I really enjoyed this article. I never realized how much focus we put into percentages compared to how much we truly use them in the real world. I really think the self reported grading would be a great idea for the appropriate grade levels but I also see some flaws in it. I know some students think they are bad at some subjects but really are pretty good in them. I think about those kids that have low self esteem and wonder how we would first change there perspective on themselves to make it so they can truly grade themselves appropriately. I also liked what the article said about the areas of misclassification. I often find myself debating between "is this right or is this wrong" on some questions. So I can see how one day I may accept one answer and then the next day I could not accept that answer. A very interesting article!
I believe the use of percentages and letter grades became a necessity when educators were asked to measure the immeasurable – learning. When I first started teaching (100+ years ago); I had to use percentages and they were directly related to a letter grade on assignments and report cards. My then boyfriend, now husband, and I were discussing how much I hated that any assignment below passing (60%) was very detrimental to any passing score. Extremely low percentages had a nearly fatal effect on grades. Students on the reservation already had enough issues with poverty, alcoholism and unemployment they didn’t need me beating them up on their report cards too! Greg taught me a 13-point scale to use WITH the percentages that would help prevent that problem. The percentage set by the district was used to determine the letter grade; but then when I recorded the grades, I used the letter grade to average. Each of the 13 letter grades was assigned a point value (A+ = 12, A = 11, A- = 10, etc. down to F = 0) No longer would a 10% paper pull the average of 100% paper down to below passing. The 12 pts and 0 pts. would average out to 6 which was a C. That really helped show a more accurately fair measure of their “average”. Numbers are easy to manipulate. You can make them say anything you want. But again, you are still measuring the immeasurable. I have tried using more commentary style notes when correcting work, and when you have a small class it is much easier but is more time consuming and difficult when you have a larger group. Being able to just sit and chat with the kids about their work is the best for them but takes so much time. Being able to express it in ways that they understand – in their own verbiage makes the most sense. Now if the folks writing the standards would just read this article…we wouldn’t need to reinvent the wheel.
I agree with what Lisa and Tyler have mentioned. We use discretion when grading depending on the student and day, but is that a true representation? When students see percentages they take that number and hang on to it and some have a harder time excepting the value of it. Is the value the student got a final determination of their life? Absolutely not, but it is hard explaining that to students sometimes. I know my own child gets all stressed out about the percentage, what it means and she did poorly, even when the scores are fine. The most important thing to do, like Lisa stated, is to have a conversation with the student and give them them immediate feedback.
I agree with Tyler, Lisa and Amanda. Percentages can be flawed. It is much more beneficial to pull kids aside who are missing a concept/concepts and go over it with them again. It is immediate feedback and I think the students will understand the concept better after having that one-on-one mini-lesson with you. One problem with the immediate feedback is how to fit it into your already busy day. I try to set aside papers to go over with kids. If I think the child made a lot of errors due to carelessness, I have them first try to correct it themselves. If I think they are truly not understanding the concept, I pull them aside to go over it with them. One last thing- I did like the point system idea in regards to the level of the child's understanding.
It is interesting to me the change of wording over the years, but essentially meaning almost the same thing. When I was in Elementary school the grading was E-excellent, VG-very good, and G-good. In early elementary at Aquin we use E-emergent, D-developing, and I-independent. Then we go to numbers 1-4. To be honest, I don't understand why. I think we should be consistent throughout. This would allow the students to learn the learning scale from the beginning. I agree that having individual conferencing with students about their learning is very important as long as they are given direction in what they can do next to continue, extend, or enrich their learning. This dialogue helps the students know where they are at and allows the teacher to differentiate instruction with students.
This article did reinforce for me the discrepancy I see in the grades I record for my students throughout the trimester and the grades I need to report for the standards on the progress report. I think we are, once again, in an area of transition in how assessments are given and how they are best reported. I know that I can make some adaptations to how I assess and how I communicate progress to my students. I did like the concept of assessment being a "bridge between teaching and learning," rather than an end result. "Conversation based grading" is the ideal, but as many of you have mentioned it takes a lot of time. I do think that it is worth the time investment.
I really liked this article, as I think that grading is very complicated, subjective, and inconsistent from grade to grade and teacher to teacher, making it complicated for students to understand. I like Lisa V.'s 12-point scale idea, as I have seen students do poorly on one assignment and it bring their grades down significantly. I agree with Lisa and others, however, that having conversations with students about their grades is time-consuming, especially when you have 65+ students to talk with! However, having those conversations would make students - especially the ones who don't care as much about their grades - more invested in their learning and performance.
This was an interesting article. To change from a percentage based system to something like the proficiency scale would require everyone to buy into and be on the same page. This would include teachers as well as parents. Honestly I think parents would be the ones who would have a harder time moving away from a percentage based score than teachers.
Amy, I had the similar thoughts when I read the article, but I was thinking that to switch from percentages would require both high schools and colleges to also switch and buy into a different system. I remember sitting at an orientation meeting with parents prior to Brianna's freshmen year of college. Several parents were concerned about their child and grades because the high school they attended used a standards based grading system and students were given unlimited opportunities to prove proficiency. The parents were worried that their children wouldn't transition well to the percentage grading system. I agree with the fact percentages are often not an accurate representation, and timely, detailed, and relevant feedback would be a much better approach. I fear to get to this across the board would take a huge paradigm shift, and I am not sure it is possible.
This makes me wonder...It has been a minute since I graduated from college, so it may have changed a bit since 198????, but I find it a little hypocritical that the same people that tell us (in college settings and particularly education courses) to grade with these "new" ideas...and till give "us" percentages and letter grades.
Interesting comments by all of you... Again, at Aquin we are so fortunate to have small class sizes and can have ongoing conversations with our students almost daily. I think the ultimate classroom environment is to teach and assess as one. We already do that! We teach and guide students through the skill, content, etc. That is why this online teaching/learning is so difficult. We like to be with our students to see how they are responding. I really like the proficiency scale, but understand the difficulty of the transition. Also time, like you have all stated, is a factor. Teachers teaching, assessing, reteaching, reassessing, is a process. If students have multiple chances to show understanding, that all takes time. I don't think I'm going to take up fly-fishing any time soon...good analogy.
I agree with many of the comments above. Fair grading is tough because we always have to look at what each child is capable of and our students who have more needs present more grading challenges.We need to make accommodations for students but that does alter their expectations so is that fair then to all? I had never thought about percentages the way the author mentioned it. I laughed at the I am feeling 42% today. Vicki how you would respond to that? I think grading in general is hard to keep completely objective at all times because so many factors enter in. I agree with Meg, I am glad we have smaller classes to address more needs and have more conversations about student progress. Interesting points to think about it.
This is a very interesting article! I also agree with many of the comments above. Grading is such a complicated thing. There are so many factors that go into grading. As I reflect on the grades I have given in the past, I realized that I only put their score and maybe a few words like "Awesome" or "Great job!" But now that I think about it, I know I need to put some more information as to why they earned that grade. Something I could try is openly discussing their grades with them. I don't want to just give them a score, I want to give them a reflection on why they learned that score. I think this is important, especially at the middle school level. This is the age where students start to form study/learning habits that get them the grades that they deserve. I also think it's important for teachers to be on the same page. Every teacher at every school grades a little different, so it's important for us to communicate with each other as to how we go about grading.
As I was reading this article I was thinking about our report card for the lower grades and I think they work pretty well with this article. I have a love hate relationship with percentages. I love them because they are so precise and I feel I can back a grade up with numbers. I hate them because of what they said in the article that one grade can destroy a student. I find in first grade we don't really use percentages much. We do more one on one feedback. Like Meg said, this is why this online learning is so hard. I want to be able to sit by my students and give them the feedback they need at the time.
Just like Betsy, I was reminded of the lower grades report cards while reading this article. I find it hard to fill out report cards because grading can be very subjective. Classwork and tests may tell us one thing about a student, but participation and conversations may tell us another thing. I don't use percentages because it's kindergarten and most of our work is done together, or corrected together. Percentages might make filling out report cards easier, but I feel I learn more about what the students know by walking around, talking to them, sitting next to them while they work, etc.
There are so many interesting comments on this article. I really enjoyed how the author of the article assigned percentages to daily life to illustrate that they really don't give you very much information. Lately, I've been operating at about 50%...whatever that means. Percentages make it easier to grade and easy for parents to understand, but they are not giving an accurate representation of what the student is actually learning or not learning. I like the idea of timely, relevant feedback, but wonder if it is something that could be consistently applied to all subject areas, in all grades and is there enough time in the day to do it? I agree with Tracy that this would be most beneficial if it was a whole paradigm shift. That could prove to be very difficult to implement.
I also feel it is more effective to meet with students one-on-one to provide immediate feedback. But as others mentioned, this can be difficult during an already full and busy school day. In the lower grades, percentages are very subjective. I feel that I can better judge how a student is doing based on classwork, tests, participation, conversations.
This article brought many thoughts to mind. First of all, I feel our parents are used to percentages themselves and therefore it is easier for them to understand. Even my first graders are excited with a 100%. I feel percentages have there place in the classroom on some assignments and tests, the ones that have a definite right and wrong answer. However, a lot of our assessing is moving away from this. In these situations I find myself fighting myself for a correct grade for a student. So many factors go into the grade, not only their performance on a test etc. I like that at our first two conferences we have the report card in front of us and are able to talk with the parents as to what their child did or did not do to receive that grade. When you only have three choices(I,D,E) to pick from many students fall in between those grades on different standards. I am not sure of the best way to grade students, but I do feel fortunate to have a small class size where I know each student. Definitely helps when grading. We know them all well enough to come up with a grade that reflects their overall work in our class.
I, too, love the opportunity conferences give us to talk with parents and the progress report is a great tool, but at our level (I can't speak for Unit 1 or 2), the progress report leaves out a great many of the standards we are teaching. I don't want a 20 page progress report, but not sure that I always agree with the ones that are chosen for us to report on. I think if we are teaching them (standards) we should be reporting on them. I'd like to have a progress report that is a more "living"/"fluid" document that we could adapt for what we teach each trimester. (I KNOW-- More work!)
Grading is very hard to do. I like to think that when I grade I also take into consideration their work, their tests, classroom participation, and our one to one conversations. I think that it is going to be hard to get away from percentages, but I do like the proficiency scale. I think parents would like that also
This article had a lot of interesting points and the comments that everyone has made has had very valid points. As many of the other younger grades have stated, we do not use percentages at the preschool level; however, there are percentages build into the grading. One of our scales that we need to use is not yet, developing, and met. With these if a student is meeting the goal 80% of the time it is considered met. I agree where the conversation based grading works well for early elementary but it is hard to take the time to be able to individually talk to each student in your busy day. I also do like how one bad score brings their entire grade down such as Lisa-V mentioned. We deal with that with our son in his high school classes and he gets really frustrated if he "messes up" on a test or an assignment and he gets discouraged more quickly for the class then. There are pros and cons for both grading systems and I think making a change will be a lot of time and effort with students, parents, and teachers.
During my masters program I have spent a lot of time learning about why we do assessments and how to use the data to make decisions. We did a project about using standards in the classroom and ways in which we can make the standards meaningful to students. Standards should be helpful to students in letting them know what they should be learning and how they are going to learn. As teachers, it is our job to put the standards into student-friendly language.
This article brought up a lot of good points regarding the confusion surrounding different types of grading and assessment. Middle school students put a lot of stock in their grades and associate the percentage earned on an assignment with their overall success as a student. I think my students are a lot more aware of the grading system than I was at their age. If I hand back an assignment with a simple 52/60, they are quick to figure out the percentage because that calculation holds meaning for them. Distance learning has been really hard because when I am in the classroom I look at grades consistently and know where individuals stand.
Well crap. It finally happened to me. I wrote this nice long post and pushed publish only for nothing to happen. Ugh. Anyway, I will try to remember what I wrote...
Assessments have been on my mind since the beginning of my teaching career. When I taught regular education I thought it was hard giving out percentages for grades on things like papers and projects. Even math assignments were sometimes difficult if there were word problems or parts of an assignment complete. However, now as a specialist teacher, it has become even more difficult. It is hard to grade students on participation and how well they completed a project. Honestly, sometimes the only difference between 88% and 92% is based on participation and not necessarily on the quality of the work. Sometimes their grades are opinionated even though I hate doing that. I really like the 4 category system (proficiency scale). I think this is very similar to the way K-2 report cards are written. In my opinion it really is the best scale. As a parent, I can see exactly where my child stands on a certain skill. The "met" vs "not met" scale that I have seen is ok for certain things, but it really does not tell you anything about the quality of learning your child is getting/receiving/retaining. I would love to see this proficiency scale for all grade levels. If the arch could make that happen, it would make a lot more sense. In fact, the 1-4 scale that 3rd-5th uses I am starting to rethink how I should perceive that scale. I never thought of a 4 being above and beyond (extending). I don't think parents think that way as well. I would think if my student did not receive a 4, then they must not be on grade level for that skill. Am I the only one rethinking this scale? Maybe I was just thinking about it all wrong from the beginning?
Wow so many great points and statements for this blog. Our assessments are quite cumbersome in Early Childhood, but really are meant to be more conversational in order to place a scale or developmental continuum. This all can be very confusing for the parents however because they are not familiar with the scale. Scales can also be interpreted different for each person who reads them as Andrea stated. Parents, teachers for even students may not have the same understanding. I struggle with this with our developmental continuum all the time. Having the converstaions about the assesments with parents has really seemed to help to cliify things.
I really enjoyed this article. I never realized how much focus we put into percentages compared to how much we truly use them in the real world. I really think the self reported grading would be a great idea for the appropriate grade levels but I also see some flaws in it. I know some students think they are bad at some subjects but really are pretty good in them. I think about those kids that have low self esteem and wonder how we would first change there perspective on themselves to make it so they can truly grade themselves appropriately. I also liked what the article said about the areas of misclassification. I often find myself debating between "is this right or is this wrong" on some questions. So I can see how one day I may accept one answer and then the next day I could not accept that answer. A very interesting article!
ReplyDeleteSo right! Not to mention that your expectations differ for each student and what goals they are working toward.
DeleteI believe the use of percentages and letter grades became a necessity when educators were asked to measure the immeasurable – learning.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started teaching (100+ years ago); I had to use percentages and they were directly related to a letter grade on assignments and report cards. My then boyfriend, now husband, and I were discussing how much I hated that any assignment below passing (60%) was very detrimental to any passing score. Extremely low percentages had a nearly fatal effect on grades. Students on the reservation already had enough issues with poverty, alcoholism and unemployment they didn’t need me beating them up on their report cards too! Greg taught me a 13-point scale to use WITH the percentages that would help prevent that problem. The percentage set by the district was used to determine the letter grade; but then when I recorded the grades, I used the letter grade to average. Each of the 13 letter grades was assigned a point value (A+ = 12, A = 11, A- = 10, etc. down to F = 0) No longer would a 10% paper pull the average of 100% paper down to below passing. The 12 pts and 0 pts. would average out to 6 which was a C. That really helped show a more accurately fair measure of their “average”. Numbers are easy to manipulate. You can make them say anything you want. But again, you are still measuring the immeasurable.
I have tried using more commentary style notes when correcting work, and when you have a small class it is much easier but is more time consuming and difficult when you have a larger group. Being able to just sit and chat with the kids about their work is the best for them but takes so much time. Being able to express it in ways that they understand – in their own verbiage makes the most sense. Now if the folks writing the standards would just read this article…we wouldn’t need to reinvent the wheel.
I agree with what Lisa and Tyler have mentioned. We use discretion when grading depending on the student and day, but is that a true representation? When students see percentages they take that number and hang on to it and some have a harder time excepting the value of it. Is the value the student got a final determination of their life? Absolutely not, but it is hard explaining that to students sometimes. I know my own child gets all stressed out about the percentage, what it means and she did poorly, even when the scores are fine. The most important thing to do, like Lisa stated, is to have a conversation with the student and give them them immediate feedback.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tyler, Lisa and Amanda. Percentages can be flawed. It is much more beneficial to pull kids aside who are missing a concept/concepts and go over it with them again. It is immediate feedback and I think the students will understand the concept better after having that one-on-one mini-lesson with you. One problem with the immediate feedback is how to fit it into your already busy day. I try to set aside papers to go over with kids. If I think the child made a lot of errors due to carelessness, I have them first try to correct it themselves. If I think they are truly not understanding the concept, I pull them aside to go over it with them. One last thing- I did like the point system idea in regards to the level of the child's understanding.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to me the change of wording over the years, but essentially meaning almost the same thing. When I was in Elementary school the grading was E-excellent, VG-very good, and G-good.
ReplyDeleteIn early elementary at Aquin we use E-emergent, D-developing, and I-independent. Then we go to numbers 1-4. To be honest, I don't understand why. I think we should be consistent throughout. This would allow the students to learn the learning scale from the beginning. I agree that having individual conferencing with students about their learning is very important as long as they are given direction in what they can do next to continue, extend, or enrich their learning. This dialogue helps the students know where they are at and allows the teacher to differentiate instruction with students.
This article did reinforce for me the discrepancy I see in the grades I record for my students throughout the trimester and the grades I need to report for the standards on the progress report. I think we are, once again, in an area of transition in how assessments are given and how they are best reported. I know that I can make some adaptations to how I assess and how I communicate progress to my students. I did like the concept of assessment being a "bridge between teaching and learning," rather than an end result. "Conversation based grading" is the ideal, but as many of you have mentioned it takes a lot of time. I do think that it is worth the time investment.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this article, as I think that grading is very complicated, subjective, and inconsistent from grade to grade and teacher to teacher, making it complicated for students to understand. I like Lisa V.'s 12-point scale idea, as I have seen students do poorly on one assignment and it bring their grades down significantly. I agree with Lisa and others, however, that having conversations with students about their grades is time-consuming, especially when you have 65+ students to talk with! However, having those conversations would make students - especially the ones who don't care as much about their grades - more invested in their learning and performance.
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting article. To change from a percentage based system to something like the proficiency scale would require everyone to buy into and be on the same page. This would include teachers as well as parents. Honestly I think parents would be the ones who would have a harder time moving away from a percentage based score than teachers.
ReplyDeleteAmy, I had the similar thoughts when I read the article, but I was thinking that to switch from percentages would require both high schools and colleges to also switch and buy into a different system.
ReplyDeleteI remember sitting at an orientation meeting with parents prior to Brianna's freshmen year of college. Several parents were concerned about their child and grades because the high school they attended used a standards based grading system and students were given unlimited opportunities to prove proficiency. The parents were worried that their children wouldn't transition well to the percentage grading system.
I agree with the fact percentages are often not an accurate representation, and timely, detailed, and relevant feedback would be a much better approach. I fear to get to this across the board would take a huge paradigm shift, and I am not sure it is possible.
This makes me wonder...It has been a minute since I graduated from college, so it may have changed a bit since 198????, but I find it a little hypocritical that the same people that tell us (in college settings and particularly education courses) to grade with these "new" ideas...and till give "us" percentages and letter grades.
Deletestill not till
DeleteInteresting comments by all of you...
ReplyDeleteAgain, at Aquin we are so fortunate to have small class sizes and can have ongoing conversations with our students almost daily. I think the ultimate classroom environment is to teach and assess as one. We already do that! We teach and guide students through the skill, content, etc. That is why this online teaching/learning is so difficult. We like to be with our students to see how they are responding. I really like the proficiency scale, but understand the difficulty of the transition. Also time, like you have all stated, is a factor. Teachers teaching, assessing, reteaching, reassessing, is a process. If students have multiple chances to show understanding, that all takes time. I don't think I'm going to take up fly-fishing any time soon...good analogy.
I agree with many of the comments above. Fair grading is tough because we always have to look at what each child is capable of and our students who have more needs present more grading challenges.We need to make accommodations for students but that does alter their expectations so is that fair then to all? I had never thought about percentages the way the author mentioned it. I laughed at the I am feeling 42% today. Vicki how you would respond to that? I think grading in general is hard to keep completely objective at all times because so many factors enter in. I agree with Meg, I am glad we have smaller classes to address more needs and have more conversations about student progress. Interesting points to think about it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting article! I also agree with many of the comments above. Grading is such a complicated thing. There are so many factors that go into grading. As I reflect on the grades I have given in the past, I realized that I only put their score and maybe a few words like "Awesome" or "Great job!" But now that I think about it, I know I need to put some more information as to why they earned that grade. Something I could try is openly discussing their grades with them. I don't want to just give them a score, I want to give them a reflection on why they learned that score. I think this is important, especially at the middle school level. This is the age where students start to form study/learning habits that get them the grades that they deserve. I also think it's important for teachers to be on the same page. Every teacher at every school grades a little different, so it's important for us to communicate with each other as to how we go about grading.
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading this article I was thinking about our report card for the lower grades and I think they work pretty well with this article. I have a love hate relationship with percentages. I love them because they are so precise and I feel I can back a grade up with numbers. I hate them because of what they said in the article that one grade can destroy a student. I find in first grade we don't really use percentages much. We do more one on one feedback. Like Meg said, this is why this online learning is so hard. I want to be able to sit by my students and give them the feedback they need at the time.
ReplyDeleteI miss my "kinder" days (mid to late 80's)...when a Smiley or OK stamp were enough of a grade!
DeleteJust like Betsy, I was reminded of the lower grades report cards while reading this article. I find it hard to fill out report cards because grading can be very subjective. Classwork and tests may tell us one thing about a student, but participation and conversations may tell us another thing. I don't use percentages because it's kindergarten and most of our work is done together, or corrected together. Percentages might make filling out report cards easier, but I feel I learn more about what the students know by walking around, talking to them, sitting next to them while they work, etc.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many interesting comments on this article. I really enjoyed how the author of the article assigned percentages to daily life to illustrate that they really don't give you very much information. Lately, I've been operating at about 50%...whatever that means. Percentages make it easier to grade and easy for parents to understand, but they are not giving an accurate representation of what the student is actually learning or not learning. I like the idea of timely, relevant feedback, but wonder if it is something that could be consistently applied to all subject areas, in all grades and is there enough time in the day to do it? I agree with Tracy that this would be most beneficial if it was a whole paradigm shift. That could prove to be very difficult to implement.
ReplyDeleteI also feel it is more effective to meet with students one-on-one to provide immediate feedback. But as others mentioned, this can be difficult during an already full and busy school day. In the lower grades, percentages are very subjective. I feel that I can better judge how a student is doing based on classwork, tests, participation, conversations.
ReplyDeleteThis article brought many thoughts to mind. First of all, I feel our parents are used to percentages themselves and therefore it is easier for them to understand. Even my first graders are excited with a 100%. I feel percentages have there place in the classroom on some assignments and tests, the ones that have a definite right and wrong answer. However, a lot of our assessing is moving away from this. In these situations I find myself fighting myself for a correct grade for a student. So many factors go into the grade, not only their performance on a test etc. I like that at our first two conferences we have the report card in front of us and are able to talk with the parents as to what their child did or did not do to receive that grade. When you only have three choices(I,D,E) to pick from many students fall in between those grades on different standards. I am not sure of the best way to grade students, but I do feel fortunate to have a small class size where I know each student. Definitely helps when grading. We know them all well enough to come up with a grade that reflects their overall work in our class.
ReplyDeleteI, too, love the opportunity conferences give us to talk with parents and the progress report is a great tool, but at our level (I can't speak for Unit 1 or 2), the progress report leaves out a great many of the standards we are teaching. I don't want a 20 page progress report, but not sure that I always agree with the ones that are chosen for us to report on. I think if we are teaching them (standards) we should be reporting on them. I'd like to have a progress report that is a more "living"/"fluid" document that we could adapt for what we teach each trimester. (I KNOW-- More work!)
DeleteGrading is very hard to do. I like to think that when I grade I also take into consideration their work, their tests, classroom participation, and our one to one conversations. I think that it is going to be hard to get away from percentages, but I do like the proficiency scale. I think parents would like that also
ReplyDeleteThis article had a lot of interesting points and the comments that everyone has made has had very valid points. As many of the other younger grades have stated, we do not use percentages at the preschool level; however, there are percentages build into the grading. One of our scales that we need to use is not yet, developing, and met. With these if a student is meeting the goal 80% of the time it is considered met. I agree where the conversation based grading works well for early elementary but it is hard to take the time to be able to individually talk to each student in your busy day. I also do like how one bad score brings their entire grade down such as Lisa-V mentioned. We deal with that with our son in his high school classes and he gets really frustrated if he "messes up" on a test or an assignment and he gets discouraged more quickly for the class then. There are pros and cons for both grading systems and I think making a change will be a lot of time and effort with students, parents, and teachers.
ReplyDeleteDuring my masters program I have spent a lot of time learning about why we do assessments and how to use the data to make decisions. We did a project about using standards in the classroom and ways in which we can make the standards meaningful to students. Standards should be helpful to students in letting them know what they should be learning and how they are going to learn. As teachers, it is our job to put the standards into student-friendly language.
ReplyDeleteThis article brought up a lot of good points regarding the confusion surrounding different types of grading and assessment. Middle school students put a lot of stock in their grades and associate the percentage earned on an assignment with their overall success as a student. I think my students are a lot more aware of the grading system than I was at their age. If I hand back an assignment with a simple 52/60, they are quick to figure out the percentage because that calculation holds meaning for them. Distance learning has been really hard because when I am in the classroom I look at grades consistently and know where individuals stand.
ReplyDeleteWell crap. It finally happened to me. I wrote this nice long post and pushed publish only for nothing to happen. Ugh. Anyway, I will try to remember what I wrote...
ReplyDeleteAssessments have been on my mind since the beginning of my teaching career. When I taught regular education I thought it was hard giving out percentages for grades on things like papers and projects. Even math assignments were sometimes difficult if there were word problems or parts of an assignment complete. However, now as a specialist teacher, it has become even more difficult. It is hard to grade students on participation and how well they completed a project. Honestly, sometimes the only difference between 88% and 92% is based on participation and not necessarily on the quality of the work. Sometimes their grades are opinionated even though I hate doing that.
I really like the 4 category system (proficiency scale). I think this is very similar to the way K-2 report cards are written. In my opinion it really is the best scale. As a parent, I can see exactly where my child stands on a certain skill. The "met" vs "not met" scale that I have seen is ok for certain things, but it really does not tell you anything about the quality of learning your child is getting/receiving/retaining. I would love to see this proficiency scale for all grade levels. If the arch could make that happen, it would make a lot more sense.
In fact, the 1-4 scale that 3rd-5th uses I am starting to rethink how I should perceive that scale. I never thought of a 4 being above and beyond (extending). I don't think parents think that way as well. I would think if my student did not receive a 4, then they must not be on grade level for that skill. Am I the only one rethinking this scale? Maybe I was just thinking about it all wrong from the beginning?
Wow so many great points and statements for this blog. Our assessments are quite cumbersome in Early Childhood, but really are meant to be more conversational in order to place a scale or developmental continuum. This all can be very confusing for the parents however because they are not familiar with the scale. Scales can also be interpreted different for each person who reads them as Andrea stated. Parents, teachers for even students may not have the same understanding. I struggle with this with our developmental continuum all the time. Having the converstaions about the assesments with parents has really seemed to help to cliify things.
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