Wow, it's already 2009 and we have so many things to accomplish.
Thank you for being willing to take a second look at Chapters 7 and 8 in Fair Isn’t Always Equal. I have to re-visit these chapters often to keep reminding myself of the true goal of learning and the role that grading plays in my classroom.
As you all saw from my demonstration lesson, reading something once is often not enough to really understand it. I purposefully chose difficult texts to put you in the place of a struggling reader. How did it feel? How can we help our students see that re-reading is important, whether it's a math problem, a poem or directions?
7 comments:
Blog 8 Jane Gregory
Our class on January 12 had me pondering about what kind of job I do when it comes to giving students directives as they answer questions. I do allow for many students to respond and ask questions that encourage different types of answers, but I feel pressured to keep class moving and exciting, so therefore do not give some students enough time to formulate their answers. Then I consciously slow down and try again. It is a great fault of my teaching style and I pledge to work on this wait time next semester.
I am a great proponent of “Think, Pair, Share” and use the concept every day in my classroom. We all learn better and easier when we can discuss our thought processes with someone else. When a student is able to share just how he solved the problem, the explanation reinforces his learning. And most students listen better when it is one of their own doing the explaining.
I really enjoyed Mitch’s Read-Aloud because it gave me insight into Pat Conroy’s life. I love Conroy’s writing because it is so descriptive. I can just “get lost” in his words and feel that I am actually a part of his book.
As I re-read Chapter 7 and 8 in Wormeli, the statements about teachers bending their instruction so that it best fits the student and that grades are not always accurate indicators of mastery still just jump off the page at me. Each night as I grade my students’ math homework, I will be more aware of backtracking to those skills in an effort each day to help students catch up. I have tried hard to do this, but I pledge to do better in the future. I have been approached by our district math consultant to pilot unit recovery using APEX this semester, and I believe this program will help.
I still have concerns that the grades I give are not always based on knowledge. Sometimes I am grading responsibility. As Einstein says,” It’s about showing up on time with the tools and the attitude to get the work done.” Responsibility is part of keeping our jobs and being prepared.
I like Mrs. Gregory's quote from Einstein. Attitude and tools are most important in completing any task. Those components accompany assessment. When it comes to grading projects, I take into account the student's behavior while creating the project. I applaud students who demonstrate the right attitude while working even if the final work was not the best quality. When grading projects such as these, I take into account that student's behavior and effort. Students need to be graded on more than productivity since they have many strengths and weaknesses in many areas. As teachers, we can help them by identifying their strengths and leading them in those directions.
While I was reading chapter seven I realized that I have done some of the things that were talked about. I feel kind of bad about it. I have often found myself grading papers and relating them to the papers that I had just graded. I can see how someone’s paper that is average can be seen as a master piece if it comes after a paper that was full of junk. I have often had to put grading papers aside because I don’t want that situation to occur. There were also a lot of things in this chapter that I don’t see how a teacher with a family and a life outside of school could do. Sometimes when I read text where they are laying out fifty million steps to being a better teacher I just have to wonder on what planet this person is living on because I know on Earth there isn’t enough time to do everything that the author had suggested.
Chapters 7 and 8 revisited
Blog 8
When asked to revisit chapters 7 and 8, I thought what did I miss? Well in chapter 7 I did miss that teachers must be careful when attaching integrity to academic grades. I think this means that teachers need to focus on student learning not student failure. We need to give positive feedback along with the corrections. I guess that is why I try to tell young ladies that they are too pretty to use foul language. And I often tell young men who smoke that girls don’t care to be around stinky breath boys, they want to talk to young men with sweet breath. We need to look for ways to document growth not just failure. Wormeli cautions us that grades are not the best forms of feedback. Parents rightfully get upset with teachers when the first they hear of a child’s struggle is in the form of a report card. Parents want the feedback whether positive or negative long before that report card comes out. I like the suggestions at the end of chapter 7 that say to teach the bigger messages of life we need to talk about them, do think-alouds, read stories about them, model those messages and create calendars of completion. These forms of self-examination help students to see for themselves their strenghts and weaknesses.
In chapter 8, I missed the maturation or students. I suppose in the ninth grade a student needs many more chances to learn to conform discipline wise. They may also need a few more chances to get used to deadlines, following rubrics etc. But by the time a student becomes a sophomore in high school, they must learn that effort, attendance, timeliness, and thoroughness really count. Those qualities may not result in a separate grade, but they do count in that late work is sometimes not graded, sloppy work is sometimes not accepted, and work that does not follow the rubric or guidelines is often failed without even being checked. Wormeli points out that as adults we can be fired if we don’t “produce what is requested, no matter how hard we’ve worked.” I think we do our students an injustice by sugar coating things at the high school level. We often paint quite a different picture than that of the real world.
One consulting teacher stated that her school district was moving to a standards based report card. My only problem with that is if everyone isn’t doing that how do colleges decide who is ready for college level work, those with A’s and B’s or those who met or exceeded standards?
The author says that we need to rethink grading late work. For the student who repeated turns in late work, I say administer punishment that will correct the pattern of lateness. For the one timer, please don’t allow the child to fail because he or she had many reports due at the same time, or they had an illness in the family. We do have to sometimes factor in that some unavoidable things happen even to children. That Zero Tolerance policy should only apply to illegal drugs.
I often don't give students time to reflect on directions and ask questions. This is an attempt to give the students that understand the assignment the maximum time to work. One strategy I try to use, is continue that thought and I'll be back to you in a minute. I don't know if this ins encouraging or discouraging. Often students just need more time to process.
When revisiting Chapter 7 and 8, it is so important to have what we want our students to learn laid out in standards and a syllabus. This can be very difficult to do. I have a hard time when working with teachers to really define what information skills we really want them to master let alone integrating the content. I can't imagine doing this for a whole course.
In certain classes, I can see where participation would be important and would warrant a grade. (orchestra, band, PE, etc.) I also like the quote from Einstein. Students who come into class with a positive attitude, good behavior and work hard should be rewarded. This could be given the benefit of the doubt when one the "line" for grades or just showing progress.
I empathize with Sadie's comments. It is difficult to evaluate papers and grade according to the work and effort of the particular student, instead of allowing another student's work to be the curve.
I feel that sometimes when a student raises the bar so high above other students, it's difficult to find fault with their work at all. Therefore, just because a student outshines his/her classmates--am I being fair when I can find no room for improvment or revision?
I found Lendy's statement about student learning not student failure profound. How many times have we as teachers felt that a student deserved to fail because of lack of effort. More than I care to think about. As teachers we must determine what makes students tick. With the amount of time I spent on the multi genre project for one lesson it would take me several years to develop enough lessons to "teach right" I agree with Sadie and Kate that we are sometimes asked to be superheros.
As far as think share pair. I am a big proponent of this practice. I used to like to pair sn honors kid with a grade level kid to expose them to each other's thought process. It was usually more beneficial to the grade level student in learning how to think. Sometimes instead of pairs, I would assign groups of 4 people with varying levels of intellect and have them parcel out who was going to be responsible for what. This gave everyone a chance to contribute and the students seemed to like it. I sometimes was guilty of not thinking things through and anticipating questions that arose, but things usually worke out.
Post a Comment