How I am assessing your notebooks

Perspective: Summer homework is worth 33% of the first quarter grade, and the first quarter grade is worth half of the semester grade, which is the grade that matters. So, in my grading program, I set the category of "Summer Homework" to 33%, and then it doesn't really matter about point value, because the computer just makes sure that any assignment in that category is worth 33% of the total. It's magic that way.

However, to keep things clean and easy to read, the summer homework -- without webography -- is worth 150 points, as follows:

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (28%)
7 essays @ 500 words each -- 6 points each = 42 points
(I am using a 6 point rubric to assess the essays, and I choose one at random to read closely. The rest, I skim. I recently read both Spark Notes and Cliff Notes so I could be alert to phrases or passages that sound...inauthentic. Which is not to say that you couldn't get away with cheating. Maybe you could, this time. But sooner or later, I'll figure it out.)

Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (29%)
11 chapter summaries of 3 sentences each, with questions = 44 points
(These are graded like this: 4=excellent summary and question, 3=decent summary and question, 2=not a summary, not a question, and 1=thank you for trying.

"Politics and the English Language," George Orwell (10%)
Annotations - 15 points
Great annotation with lots of notes, clearly influenced by Mortimer Adler, not much use of the highlighter: 15
And so on along those lines, 12 points, 9 points, 6 points, 3 points in the usual A-B-C-D-F pattern.

Notebook (10%)
Well organized and on time - 14 points

Blog Participation (23%)
35 points
I am penalizing people who did all the blogging at the last minute, but not much...of course, if you didn't start three threads, you can't get full credit. Sometimes the blog entries were just so...pedestrian -- that I had to assess a penalty. I warned against the breathless "Me too! I agree!" response, which is not a response, really.

Where does the vocab fit in? It's layered into the first four categories...I am reading these entries and just marking them as done unless I see something egregious...and I have.

You get your notebooks back on Monday, September whatever-that-first-Monday-is...the 10th! Yes, the 10th. DON'T WALK IN ON THURSDAY AND ASK ME FOR YOUR NOTEBOOK. Tiny daggers will shoot out of my eyes in your general direction.

So far, I have graded As, Bs, Cs and Ds. That's how it is, Peeps. I gotta call it like I see it.

See ya on Thursday.