Howdy,

Does this sound familiar: "What is my grade?" "I got a C on my last, will that affect my grade a lot or a little?" "Does the fact that I missed the last three homework assignments affect my grade?"

Well, dealing with 8th graders, I encounter this often, even after I give them bi-weekly print outs of their grade. Because I want to use excel this year for my ecology unit, I want to introduce it to them first before I have them use it to study trends in human populations increase vs. particular plant and animal populations (or something like that).

At any rate this will be a small introduction into using Excel to analyze their grades. I will give them different data sets (2-3) the display different grade outlooks, and have them experiment in choosing the best graph that represents the data. This exercise will take place at the end of Term 1.

Aaron- I like your idea- I think its important that the students understand how their grades are calculated. Some of the more conscientious students seem to get it, but most of them don't. In my class, they could actually figure out their own grade if they wanted to. Its a good idea to introduce excel before the ecology unit.