GRADING POLICY

Research indicates that grading should represent what students know and are able to do. This is commonly referred to as Standards Based Grading. I use two types of assessment in the classroom. The first is formative assessment. Formative assessment occurs several times a day and may include quick checks of work, conferencing with students, student self-assessment, and quizzes. Formative assessment data informs the teacher as to what degree the students are understanding and applying daily learning objectives. Teachers adjust their daily planning to ensure that learning is taking place. Summative assessment occurs at the end of a unit and determines to what extent the students internalized the information and are able to apply it to new circumstances. Teachers use summative data to evaluate a unit plan or curriculum. It is my policy to only record summative assessment data for final grades. This is what you will see in PowerSchool. The students should have a risk-free environment to learn in, make mistakes in, find out why they made mistakes, and correct the mistakes. This is where learning that lasts takes place.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT EXAMPLES:Reader's and Writer's Notebook entries, Math Journal, daily math practice, reading and writing conferences, participation in classroom discussions, Inquiry notebook entries, quizzes, etc.

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT EXAMPLES:End of unit tests, projects, papers

* As a note, report cards are currently under review by a district committee. The committee is researching Standards Based reporting and reworking the report cards for this year. At this time it is undecided what form the reporting of grades will take. Be advised that for all these reasons you will not see a great deal of scores posted on Powerschool at this time.

Go to USEFUL LINKS for information about Standards Based Grading.