Grading Practices

Rolling Grades

As you use the Parent Portal for PowerSchool to monitor English grades during the school year, please be aware that our department does not use the "traditional" grading method of averaging first and second nine-weeks grades together with the exam score to calculate a final or F1 grade. We hope this change will make it easier for you to understand our expectations and a student's growth over the semester. We call our grading process "rolling grades." To put it simply, with rolling grades, only the F1 grade matters.

Across the department, we've agreed upon the grade weights represented in the chart below. Although quarter grades can help reveal short term trends in a student's performance, you will see that quarter grades do not figure into final grades at all. Instead, a student's work goes into one of the percentage categories shown in the chart below, and grades in each category "keep rolling" through to the final calculation at the very end of the semester.

English 9-12

• • • • 25% Final Exam/EOC

      • 30% Formative

      • 45% Summative

English teachers use their professional discretion to categorize and weigh all work. They publicize that information on their websites, shared documents, parent brochures, etc. If you cannot access that information, please contact the teacher directly using the links on our homepage.

We are excited to use grading practices and rubrics to encourage students to keep learning and growing until finishing a course. Please contact me or any of the other English teachers if you have questions.

Sincerely,

Meredith Licht

English Department Chair