There is a prompt that requires the student to argue a point and one which deals with symbols and themes in the novel. I made sure that the prompts covered a wide range of possibilities to make sure each student has a prompt that they are comfortable with.

Itinerary for Meeting on the 10th of November

This is a reminder that this meeting will still be taking place, even though school ends at third period on this day for Parent Teacher Conferences.

We will be going over Impromptu and Prepared Speeches, and we are assuming that everyone has already written at least the first one or two minutes of their Prepared Speech.

The meeting will be held in G.05 from 12 o'clock to 1 o'clock.

To Do List for the Week

1. Track down Caroline's transcript from the application that she made to the school as she cannot find a copy of it at home.

2. Organise another Personal Project session with Mr Moore to discuss our progress.

3. Come up with three prompts for the timed essay that will take place on Friday, the 2nd of December.

4. Have the session with Mr Vahey and possibly organise another one.

Session with Mr Vahey - Today at Lunch

This is a reminder that the session with Mr Vahey will be taking place today during lunchtime in 3.01. There are two students who are definitely unable to attend, and they have notified me of this. Everyone else is expected to attend, and to have either their SuperQuiz booklets or paper that they can make notes on. In case there are students who do not have their booklets, I will be taking extra copies to the session. 


If today's lesson goes well, I will work with Mr Vahey to organise another lesson as soon as possible.