Dear BRVGS Seniors,
I hope that you are all doing as well as possible this week. My apologies for not catching back up with you all sooner, but we have been working quite a bit on instructional materials for our 9th and 10th grade classes. I know that many of you have been wondering how you will be able to wrap up your BRVGS senior project and final grade, so I wanted to give you some information on what will happen from here.
PLEASE read the following information carefully, so that you know what will be happening from here on out:
1. You have the option to take a "Pass" grade (rather than a letter grade) for the BRVGS Senior Course, without having to do any more work on the BRVGS Senior Project. The "Pass" grade will be based on your letter grade at the date of school closing (March 13th). Please note that Pass grades are not calculated as a weighted grade (or into GPA at all), so that may have the chance to negatively affect your overall GPA. Please contact your counselor if you need to know more about the potential impact of a "Pass" grade on your GPA.
2. You also have the option to receive your letter grade as of 3/13/20 (or possibly to improve that grade) by completing your project. You can do that by providing a "presentation overview" that can be attached to your senior website for review by an evaluation team at a "Virtual Expo," to be held in late April. That overview, which is essentially what you would have presented publicly about your project, can be any of the following:
A video of you doing your presentation (Louisa and Nelson students, you would be able to use the videos of your local presentations for this if you choose to do so)
A Google Slideshow or Prezi with a voiceover (or, if voiceover is not possible for you, presentation notes within the slideshow). Ms. Outten would be able to provide info on how to do that, if you wish to pursue that option.
A live interview by phone or Google Hangout (depending on availability of evaluators)
A handwritten overview of your project (what would you say in a presentation), mailed to BRVGS, and we will scan and attach that to your website.
3. I will email you again soon to inform you of your course grade as of 3/13/20. Students will need to respond to a survey linked in that email to let us know which of the options you prefer to take from the choices describe above.
An important note - if you choose to go for the "letter grade" option, your website and accompanying materials will be evaluated against the BRVGS Senior Virtual Expo Rubric, and must be satisfactory - but the Virtual Expo will not NOT be given a grade, UNLESS your website and materials are good enough to raise your 3/13/20 grade - in which case your grade would improve accordingly. In other words - as long as your Virtual Expo submission is satisfactory, as established by the rubric, your grade cannot go down from where it was on 3/13/20.
If you choose to participate in the Virtual Expo, materials must be uploaded to your site or submitted to BRVGS no later than Friday, April 24th. The Expo will be held the week of April 27th - more notice will be sent out on that soon. For students who wish to improve their websites, but do not have reliable access to the internet, BRVGS will be happy to help you by consulting with you on the phone and making improvements as you direct. Please contact Ms. Outten at soutten@brvgs.k12.va.us to make arrangements to discuss that.
Again, we will be sending out another email in the next few days to let you know of your grade as of 3/13/20. Please make sure to read that and to respond to the survey to let us know which of the grade options you would like to do.
Please feel free to email me directly at mcarr1@brvgs.k12.va.us if you have any questions. I look forward to working with you all as we finalize your senior projects. In the meantime, take care and stay well -
Mr. Carraway
