Foundations: My Scale Revisited
As we continue to experience the many ramifications of the pandemic, I have noticed weaker math skills, especially algebra, and a reduced attention to detail. Please know that I am absolutely not blaming anyone for these results. Students and teachers have been working (continuously pivoting!) tirelessly to do their best during these difficult years. I am simply sharing my observations of the shifts in the foundational skills of the students in my room. My physics students, AP and regular alike, are neglecting axis labels, units, and post-solving conceptual checks like never before. This has been so universal that I began shifting how I applied my scale to my students' work, beginning in the early months of last year. For example, where a 6 used to be reserved for students with absolutely everything on point, I began giving these perfect scores to work with missing units and algebra errors, reducing the score to honoring only what I considered the core of the objective. In e
