Mr. Johnston doesn't give out the normal syllabus that shows the grading ranges and the percentile of each category therefore when you walk in on the first day you don't know if your grade will be weighted or not and which category is more important to watch out for.
By this point, the majority of you should know how GPA (Grade Point Average) works and how to calculate it, so if you do, you can skip this paragraph and the next one. GPA is what it means, they average out the grades that you get throughout High School (or any High School credits that you took in Middle School). The way that they average it is by pairing each grade letter with a certain number/points and then averaging them out. An "A" or "A+" is a 4.0, an "A-" is a 3.666, a "B+" is a 3.3, a "B" is a 3, a "B-" is a 2.666, a "C+" is a 2.3, and so on. GPA is only calculated with your SEMESTER grade, not your quarter grade. Every semester they will take your two quarter grades and your semester exam and total them up for your "semester grade". This semester grade is what colleges see so if you get a B+ one quarter and you think colleges are going to hate that, just remember that you can beef up your semester grade still, because that is all that colleges see and the grade that goes into GPA. Cumulative GPA is just all of your semester GPA scores averaged.
For example if I got four A's, two A-'s, one B, and one B- as my semester grade, this is how I would calculate my GPA. Four A's means that I have "4.0 + 4.0 + 4.0 + 4.0", two A-'s adds on "+ 3.6 + 3.6", one B is "+ 3.0" and one B- gives us "+ 2.6". Adding them all together, you have 28.8. Then you divide by the number of courses/credits you have, so that would give you 28.8 divided by 8 equals 3.6. 3.6 is your GPA for that semester!
This is an Advanced Placement (AP) class and most of you know how this whole schpeel works. If you get a C- or above in an AP class, it is weighted one letter grade up. That means that if you get a C, which GPA wise is a 2.0, then it will be weighted to 3.0 for an AP class. This is how some people have a 4.3 GPA, they take AP classes and get A's in them, therefore they are weighted to a 5.0 scale!
Now for how Mr. Johnston grades in his class. He has two sections in his grade book. They are Exams (50%) and Terms/Writing (50%). The Exams part is all of your multiple choice (about 40 questions) from your test that you have every 2 weeks or so. The Terms portion is the term that he gives you to write up on your test and any essays that he assigns. It's not a lot of assignments that he puts in there (especially fourth quarter) therefore it is pretty important to study and try hard on them. Of course, there are some things that you can watch out for in case you do screw up and think your year is over.
With the exam portion, for quarters 1-3, you have roughly 4 tests each quarter. That means that they both count for a fourth of that section. A fourth of a half is 1/8. Maybe it's just me, but I can see from that that if I do bad on one test, it isn't going to be totally detrimental to my grade.
Next is terms. The way that test terms are is that he has them scored on a ten point scale yet in order to make terms just as important as your tests, you have to multiply the points by 4.
In Infinite Campus, there are two types of grading processes that you have probably seen along with me. The first one is when Infinite Campus averages the percentages of each score in that section. The second one is where they take the # of points earned over the number of points possible in each section. Mr. Johnston goes by the second scenario. As you can see in the picture, for Quarter 1, there were 170 points possible that I could have gotten for that section. Say I got 140 points throughout all the exams (which, would be AMAZING if that ACTUALLY happened). That would be what my percentage would be based out of (82.35%).
I say this because some teachers go off of percentages, like my math teacher did one year, and everyone in the class scored above 100% on one of the more ditsy quizzes. Even though the quiz was only out of 6 points, and everyone got 7 out of 6, that one little quiz brought my grade up by about 6%. Now if she was going by the point system, I would've just gotten one more point added on to my points earned.
Simple enough as that, I hope this helps and Good Luck!!
By this point, the majority of you should know how GPA (Grade Point Average) works and how to calculate it, so if you do, you can skip this paragraph and the next one. GPA is what it means, they average out the grades that you get throughout High School (or any High School credits that you took in Middle School). The way that they average it is by pairing each grade letter with a certain number/points and then averaging them out. An "A" or "A+" is a 4.0, an "A-" is a 3.666, a "B+" is a 3.3, a "B" is a 3, a "B-" is a 2.666, a "C+" is a 2.3, and so on. GPA is only calculated with your SEMESTER grade, not your quarter grade. Every semester they will take your two quarter grades and your semester exam and total them up for your "semester grade". This semester grade is what colleges see so if you get a B+ one quarter and you think colleges are going to hate that, just remember that you can beef up your semester grade still, because that is all that colleges see and the grade that goes into GPA. Cumulative GPA is just all of your semester GPA scores averaged.
For example if I got four A's, two A-'s, one B, and one B- as my semester grade, this is how I would calculate my GPA. Four A's means that I have "4.0 + 4.0 + 4.0 + 4.0", two A-'s adds on "+ 3.6 + 3.6", one B is "+ 3.0" and one B- gives us "+ 2.6". Adding them all together, you have 28.8. Then you divide by the number of courses/credits you have, so that would give you 28.8 divided by 8 equals 3.6. 3.6 is your GPA for that semester!
This is an Advanced Placement (AP) class and most of you know how this whole schpeel works. If you get a C- or above in an AP class, it is weighted one letter grade up. That means that if you get a C, which GPA wise is a 2.0, then it will be weighted to 3.0 for an AP class. This is how some people have a 4.3 GPA, they take AP classes and get A's in them, therefore they are weighted to a 5.0 scale!
Now for how Mr. Johnston grades in his class. He has two sections in his grade book. They are Exams (50%) and Terms/Writing (50%). The Exams part is all of your multiple choice (about 40 questions) from your test that you have every 2 weeks or so. The Terms portion is the term that he gives you to write up on your test and any essays that he assigns. It's not a lot of assignments that he puts in there (especially fourth quarter) therefore it is pretty important to study and try hard on them. Of course, there are some things that you can watch out for in case you do screw up and think your year is over.
With the exam portion, for quarters 1-3, you have roughly 4 tests each quarter. That means that they both count for a fourth of that section. A fourth of a half is 1/8. Maybe it's just me, but I can see from that that if I do bad on one test, it isn't going to be totally detrimental to my grade.
Next is terms. The way that test terms are is that he has them scored on a ten point scale yet in order to make terms just as important as your tests, you have to multiply the points by 4.
In Infinite Campus, there are two types of grading processes that you have probably seen along with me. The first one is when Infinite Campus averages the percentages of each score in that section. The second one is where they take the # of points earned over the number of points possible in each section. Mr. Johnston goes by the second scenario. As you can see in the picture, for Quarter 1, there were 170 points possible that I could have gotten for that section. Say I got 140 points throughout all the exams (which, would be AMAZING if that ACTUALLY happened). That would be what my percentage would be based out of (82.35%).
I say this because some teachers go off of percentages, like my math teacher did one year, and everyone in the class scored above 100% on one of the more ditsy quizzes. Even though the quiz was only out of 6 points, and everyone got 7 out of 6, that one little quiz brought my grade up by about 6%. Now if she was going by the point system, I would've just gotten one more point added on to my points earned.
Simple enough as that, I hope this helps and Good Luck!!