My primary concern in this course is to support your learning to teach. One way for me to do that is to give feedback on your work – to let you know what I see as strengths, what I believe is in need of more thought or development, how clearly you have conveyed your ideas, the extent to which your work demonstrates evidence of learning, etc. Number or letter grades are not particularly effective ways of communicating these things!
Therefore, this will be a “gradeless” class. My aim in going “gradeless” is to shift the focus from “How can I get a better grade?” to “What can I do better to learn?”
Because the university requires me to assign a grade, I will host individual conferences at the end of the semester. You will come to this conference prepared to show how you have met expectations for each of the learning standards, using evidence from course assignments. In other words, you will prepare a portfolio that provides evidence for the grade you believe you have earned in the course.
Additional information about university policies about grades and GPA are here: https://onestop.utk.edu/gpa/
Read more about gradeless math classrooms here:
Research base for standards-based and gradeless learning:
©Frances K. Harper, 2020