The school has finished its sixth week of distance learning after the spread of COVID-19. Alongside spending time with family and face-timing friends, students are having classes every day to get the most out of this situation. However, many grades are greatly affected by this, with Grade 10 as no exception. 

For starters, the IB E-assessments, which include the course material from both the freshman and sophomore year, are canceled. There was a long wait for this announcement which made a lot of Grade 10’s anxious. 

“Online classes had just begun and students were getting a lot of workload and not knowing [the status of the tests] made [studying] difficult”, Chloe Seldon, Class of 2022, said.  

On April 1, IB announced that instead of the E-assessments, the final scores will be predicted grades. Mr. Robert Smith, MYP coordinator, sent an email the next day confirming this. The email mentioned, ‘Woodstock students’ predicted grade for exam courses will primarily be determined by the student’s work completed up until Spring Break.’ This news was both positive and negative as many students were planning to study for their E-assessments to cover up for courses they had lower grades in. However, students who had kept up their grades throughout the year, deem it a better opportunity to have desirable grades printed on their transcripts. 

Even though the E- assessments got canceled, the E-portfolios, a form of E-assessment for arts and languages, continue to be a requirement. This is extremely concerning for some students, especially for those in the arts. 

Film and media students are supposed to create a short film. The process for this began way before and included making plans according to their current setting. However, due to quarantine and lockdowns, many students had to start from scratch. 

Visual art students, on the other hand, have already modified their projects. They have to now make a vessel with items around their homes to create a structure to hold water. 

As for the drama students, they have to research on one type of theatre and perform on an environmental problem. 

All of these were initially supposed to be done with materials that were available on campus, however, with distance learning in place, many teachers had to recreate subject-specific guides, be available for office hours and talk to students individually to help them through their summative. 

On a less academically oriented not, the last term of the year, Maymester, is usually filled with activities such as Mayhem and class nights, but most importantly the Junior-Senior Banquet (JSB), which is put together by the sophomores. The Grade 10 students had already started planning for the event in their homerooms and even talked to the Grade 12 class governors to finalize the theme. But the virtual environment has led to great disappointment for the class as JSB is not taking place anymore.

“Since we have a very limited amount of time left, this pandemic really costs our memories. I am very sad because we planned so many events this semester that were really hard to get approved which we won’t be able to do”, Vansh Aggarwal, Class Governor of Class of 2022, said 

With no certainty of what might happen next, both the staff and students are doing their best to get through this and come back to school prepared for the next academic year. 

Riya Gupta is the news editor for The Woodstocker

Edited by Archita Aggarwal