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My experiences with grading...
My experiences with grading...
I went through my entire academic career using letter grades. I started my teaching career using letter grades. What I have noticed it that teachers, students, administrators, and parents focus on the letter grade. "What's my grade" is the top question I here from all of those parties. I know all of the above parties would agree that the goal of schooling is not to earn a letter grade, but all of my past experiences point to the opposite conclusion that the letter grade is what matters most. This grade only matters at the deadline and that is at the end of the quarter. So until that deadline that grade is a work in progress.
What is the goal of schooling?
What is the goal of schooling?
The goal of schooling students is to have them learn and understand the content. Learning is what schooling should be all about. The questions that should be asked are, "Did I learn the content?", "Do they understand the content?", or "What did you learn?". This learning has only one deadline and that is the end of the quarter.
How to determine if a student understands or has learned the content?
How to determine if a student understands or has learned the content?
Give their work a grade. How that work is graded is very important. The grade should represent the level of understanding that the student has over the content. This level of understanding is not fully measured until the deadline of the end of the quarter.
How can a grade be given to a level of understanding?
How can a grade be given to a level of understanding?
2 options:
Give them a letter grade associated with a percentage that matches their performance on the work that was given to assess their understanding.
Give them a progression grade associated with tasks that represents the level of understanding of the material being learned.
The first option is the traditional letter grade approach which over time has caused everyone to switch the focus from what was learned to what is my grade. The second is a modern researched based approach to better assess a student's understanding of the content by focusing on a task that shows what was learned instead of arbitrary amount of right and wrong answers on work. I will refer to this as Standards Based Assessment and Referencing, SBAR. Both approaches work in given circumstances so I use both. When it comes to the learning of the standards I will use SBAR by grading perfromance assessments using there dimensional rubrics. These scores only become final at the deadline which is the end of the quarter. So these scores show a work in progress on the learning of the content.
What does a student do if they are not satisfied with their level of understanding, "grade"?
What does a student do if they are not satisfied with their level of understanding, "grade"?
They communicate with me to correct their performance assessment scores. They can work with me during study hall, correction days, before, or after school. Class time is for the current class material and will only cause an unending cycle of unsatisfactory work. There deadline to accomplish a greater understanding is at the end of the quarter.
Reading Gradebook
Reading Gradebook
Gradebook Explanation.webmPlease watch this video to understand the gradebook. I created time stamps so you don't have to watch it all at once. (Bolded means extra important)
Evolution of online gradebook (0--3:30 mins)
Recommendation on checking gradebook (3:30--6:30 mins)
Weighted Categories (7--11:00 mins)
Irrelevant information on gradebook (11-11:30 mins)
Explanation of Categories (11:30--15 mins)
Due dates (15-15:35 mins)
Valid vs. Missing (15:40-17:05 mins)
Points turned into percentages (17:30--19:30 mins)
Actual Grade Earned (19:30--25:05 mins)
How to calculate grade on your own. (23 mins)
Conclusion (25:10--End)
Thanks for watching!!! I hope this helps.
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