Category: Teaching

Just for Fun…a math bonus

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 6 Comments

These are the three bonus questions from my Pre-Algebra Final:

B1: Take the number of inches in a foot.  Subtract the number of days in a week.  Multiply that by the difference between the number of letters in “happy” and “sad.”  Add the number of protons in a carbon atom.  Square that number.  Subtract half the number of times Sideshow Bob has appeared on “The Simpsons.”  Square it again, then multiply by pi.  Add the league minimum salary for an NFL veteran.  Multiply by the difference between the number of stars on the U.S. flag and the number of states in the U.S.  What is the number?

B2: What is the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 100?

B3: A five letter word near the ocean is spelled C-O-A-S-T.  A five letter word that means “brag” is spelled B-O-A-S-T.  Spell a five letter word you put in the toaster.

I’ll post official answers tomorrow in a comment.  >:)

Let’s never do that again

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

At long last, I took my Praxis tests today.  It was harrowing.  It was uncomfortable.  Maybe it was successful.

First came the content knowledge test, 120 questions in 120 minutes.  My practice runs had all been fine, so when I finally began the test in that massive lecture hall with my bubble sheet on the wafer they call a desktop, I was confident.  Question one included a short excerpt from a novel and included refernces to a character named Heathcliff… I should know that…but I didn’t.  Bad start.  I filled in the bubble for Wuthering Heights and moved on.  Score!  Process of elimination rules.

I went on (and on and on) and felt like I knew about half of the answers cold, was able to work out half of the others by eliminating wrong answers, had solid educated conclusions on others, and at least improved my guessing odds through elimination on all but maybe four.  I am confident I passed this one.  More to the point, if I didn’t pass, it’s not likely to get much better and the creative writing scheme is over.

Then came the pedagogy test.  I hope to God I passed that because I never want to endure that torture again.  Firstly (always hated that word), they managed to find a room on campus with smaller desk-wafers, chairs from the Spanish Inquisition, no discernible air conditioning in the midst of a freak tropical monsoon, and a wall so close to my personal space that I don’t want to tell my wife about it (she gets jealous).  I feel like I spent all morning staring at my belly button.

Then the tests were (finally!) distributed.  Two constructed response questions, one evaluating the teaching points of a piece of literature, the other dissecting a (fictional) student’s writing.  I thought I was ready for this test.  I did my reading and my SparkNoting and of course my Rocketbooking.  I had outlines prepared for six different high school literary mainstays: Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet, The Great Gatsby, 1984, Beowulf, and as a matter of indulgence, The Hobbit.

All sorts of people insisted that R&J was almost always on the list of stories to write about, so I made it my #2 candidate (behind Frankenstein, whose outline was perfection) in my depth chart.  R&J wasn’t there.  Frank either.  But Gatsby, surely…but no.  1984?  Surely the singular paragon of Old English literature known as Beowulf would be there, right?  No and no.  Oh snap.  But there at the bottom, three stories from the end, was the jewel I never expected to see:  J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit.  It was there.

My first impression: Sweet!

My second impression: What the hell was on that outline?

To make a long story less long, I wrote the evaluation of the student work first (a daydream/adventure about a space ship) and muddled through my Hobbit part as best I could after that.  I finished the rough, low-detailed versions of my responses with time to spare.  Forty-five seconds is technically time, right.  None of my answers were brilliant.  It was okay.  I suspect that test will be a close call on either the pass or fail side.  Hard to say which.

In completely unrelated news, the Anywhere But Here Anthology promptly rejected L.R. this morning.  Running out of places to send that one.  Weird how the world didn’t stop for my test today.

I’m going to take a nap now.

Down the Drain

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

Did you know that a sonnet has 14 syllables per line?  I didn’t…because they have ten.  Even a first grader can count syllables.  But the Cliff’s Notes Praxis II study guide says it’s 14, as in the number of dollars I spent on the book.

It’s in the answers to the practice test that itt comes up.  It also states that said sonnet is written in iambic pentameter (which they are) but provides an answer that denies this.  Arraagh!!

So what?  One little mistake isn’t that bad, is it?  No, not if it’s one.  Upon reading the Amazon reviews of this book I realized that there is a lot of misinformation in the book, both the study notes and the practice test.  And excuse me for not knowing whether Graymalkin was the cat or the toad in Macbeth.  Really, that’s the type of thing the Praxis will ask.  I hope not.

So I will take my practice test grade with a grain of salt and check my wrong answers with other sources.  Then I’ll double-check the ones I got right but wasn’t sure about.  And somewhere in there I’ll make sure I’m ready for my Pedagogy test.

Are there laws protecting people like me from bad information?  If I fail the Praxis due to answers from this book’s faulty information, can I sue Cliff’s Notes for my eighty bucks (cost of the test)?  Hopefully I won’t have to find out.

Frankenstein

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 4 Comments

Got through the nearly 3-hour Frankenstein Rocketbook.  Whew.  But drawing up the outline for the pedagogy test was a snap.  I hope the story is on my list!

I managed to find two major literary characteristics without touching on either Gothic or Science Fiction literature.  I opted for Romanticism and Metanarration (narration that draws attention to itself, particularly Robert relaying Victor’s telling of the monster’s story) and the questions of reliability this brings about.

Anyway, next up is Beowulf.  Only an hour again this time, thank goodness.  I’ve got good assignments for this one, particularly the write-you-own-epic-poem assignment, one I actually did in high school.  Our string of limericks for Frosty versus the Sun was memorable.  (Frosty lost.)

In other writerly news (which is what this blog is supposed to be about, right?), my novel outline moved along well until recently.  I haven’t tried it much of late.  It has deliberate attempts to sit back and let the story progress instead of the short story technique of pushing the plot along as fast as the narrative can support.  It shouldn’t take more than an hour to finish the outline.

After that, I’ll move on to character sketching.  I have an urge to start writing again, but it’s still too soon.  Maybe I’ll write a few little backstory scenes to help get the feel for the characters, scenes that won’t go in the novel.  (I’ll sell them in the future when the novel is a huge commercial success.)  Prewriting is important.  I am still resisting the urge to skip it.  But I need to get moving if it’s going to be ready by mid-August.

Mysterious Testing

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

Yes, I’m a little preoccupied with this Praxis test thing.  It’s just over two weeks away,

I took the 90-question practice test out of an ebook and got 75 of them right.  75 out of 90 sounds pretty good, right?  That’s 83 percent.  To pass I only need…I don’t know.

The tests each have a raw-to-scaled conversion table based on the test’s relative difficulty.  I need a scaled score of 157 out of a possible 200 to pass the content knowledge test (minimum score of 100).  Al I can be sure of is my raw score.  Supposedly there are conversion tables for specific practice tests out there, though no general conversions.  I can’t find any of them.  If some other practice test told me that 83% translated to a 183 or a 143, that would at least give me a ballpark idea of where my current performance falls.  [Note: the real test has 120 questions, but I can use proportionality to get some idea, can’t I?]

This is a test that includes some education theory.  Part of education theory (even questions relevant for the test) say that students should be aware of the scoring ruberic and/or passing requirements before they take the test.  Ironic that the real passing requirements are such a mystery.

I have ordered another test prep book.  It was cheap and I should be able to recoup half the money reselling it, so I went ahead and bought it.  It may provide a conversion table, but I don’t know.  It should help.  I may be cramming for a test I could have passed the first day it was suggested or I may be wasting time prepping for a test I will never be ready for.  I’d like to know one way or the other.

Analyzing Writing and Writing for Analysis

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been working on my pedagogy test outlines.  So far I have reasonable outlines for The Hobbit, 1984, and The Great Gatsby.  If I can remember enough from those outline, I suspect I can score at least 4 out of 6 points on the test.  Not terrible, especially since I’ve only read one of those.  (Yeah for Rocketbooks and SparkNotes!)  

As I prepare to approach the test, it makes me wonder about how my own stories would be analyzed.  What are the literary characteristics?  Ah, who cares.  The question that really sparks my interest is the one that asks what barriers students would experience in trying to read/analyze my stories.   Hmm.

I’d like to say that the science gets a little too technical, but it doesn’t.  That’s usually deliberate, wanting my writing to be as accessible as possible.  There are some dark themes in some of my stories, particularly the importance of drug use and incest in “Poison Inside the Walls”.  

Does every story need to have two distinct barriers to comprehension?  Or just the ones deemed worthy to study in an English class?

Rocketbook: 1984

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

Let’s face it, a one-hour video summary and analysis is not the way to experience classic literature.  I am probably robbing myself of some of the joy of reading and experiencing these novels by getting them spoonfed to me in indigestible lumps.  On the other hand, who can read a novel in an hour?  Not me.

I was already familiar with a lot of 1984’s symbolism and ideology.  Big Brother, 2+2=5 (or as Picard would say: “There…are…four…lights!”), even The Party’s influence over history.  I find the details of Newspeak fascinatingly horrifying.  I feel like I have a better idea how to answer the 3 questions for 1984 than for Great Gatsby.  A lot of what made Gatsby a great book was in the actual writing whereas more of 1984’s greatness comes from the ideas.  I’ll prep responses for both.  I want to start doing 3 a week so I’ll have a good 9 or 10 to draw from when I reach the actual test.  I really suspect I’ll be writing about Shakespeare since it’s pretty well guaranteed to have something of his on the list, but we’ll see.  It would be nice if I could write on Orwell or Tolkein instead.  But as long as I don’t have to B.S. something about Pride and Prejudice, I’ll be happy.

I think this technique is proving effective.  If I get a block of free time (hahaha), I’ll watch 1984 over the computer with Netflix.  I also plan to nose through a few SparkNotes online since Rocketbooks’ selections are limited.

Next up: Frankenstein.  I read it the summer before 9th grade; it was on a required reading list.  I didn’t get it then.  No time for the reread right now, but I can Rocketbook it.

I hear mixed comments regarding the accuracy of different film adaptations of Frankenstein.  Which is more accurate, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with DeNiro or the made-for-TV version with Luke Goss?  Input from scholarly types appreciated.  (You too, Tracie.  🙂

My First Rocketbook

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I thought I already wrote this post.  Senility in my middle age.

Anyway, I watched the first Rocketbook video from Netflix: The Great Gatsby.  Let’s face it, it wasn’t earth-shattering by any account.  It wasn’t especially entertaining.  It wasn’t more clear than Cliff’s or Spark Notes are.  The illustrations were only mildly helpful and only mildly decent.  It was late when I watched it and I nearly fell asleep a few times.

On the upside, it was quicker than trying to read a text-based study guide and Mach speeds faster than reading the book.  I got a much deeper sense of the literary elements than watching the movie would have given.  I effectively went from zero to test-ready with The Great Gatsby in an hour.  Not bad.

But am I really ready for the pedagogy test?  (The content knowledge will be too broad to fully cram for.)  Well, let’s see.  You English-teachery types out there, keep me honest.

The Praxis pedagogy test will ask three questions about a list of high-school-relevant literature.  The questions are always the same, but the list of works changes.  They are (abbreviated):

  1. describe two literary features important to the work (with examples);
  2. describe two obstacles to student understanding (specific to this work); and
  3. describe two assignments that address answers from 1 and 2.

I considered trying to answer these questions here, but they were long, boring, and woefully incomplete.  I need the full story to go with the nice tidbits I gleaned from the Rocketbook.  Sure, the doctor’s eyes on the billboard symbolize the judgment of God, but what was he judging?  The green light symbolizes Gatsby’s misguided and illusory goal of getting Daisy, but why was that misguided again?  Nick’s rejection of Jordan symbolized his rejection of high society, but what led to that?  Was it the hit and run?

Question 2 is probably the hardest to answer with the knowledge I have now.  The twenties time period might be an obstacle.  Maybe the gray characters rather than raw good and bad?  Tom’s racism might catch a few kids off guard.

I think a nice, loyal-to-the-book video would make a nice companion to the Rocketbook.  Yeah, yeah, reading the book would be better, but I take the test in a few weeks.  I just don’t want to spend too much time on Gatsby because there’s no guarantee it will even make the list!  I’m trying to troll the waters for potential tidbits.  I’ll be okay if a Shakespeare piece I know hits the list of works: Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, or MacBeth.  I know Midsummer Night’s Dream okay, but I doubt it will be included.  Animal Farm, Beowulf, Scarlet Letter, a couple Poe shorts, The Hobbit — those I can do.  (What would it take to sneak Ender’s Game or Fahrenheit 451 onto the list?)

The good news on this test is that half of it comes from an analysis of student writing.  That I believe I can do.  (Thank you, Critters!)  A passing score can reportedly be ALMOST achieved from just one of the two parts.  So if I can squeak out half the literature points, I’ll be in good shape.

I plan to fully write responses for a few different works (maybe including Gatsby, R & J, MacBeth, Hobbit…just to be indulgent, Scarlet Letter, Frankenstein, Beowulf?) so I can push through them faster on the test.  It seems the smartest approach, not unlike the exhaustive study process I used to prepare for college history tests.  *shiver*  As long as I pass it, the school will reimburse the cost of the test.  Big incentive to study hard.  Fingers crossed.

Rocketing through classics

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

A little browsing on Netflix brought me to a series of DVDs called Rocketbooks.  They seem to be some combination of onscreen text, audio text, and commentary of the form of Cliff’s Notes or Spark Notes.  I’m not 100% sure on that; it could just be text on the screen and reading aloud, but one DVD doesn’t seem long enough for that.  I am recording my pre-viewing commentary here for posterity.  Tomorrow I’ll provide a follow-up post with more accurate descriptions as well as some commentary on the quality.

I received the first of the Rocketbooks in the mail today: The Great Gatsby.  It’s a book I always heard great things about but never got around to reading.  I intend to view it after my wife goes to bed (as she has no interest in reviewing literature or teaching English classes).  I am eagerly curious about what mysteries this DVD will unlock.  I hope it’s worth the effort.