Do Now

Terminology and Concepts to look out for

revise · checkable · stranger

Relevance to Me

You have a draft. Today is the difference between a draft and a report: reading your own writing as a stranger would, and fixing what they could not follow.

Board Question

Open your Conclusion form. Find the day you point at as your strongest evidence. Now open that day's observation form on the left. Are the numbers you cite actually there? Write yes or no in your notebook and commit to it.

The rubric is on the course site and on the board. All three report forms are on the right: Intro, Body, Conclusion.

Last Call on Lab Report 1
  • 1) Today is the LAST day of class time devoted to Lab Report 1.
  • 2) The three forms stay open after today, but no more class minutes go to them.
  • 3) I will do the grading run THURSDAY AFTERNOON, September 17. What is submitted by then is what gets graded.
  • 4) Order today: Intro, then Body, then Conclusion. Open the tab, read what you wrote as a stranger, make it checkable, submit.
  • 5) Your observation forms from Lab week are on the left. Fix a note there only when your report shows it was wrong.
  • 6) Exit ticket in the last 20 minutes of class — its own form, last slide of the We Do deck.

LAST CLASS DAY FOR LAB REPORT 1. GRADING RUN THURSDAY AFTERNOON — SUBMIT BY THEN.

Better Means More Checkable, Not Longer

Last week you wrote the report. Today you make it better, and better has one meaning in this room: a stranger could read it and check it.

A stranger is a reader who was not at your station, did not see your screen, and does not know which pane was which. Every sentence you wrote last week was written by someone who knew all of that. Today you read it as someone who does not.

Here is the test, one sentence at a time. Take any sentence in your body and ask: could a stranger check this?

Pane 2 did better on the questions.

A stranger cannot check that. Better how. Which questions. How many. Now the same finding, made checkable:

Pane 2 answered two of the three questions correctly. It missed the population: the figure it gave did not match the Census estimate on the page I checked, dated 2024.

Nothing was added that was not already on your Day 2 form. The number, what it is out of, the source, and the pane. That is what revise means today. Not more words. Not a new claim. The same finding, with its evidence attached, in a sentence a stranger could go and verify.

Three questions to run on every section, in order.

Is every number out of something? Two is nothing. Two out of three is a finding. Four yes marks out of four is a finding. Ninety-eight words against a limit of one hundred twenty is a finding.

Is every quote a quote? If you say a pane hedged, the hedge is in quotation marks and the pane number is in front of it. If you say a sentence decided a criterion, that sentence is there, copied, not remembered.

Does the frame match the middle? Your Intro says what you expected. Your Conclusion says what you found and points at a day. Your Body is that day. Read the three against each other. If the Conclusion cites pane 3 as the most reliable and the Body shows pane 3 got one of three, one of them changes, and it is the smaller one.

One more thing, and it is the thing that separates a report from an opinion. A negative finding, written plainly, is full marks. If your ranking did not hold, say it did not hold. If no pane hedged, say zero. Do not go looking for a hedge to fill the blank. The absence is the data.

The order for today is fixed. Intro first, read as a stranger, fixed, submitted. Then Body, one section at a time against the observation day it came from. Then Conclusion, checked against the Body it points at. Submit each form before you move to the next tab. Nothing new gets written unless it fills a blank or makes a sentence checkable.

I Do · pick an answer, then Check
Question 1notebook cue: revise
Today, "make the report better" means
Question 2notebook cue: checkable
Which of these sentences could a stranger check?
Question 3notebook cue: stranger
A stranger is
Question 4worked aloud
Your Conclusion says pane 3 was the most reliable. Your Body shows pane 3 got one of three on Tuesday and two of four on Wednesday. What changes?
100%
Lab 1 Close-out, Day 4 — Monday, September 14 · How to tell which one is better, and how to say why.

Lab Report 1 — rubric

Six rows, zero to four each, twenty four points. This is what a 4 asks for.

  1. The record. Four days submitted, each pointing at the right run, with station data present. Response text is pulled from the server and is not the student's responsibility.
    All four days submitted. Station and run number correct on all four, so all four resolve to real runs.
  2. Description without judgment. Day 1. Statements another reader could check against the response.
    Length, structure, specificity, and hedge counts all present with examples. No ranking language anywhere in Day 1.
  3. Verification. Day 2. Every correctness claim carries the source it was checked against.
    All three questions carry a named source and the answer found there. Counts are raw and match the responses recorded.
  4. Consistency and stability. Days 3 and 4 together. The same criterion applied the same way, and the ranking tested against it.
    All four criteria applied to all three panes with the deciding sentence quoted. Day 4 recopies Wednesday's ranking, reports both new runs, and states plainly whether it held.
  5. Setup. Introduction. A reader who was not here can follow the lab.
    Names the question, the three models and how they differ, what was held, and what changed each day. Includes a prediction made before the lab.
  6. Argument. Reflection and conclusion. A claim, the evidence under it, and an honest limit.
    Claim stated. A specific day and specific numbers cited to support it. One thing named that the lab cannot show, with the evidence that would be needed. The change in the meaning of better is traced across the four days.

A negative result scores full marks.

A student whose ranking collapsed on Day 4 and who says so plainly earns a 4 on rows 4 and 6. Students will assume the opposite. Say this out loud on Wednesday, before they start writing, or half of them will quietly fabricate stability.