Assessment

I am the kind of teacher who strongly believes in creating an environment where students can experience success and failure not as reward or punishment, but as an informational conversation. I substitute traditional grades with informative feedback that is provided to the students while they are still learning.

Report cards will be the only time students will receive a traditional number grade in my class--due to state regulations that I must provide them a numerical grade. Report card marks will be determined based on (1) the student's projects and portfolios which will be evaluated on a shared Google document with students and parents (2) my own professional judgement based on what I see and hear while observing and working with the student while they are still learning that will be tallied on an objective rubric based on the products, progress, and process of their learning (3) self-assessments that ask the student to reflect upon their own learning and proposed grade.

Assessment throughout the year will be either written or spoken feedback from me to help the student learn and improve. My intention is that students are self-motivated to learn for learning’s sake and they are given more informative feedback through our conversations instead of less feedback from traditional numbers and letters.

At each report card period, students will be evaluated based on the products of their learning, the progress of their learning, and the process of their learning. The objective rubric I will be using to determine their grades is:

Periodically, students will be asked to complete the following Self-Assessment to gauge what they have learned, what they need to improve on, and what grade they should receive. Here is the document they will complete: