First Semester Exam Schedule

The room assignments are now set for the first semester exams. Please click here to download the first semester exam schedule.

Senior Exam Exemption for Second Semester

A new policy that has been implemented, and was announced to the senior class on Monday, November 24th, is the Senior Exam Exemption for Second Semester. The details are below:

Seniors may exempt the second semester exam for a class where they meet the following criteria:

• A student must have an unadjusted grade of 87 or better for second semester (calculated as the average of the final third quarter and fourth quarter grades).
• Absences – no more than 5 absences for that course during second semester. College visits or school related absences are exempt (field trips, athletic trips, France trip, etc). If there are more than 5 absences, then the student can appeal to the Academic Dean (for extenuating circumstances like an extended illness).
• A student may not have more than 5 tardies to school for the semester.
• Acceptable behavior: No Honor or Discipline violations from the date of announcing exam exemptions (Monday 11/24/08).
• Note: This exemption does not apply to AP Exams.

The students were handed a sheet with this criteria that they need to sign, have a parent sign, and return to the Academic Dean. You can also download the form here.

Parent Council

For those of you who have not attended a Parent Council meeting, it is a group of Walker Parents that meet once a month with the Upper School administration. The group is open to any and all Upper School parents who want to attend and is led by Mary Jo Walker.

Our discussions have been very positive and productive all year. To provide an example, this morning, we discussed:

• the plan for the Inside the Upper School program, taking place Tuesday evening, November 18th. This program is for middle school parents to learn more about the Upper School, and the transition from 8th to 9th grades.
• the long-range facilities plan for Walker. Don Robertson visited the meeting and gave a detailed talk about our campus plan and the construction that has already taken place along with the exciting facilities plan for the years to come. Don then led a tour of the Coles gymnasium expansion.
• possible dates for the Spring Break-out celebration this spring.

The next Parent Council meeting will be on Monday, January 12th at 8am in the Leithead Boardroom. Past Parent Council meetings have led to valuable discussion of our exam policies and a new policy on senior exam exemptions, and the use of an additional traffic officer at the intersection of Damar and Allgood, among other initiatives.

Operation Convoy Kit

As you may know, we have WOW groups that help connect our students across the entire school (the group includes students from each division, and they get together several times a year for activities). Our next WOW activity will involve making care packages for our troops serving overseas. Students should bring in materials for these care packages, and what they should bring in depends on which advisory they are in.

Here is a link to the list of items that each advisory should bring in. They should be brought into their advisor before Thursday, November 13th.

On November 13th, our Upper School students will be joining the members of their WOW group to write thank you notes to the troops and assemble the care packages as part of a project called "Operation Convoy Kit."

Did you Know...

...quarter grades do not go on a student's transcript? Each student's transcript shows only semester and year grades. The quarter report cards function as a progress report for students at the mid-semester.

End of Quarter Information

The first marking period ends Friday, October 10th. A copy of the report card will be given to students on Monday, October 20th with the report card and teacher comments being mailed home on Tuesday, October 21.

Email addresses

We are planning to make more effective use of email to communicate important information with Upper School families. In order for us to do that successfully, we need to have up to date email address for each family. Should you change internet providers, change your email address, or wish communications sent to a different email account, please share that information with Cheryl Rogers at rogersc@thewalkerschool.org. So our communications do not get lost in techno-heaven, we ask that you have your filter set to accept emails from Cheryl Rogers.

Parent-Teacher Conferences Q&A

With conferences coming up at the end of this month, we thought it would be helpful to answer some commonly asked questions about the conferences:

1. When and where are the conferences held?
They are held in the Dining Hall on Monday, October 27th, and Tuesday, October 28th.

2. What do I need to do when I get there?
When you arrive, fill out a nametag at the desk by the door and have a seat (there will be coffee for those interested). When your timeslot comes up, the teachers will meet you in the waiting area and lead you to a table for conference.

3. How do I sign up for conferences?
There was a form mailed home to request teachers for conferences along with a time preference. You can also sign up for conferences online.

4. How long will the conference be?
The conferences are scheduled for 15 minutes. All of the teachers you requested to have a conference with will sit at a table with you together for those 15 minutes.

5. Is 15 minutes with all the teachers enough time?
By having all of the teachers at the same table, you can get a better sense of the academic "big picture," and also see if the academic performance is consistent across all classes. Used efficiently, we have found the 15 minutes to be ample time to get an overall update on how your child is doing and provide suggestions on how to better take advantage of the available opportunities. If you ever feel that you have questions that went unanswered or needed more time with particular teachers, after the conference you can personally schedule another time with them to revisit particular issues.

6. Can I have an administrator or counselor at the conference as well?
You can certainly request to have any of the administrators (Bob Murphy, Michael Arjona, Newton McCurdy), college counselors (Neil Clark or Peter Sullivan), or guidance counselors (Jessica Eaton or Anna Hairston) at the conference as well.

We are looking forward to the opportunities to discuss your child's academic performance with you, both by sharing good news and working on plans for improvement. If you have any questions about scheduling a conference with your child's teachers, contact Cheryl Rogers.

Turnitin.com

There will be some teachers using Turnitin.com this semester as a teaching tool to help our students learn how to use research sources effectivley and avoid plagiarism.

Students will be submitting papers through the Turnitin.com website. Turnitin.com then produces an originality report that looks for material found on websites, in newspaper or magazine articles, or within papers that have been previously submitted to Turnitin.com. The students will be able to see this originality report as soon as they turn in the assignment. The student will then be able to see whether they have effectively paraphrased sources and used quotes where necessary. They will then be able to revise their paper if there are clear mistakes they have made in using sources.

Here is a link to an example of an originality report that was generated for an essay where I purposefully mixed original thoughts with sections copied from NY Times and Wall Street Journal articles. The plan is to prevent plagiarism and use this submission process as a teaching tool rather than try to catch plagiarism after it occurs.

Academic Council Response to Concerns About Exams

Below is a summary of the Academic Council response to questions/concerns presented by Planning and Support Committee of the Parent Council on semester exams. If you would like to read the full response or look at the data compiled on exams, you can find links to those two documents below the summary:

The concerns and suggestions about possible exam exemptions brought to the Academic Council from the Administrative Planning/Support Committee generated a lot of discussion prior to, as well as during, the September meeting. The easy assumption to make would be that the Council had predetermined answers and that none of the points brought to them were taken seriously. That was not the case.

The result of our discussions is that we will keep our current exam structure, while discussing the possibility for a second semester senior exam exemption at our next Academic Council meeting. This result is based on our commitment and responsibility to have all of our students prepared for the college or university they attend.

The Committee provided valuable information on end of course exams, tests, or projects given for some of the universities our graduates have attended as well as exemption policies of independent and public schools around us. In a first for the Council, Michael Arjona provided us data based on all 3,667 first semester exams taken by our current students and how those exams affected their end of semester grades. Although we have discussed this topic before, this was the first time the Council has had such information. The main findings are that exams tend to have a negative effect on semester grades, but the overall effect is very small. This small, negative effect holds true whether you look at the 100 point numerical grade scale or the 4 point GPA scale.

Based on these inquiries, we have a strong belief that our current exam structure, while not perfect, does not put our students at an academic disadvantage in the college application process and provides the needed experience for college courses, as well as AP exams while in high school, when they will be expected to pull together large amounts of material for one test.

1. Full list of concerns and Academic Council responses

2. Summary of the data collected on Semester Exams and their impact on Semester Grades.