Bonnie Tucker, thank you for the wonderfully interactive strategy share. I love the way you previewed the vocabulary, had us work together to do a word sort, and then had us read the FRENCH directions to accomplish a goal. Gee, in one short lesson you had us reading French. I am impressed!!
Thank you all for struggling through the "Metaphors" exercise. It is important for us to remember how it feels to be a struggling learner. Once again, you all rose above my expectations. Thanks for making me think about things I had not considered.
Chapter 10, "Conditions for Redoing Work for Full Credit" sparked a lot of thoughful blogging. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of all the issues this chapter presented. If you haven't had the chance to read everyone's comments about Chapter 10, I would suggest that you make a point to do so. Reading everyone's comments always makes me think more deeply.
Chapter 11, "Six Burning Grading Issues" made me reconsider the way I record grades. Let me know what it makes you think about or consider.
10 comments:
The topic of Chapter 11 is grading. A suggestion made by the author is that we should not record zeros for missing work. He believes that a fifty should be recorded. I disagree with this belief. If my student does not complete an assignment, then he receives a zero. It would be unfair to the other students who complete their assignments if half credit were given to missing assignments. The value of assessment comes into question if zeros are not allowed for incomplete work.
Blog 11 Burning Grading Issues
Before reading this chapter I thought giving a student a 60 was ludicrous if the student had done nothing to earn the sixty. After reading, I have changed my mind. Although I might make it a 50 instead of a 60 because I think 50 is enough to say to a student, “I’ll meet you half way.” As a teacher, I would record the true grade beside the 50 for the purpose of parent-teacher conference. I would be sure to let the student and the parent know that the 50 is plugged in order to give the student hope if he or she chooses to start working.
How many of us were familiar with the word “ilk”? I had to go look that one up. It made me think if the parent-teacher conference I recently had with my daughter’s World History AP teacher. I expressed concern that she wasn’t understanding the concepts well enough, and he stopped me mid sentence and said, “she definitely has the “gray matter” to do well in this class. That let me know that he felt she needed to do more, apply herself more, or study more. So the conversation left the grade and shifted to what needed to be done on my part and my daughter’s part. I do agree with Wormeli that within gifted student groups there are gradations of giftedness. Teachers need look for these gradations and adjust. I really have my doubts about my daughter being in a class where the scale is such that she is congratulated for making the highest grade on exam along with two other students and that grade is a 79! I mean how is she supposed to feel? How am I supped to react! A 79 in any other class means a lot more studying needs to be done or a tutor needs to become involved.
How about the question on an application, what is your unweighted GPA? I was clueless as to how to calculate that! Are there many students going to our major colleges with a 3.0? That used to be a good GPA, signifying that a student should do well at the college level. But what good is a 3.0 when your classmates are making a 4.79? These grading issues are becoming more and more complex. But I am getting ahead of myself because I think this issue is addressed in the next chapter.
I hope all teachers will grade late work to some extent. I do believe that the line has to be drawn somewhere for habitual late work. I don’t agree with allowing classes to take exams and then let those students who did everything on time “free time to just chill” while everyone else is left in the classroom to do their make up or late work. For me, this is not fair to those of us left babysitting the completers or to the students who feel that they have time to waste. No matter how many ways I can think of to occupy their time, the completers feel they are being punished if asked to do something constructive rather than play.
The task of grading special needs students in inclusion classes is certainly a tough one. I hope all teachers of special needs students know how to accommodate their students. I recently saw a special needs student struggle with an assignment. She actually completed all of the assignment. It did take her a lot longer than the other students. And at one time, I thought she was going to become ill over the assignment. But with the help of Ms. Fisher and our intern, Ms. Cook, she managed. I was ready to tell the teacher that she was going to have to accept the part that she did and grade it without the child finishing it. I don’t know if that was my place. I don’t know how the teacher would have responded. But I was ready to go to bat for that student because I didn’t think the assignment was worth the child losing her mind.
Blog 11 Jane Gregory
Once again the issues in this chapter are very controversial. And once again my ideas about these grading issues are filling my mind with confusion and dismay, and I will probably rethink my position on these issues many times over. I do understand why the author feels that adjusting the grade of F so that it is mathematically justified is a fair idea. In my class the only grades that students have the opportunity not to do are in the homework category. That is, of course, unless they absolutely refuse to make up a test. And there are so many grades in the homework category (one paper each day) that missing one now and then just doesn’t matter to the overall grade. Because of this, I actually am not too concerned with this idea. But shouldn’t this issue take care of itself if we, the students and the teacher, are willing to retest. And if students are not willing to invest the time in satisfying the redo requirements, then perhaps the grade should stand as is.
Students in the gifted track should be compensated by a higher point count for the level course taken. If the label beside the grade shows in itself a higher expectancy of progress and extra points are given for the grade, we have compensated that student for his extra work.
I do believe grades should be weighted. Homework and daily quizzes are less important than tests and the percentages they count should reflect this. Homework and quizzes serve as the practice run with many grades in each category. That way the grades tend to balance each other and these papers serve as a useful learning tool. Tests should be weighted much more because by the time they are taken, students should have had enough guided practice to really show mastery of the material.
I thought the author’s words about valedictorians and class rankings were most interesting. I can see his viewpoint but retiring these institutions could really open up a can of worms. Academic scholarships would have to be completely refigured. What would that grade-crazy parent worry about???
I really liked what the author said about non-sequential learning and that students should be allowed to step forward before the previous material is passed. Sometimes it takes forward progress to allow students the opportunity to see where they are going and actually grasp those earlier concepts.
Accommodations for special education students is an area that is a stumbling block for me. I really need to re-read this section to let this all sink in my brain awhile. Probably within a couple weeks I will have changed my thoughts on most of what I blogged here. This course and the reading it entails have a tendency to do that to me.
Ch. 11 – Six Burning Grading Issues
Recording a zero for a missing assignment skews the grade average so that it does not accurately reflect the students work. If a student misses a daily quiz, I usually would not have them make it up and would not record a zero. I just average the other daily quizzes. So I do that same for most other assignments, unless they are habitually late or missing assignments. If I have a student who can maintain an A average, I will not hold it against them if they do not turn in all daily assignments. It would appear that some daily assignments for them are just “busy work”. Unless I can be sure that an assignment is not just busy work, I do not want to penalize a student for missing it. If students are habitually late or missing work, then I will usually record a 50 or 60.
I have been a proponent in the past of grading on a 4.0 scale. By doing this, a grade of 0 doesn't hurt has much as grading on a 0-100 scale. In the 4.0 scale, 4 is obviously an A, 3 is a B, 2 is a C, 1 is a D and 0 is a 0. This hurts the student for not doing work, but doesn't kill the student. The problem comes in when it is time to enter grades, but if a student has a 3.3 avg, then you give him a 90, a 1.0 gets a 70 and then a 0 gets a 0. No student is going to have a 0 for their final grade. I believe firmly that we need to explore this avenue. What do y'all think? MItch
My last post should have read "0 gets a 60" not "0 gets a 0" Sorry
Mitch, I agree with you. (Now that you changed the 0=0 to 0 gets a 60.)
In chapter 11, I had several thoughts and ideas that were questioned. One of those was recording 60 as the lowest grade. In this case, how do you differentiate between a student who is trying and earning something lower than a 60 and a student who is doing nothing. Failing is failing but I think effort should count for somthing when grading. If a student is giving their full effort, then record the 60. A student who does not turn in work should be shown a zero. Grades should be recorded on the standards and syllabus/expectations for the class. If the class is an honors or AP class, the course expectations should include additional work or higher level concepts. A lot of grading issues could be resolved if we ask before we teach a lesson, make a test or design a project - What do we want our students to learn and demonstrate on this assigment. The rubric should reflect these expectations and the student should be graded accordingly.
I like Lendy's comments of recording the true grade next to the adjusted grade of 50 or 60. If enough of these built up, it would be could evidence during a parent-teacher conference.
Perhaps I'm not enough of a matemetician to know what I should weigh more than another so I don't drown a student in zeros. I would hate for a student to be mathematically elminated from passing my class in the first 9 weeks. I have seen students make a turn around in the last half of the year and produce stellar work. I've made adjustments for that with a point here and a point there.
However, I do not want the condemnation of a zero to prevent me from realistically showing what a student has/has not accomplished in my class.
There were a lot of comments that angered me in this chapter. I don’t believe it is fair to give students who haven’t done the assignment a fifty. I have had students who have turned in assignments fifties. What will be the initiative to do work if you get a grade whither you turn it in or not. People who get zeros are normally students who deserve zeros.
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