Saturday, September 23, 2006
Regents Effort: Very Poor
Whether I have good news or bad news, I will let you know. The Regents class results for the first multiple-choice exam were very poor. The obvious explanation is a general lack of effort and study. Let me remind you:
I stay after school EVERY SINGLE DAY, usually until the late buses leave. I am also in Room 229 before school @ 7:30AM on Days 1 and 4. There is an unbelievable amount of extra help available to you. If you do not take advantage of the help, you may find that your results will not change, which will make neither of us happy. While I observed well-attended extra-help sessions among the other teachers' Chem Regents classes, NOBODY in my Regents class came to my daily extra help even though most of you needed to.
What is most appalling is that all of the test questions were directly covered in the notes, worksheets, and homework (which will always be the case). All of the answers were available to you. I estimate that most of you did little to NONE of the homework so that you went into this test not even knowing what you did or did NOT know.
Hear me and mark my words, future tests will be of similar difficulty. You have to learn to be prepared otherwise the only consequence will be failure; your quarter grade is primarily determined by these tests and that is NEVER going to change for any reason. It is your responsibility to learn the material. I have proof that I taught the material as I can show you verbatim from the notes and hw where each question came from; I also have a long record of proven teaching success so do not ask or expect me to fix what isn't broken.
I expect and will look for any student who did not do well on this test to attend extra help regularly (if not daily); I also expect you to write out corrections to this test so that you learn and understand the material after the fact so that you can at least apply the information when you take the Regents exam.
I hope to have better news after the next test.
I am presently disappointed and you will hear more about this on Monday.
-Mr. Cicale
I stay after school EVERY SINGLE DAY, usually until the late buses leave. I am also in Room 229 before school @ 7:30AM on Days 1 and 4. There is an unbelievable amount of extra help available to you. If you do not take advantage of the help, you may find that your results will not change, which will make neither of us happy. While I observed well-attended extra-help sessions among the other teachers' Chem Regents classes, NOBODY in my Regents class came to my daily extra help even though most of you needed to.
What is most appalling is that all of the test questions were directly covered in the notes, worksheets, and homework (which will always be the case). All of the answers were available to you. I estimate that most of you did little to NONE of the homework so that you went into this test not even knowing what you did or did NOT know.
Hear me and mark my words, future tests will be of similar difficulty. You have to learn to be prepared otherwise the only consequence will be failure; your quarter grade is primarily determined by these tests and that is NEVER going to change for any reason. It is your responsibility to learn the material. I have proof that I taught the material as I can show you verbatim from the notes and hw where each question came from; I also have a long record of proven teaching success so do not ask or expect me to fix what isn't broken.
I expect and will look for any student who did not do well on this test to attend extra help regularly (if not daily); I also expect you to write out corrections to this test so that you learn and understand the material after the fact so that you can at least apply the information when you take the Regents exam.
I hope to have better news after the next test.
I am presently disappointed and you will hear more about this on Monday.
-Mr. Cicale
# posted by C @ 1:04 PM 
