Improve Grades

Posts Tagged ‘grades’

More Restaurants Getting A’s Now That Grades Are Displayed
The Health Department has been giving restaurants letter grades for nine months now—so how’re our eateries doing? A-OK, actually. Health Commissioner Thomas Farley showed up at City Council yesterday to tout the good news that more than half of the 15,000 restaurants the department has inspected since the new system was put in place are now sporting blue A’s in their windows. [ more › ]

Read more on Gothamist

Sleep deprivation leads to lower grades, depression: researcher
Alex Migdal , News Staff While most students denounce sleep as the least important of their priorities, a University of Alberta professor thinks that widespread attitude should be put to rest. Cary Brown, an associate professor in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, recently held a seminar on sleep hygiene at the U of A, where she said small changes can be taken to improve sleep for …

Read more on The Gateway Online

School secretary fired for fixing son’s grades
A Cow High secretary fired for allegedly altering her son’s test scores has lost an arbitration appeal. Arbitrator Mark Brown upheld School District 79’s decision to fire the unidentified woman on Feb. 16.

Read more on Cowichan News Leader Pictorial

Local high schools improve grades
The Florida Department of Education released grades for the 470 public high schools in the state. Overall 71 percent of the schools received either an A or B grade. Locally, most schools improved.

Read more on NBC 2 Fort Myers

This is the way I had to study math in order to make A’s and B’s in Algebra, Trig, and Calculus. I was never successful listening in class. I developed a study routine that made me ahead of my classes. This guide is for those who really struggle in math
How To Get Good Grades In Math

Leaps 3.0 Now Available to Assist K-12 Educators in Improving Behavior, Grades and Attendance
AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Providing K-12 educators and response to intervention specialists with tools to improve behavior and social skills.

Read more on Business Wire

We have been selling this ebook secretly since 2006. Make $17.98 per sale! Now It’s Out With Affiliate Program And Listed On CB. 70% Commission With High Conversion!
Secrets Of Studying – How To Score Better Grades :: 75% Commission

Are your child’s school grades dropping and their teachers complaining about their concentration during class? Are they too tired at home to complete homework assignments?

There are many possible causes but one very frequent cause is the lack of Omega3 fatty acids in their diet. Omega3 fats are those that are in fish and many grain oils. They are essential for the production of brain cells and other cells within the body.

Omega3 fats are essential for the maintenance and proper functioning of the brain. A large portion of the brain is composed of fats and lack fatty acids in the diet affects the continuing development and functioning of the brain.

How then should we be ensuring that our children are getting sufficient Omega3 fats to ensure that their brains can function and they can concentrate and perform to their full ability in school? Diet is of course the first most important area to examine. Fish and grains high in fatty acids should be a part of their diet.

However many of the fish we eat are farm reared or are low oil type fish. Farm reared fish do not eat natural algae which is the largest contributor to the production of fish oil in their systems.

Beef is generally produced in feed lots and the cattle are fed on grain rather than fresh green grass with the result that their meat is also low in essential fatty acids.

To improve this situation we should then be giving our children essential fatty acids in the form of supplements. Concentrated fish oil supplements being one of the best ways to achieve this.

Studies have been done and results measured where school children were given one fish oil capsule twice daily over a period of six months. The improvement in concentration, reading skills and grades was very marked. All the children in the study showed improvement.

How then can you help your child improve if they are losing concentration and their grades are declining?

1. Examine their overall diet and remove items such as excessive sugar, colorants and carbonated drinks which affect the digestion of other essential nutrients. Increase the provision of essential fatty acids in their diet through foods such as fish, nuts or foods containing omega3 oils.

2. Give them a supplement of concentrated fish oil in capsule form.

Increasing the intake of Omega3 fatty acids will affect brain functions well as many other body functions. You should notice an improvement in concentration and school grades in a three to six month period.

Sometimes getting straight A’s is very difficult thing to do if you attend a very academically challenging public school or private school. In this instance, you’re going to have to work a little harder than your typical public school sounterparts who can get A’s relatively easily. However, don’t think a lack of a perfect GPA will hurt you, because in these cases your relative class is much more important than your raw GPA and you can bet that admissions officers consider both. Placing in the top 10% of your graduating class is a set place for most schools, but you should definitely shoot for the top 1-3% to have a better chance at more elite schools.

If you’re concerned about not being able to meet these benchmarks, all hope is not lost. There are obvious exceptions to anything and I’ve met people with abnormally low GPA’s who have gotten into top schools. Just know that in those cases, there is almost always a powerful set of extenuating circumstances that help them, which we will discuss later. To be safe, make sure to put in the effort to avoid being put in such a difficult situation because in high school getting A’s is mostly contingent on you putting in the necessary time. There is usually no curve to deal with and grading is more straightforward and evenly distributed than in college (where a couple major exams often determine your grade) so there are plenty of opportunities to bring your grade up, especially with the constant stream of homework inherent to high school academics.

Here are some important things to keep in mind that will help you stay on the right academic path:

Take the hardest classes - You may have heard this before, but it’s absolutely true. At the center of your academic career are the classes you choose to take, not your GPA. A lower GPA in as a product of the hardest courses your school offers is always better than a high GPA in lower level classes. Never underestimate the value that admissions officers place in the courses you choose to take. In many cases, you should even try to take classes you may struggle in. Even if you get something below an ‘A’ (though an ‘A’ is always possible in high school) but not lower than a ‘B’, you can use it to talk about your intellectual curiosity in your application.

Balance v. Risk – It all comes down to a blanace between protecting your GPA and challenging yourself. If you can succeed in them, take as many AP and advanced classes as you can. However, this may be a bad idea if you end up doing very poorly in them. If this is the case, it’s better to choose and pick the advanced classes that cater to your skills. This is important because taking every AP class possible and then getting C’s (B’s are fine) in them shows a certain academic immaturity and suggests that you are out of touch with your limits. Bottom line is challenge yourself as much as possible but avoid the classes you think will end up really hurting your GPA.

Get organized - One of the most senseless ways to lower your grade is to forget to turn in assignments or to study for a test. For your time, get a Gmail account and use the Google calender function to plan out the hours in your day. This is a great tool not only because it’ll help you manage your time, but more importantly it will force you to be honest with yourself in how you allocated your time. One of the most important things I talk about in this book is that time is the only resource you can never have enough of. You’ll be surprised if you add it up how much of your time is wasted on TV and useless activities.

Study in groups - Studying with other people can be a great way to enrich your learning experience. Try to do it with a total of three other people max, and ideally with one or two other people in order to minimize distractions. Also try to work with people beyond your immediate friends not only to build connections with other people, but to reduce the amount of distractions as well. Try to study with someone who is less adept at the subject than yourself because it’ll force you to teach them. They say the ability to teach something is the mark that you truly know it.

Delegate work – Oftentimes you’ll have to do tedious homework for classes. One of the ways we’ve discovered to minimize time spent on busy work is it divide it up amongst friends. With the advances in technology these days, doing this is easier than ever. All you need to do is round up some friends willing to do this and all get a gmail account. From there, you can share a Google Doc between yourselves and each contribute a part of the assignment. The beauty of Google Docs is that any work you do between yourselves can be saved and shared instantly with the others even while they’re editing. This method of sharing work can help you with anything from major projects to tough homework assignments. Find yourselves a group of smart, hardworking students and make sure you delegate tasks to everyone ahead of time. This will prevent people from slacking and taking advantage of your work.

Minimize Electives - A couple during your time in high are fine, especially if they are directly related to your career or academic interests. But understand that colleges view them as ways to get out of harder classes. If possible, take an AP or advanced level class instead.

Junior and Senior Year - These are by far the most important years for you in terms of academics. It’s of course important to do well freshman and sophomore year because those grades will affect your overall GPA. However, those years are considered less strongly, and even if you did not do very well in those years, a dramatic improvement in your junior and senior years can really help you. Admissions officers look at the trend of your academic performance and if you are on an upswing, that really helps your case and to negate weaker academic achievement earlier. Therefore, your junior year is by far the most important year because it’s your last full year of academics before your college applications so make sure you stay on top of your work that year. Also, make sure you don’t fall into a senior slump. Most colleges require you to submit midyear grades and use it to see if you’re truly a hard worker and not trying to get away with work. Finishing strong is also important because if you end up on the cusp or waiting list at a school, good grades your senior year can be the factor that gets you in over someone else. Just make sure not to screw up our senior year because it would be a very silly way to lose an acceptance letter. Though rare, some kids who’ve bombed their senior years because they thought it didn’t matter have had their acceptance letters revoked.

Challenge What You Are Taught - The point of this section is to teach you that one of the best ways to be a good student that teachers will remember and pay attention to is to question things that are commonly accepted as true. When you sit in a class listening to your teachers lecture, make the effort to listen and analyze instead of spacing out. This is especially important in classes that have a significant subjective aspect, such as literature, history, music, art, business, etc. Not only does this help you develop critical thinking skills and improve your learning, but you’ll make an impression on teachers by thinking independently. If you put a noticeable effort into this, you’ll have no problem getting great letters of recommendations that say more specific things than “I really enjoyed having xxxx in my class”.

The purpose of schooling is to teach our children to learn and produce quality work.  In order to accomplish this goal, our schools must re-think the ways in which they view the educational process.  Such changes do not necessarily cost more money (although increased funding for education is important), but rather requires a radical shift in how we set out to support our students in achieving quality in their school experience.

Although many students are currently experiencing success in our schools, we have too many young people who are branded as failures as a result of the inadequacies of our present academic system.  The premature use of competition, the introduction of compulsory homework, and an obsessive emphasis on grading (which often overshadows the primary purpose of education – learning), all serve to detract from promoting quality education. 

In his classic work, Schools without Failure, psychiatrist William Glasser focuses on the components of successful schooling.  In his opinion, teachers must develop a positive involvement with students, re-think the relevance of their curriculum and consider the student evaluation process as a byproduct of a successful, quality learning experience. 

Within most schools, grading takes on a life of its own.  I call it the “wad-ya-get” phenomenon.  I find it interesting that when I talk with students and parents about their schooling, the topic promptly turns to the issue of grades.  Grades have become the “be-all” and “end-all” of education.  Rarely, when students or parents talk about school, do they discuss the content or quality of what kids are learning.  They invariably turn their attention to grades.  Parents typically ask their children “how” they do in school rather than “what” they accomplish in school.  Power struggles between parents, their children or teachers rarely involve the nature or quality of the work students accomplish, but generally pertain to the unsatisfactory grades received. 

When teachers are asked about grades, they insist that grades are positive motivators.  My educational experience has shown that good grades (A’s and B’s) are positive motivators for excellent students, but poor grades (C’s, D’s, and F’s) actually reinforce failure-oriented school behavior among those students who chronically fail. 

When I taught elementary school students, I would say, “I want all of you to succeed in my class; let’s talk about some meaningful objectives for getting A’s and B’s in my class and how you can achieve that goal.”  My students were puzzled.  They were used to being told, “If you don’t get your work done and turn it in on time, you will have trouble making it in this class; there are specific standards you must meet in my class or you will fail.”  When the attitude implies “the glass is half full,” students are more likely to buy in to a teacher’s expectations and fulfill them.  Students are eager to accommodate teachers who believe that all of their children have the potential to succeed no matter what happened in their prior school experience. 

The primary purpose of grading/evaluation is to provide students with a yardstick for progress being made.  Grades should never be used as an arbitrary measure reflecting a teacher’s standards.  When we are evaluated on our job, the process is hopefully designed to motivate us and improve our performance.  Many teachers mistakenly believe that they can coerce students who are not doing quality work by using grades as a motivational tool.  However, it is naïve to assume that a student who has chronically failed school will improve his performance by being labeled a failure through the grading system.  Dr. Edward W. Deming, noted management theorist and consultant, believes that managers (i.e. teachers) who attempt to coerce employees (i.e. students) will get workers who do just enough to get by.  The use of coercive, punitive management techniques is not good enough for our students and our educational system. 

Here are some principles of grading that will enhance a student’s chances of learning and experiencing school success:

Accentuate the positive with one’s grading policy.  “All students can achieve in my class.” Allow students who do not turn in quality work to re-do work until it is quality.  This should include re-takes of tests, re-working in-class material, and fine-tuning non-compulsory homework.  Remember, the goal is not some arbitrary school standard, but having your students ultimately learn the material no matter how long it takes. Homework should be removed from the grading process.  Many students do not have an appropriate environment at home or the support from parents to make it a priority.  Make homework non-compulsory and meaningful and you will get better buy-in from students.  Teacher involvement with students is critical in order to get students to embrace the concept of quality work.  Students should be able to say, “My teacher is fair, reasonable and pleasant to be around.”  Work tasks should be meaningful rather than focused on memorizing information for the purposes of the teacher.  Students should be taught how to learn.  This process should include critical thinking, learning how to find information, creative activities, problem-solving, cooperative learning strategies, and class meetings. Teachers should look for fresh ways to motivate students without the use of coercion.  Excuses such as this kid is too lazy, un-teachable, or from a troubled home are not helpful.  Grades are a reflection of the quality of the learning experience.  If many students are doing poorly, it is the responsibility of the school to correct the problem.  Dr. Deming never blamed the workers for management’s failure to lead and motivate.  If the school system is organized upon a healthy, need-satisfying leadership style among its teachers and administrators, most students will succeed and receive good grades. Positive evaluation is a byproduct of the quality of a school program.  If students are not succeeding, the program is faulty. 

Some in the educational establishment may say that the ideas articulated in this article call for a lowering of academic standards and a “dumbing-down” of the curriculum.  On the contrary, I am suggesting that school systems need to honestly grade themselves and see where improvement may be needed.  Without a lead-management style of relating from administrators and teachers, and a curriculum based upon critical thinking, problem-solving, and meaningful work experiences, schools will fail along with their students.  We cannot afford for that to happen if we are to promote quality schooling.