FIAE Chapter 10

The conditions for allowing students to redo work for full credit were addressed in this chapter. I think the most useful piece of advice in this chapter is to create a policy that allows you to withhold the right for students to redo work depending on certain circumstances. If a student purposefully blows off a test, then he or she really shouldn’t be given a second opportunity when they did not take advantage of the first opportunity. With this policy, however, will come parents who disagree, so I also think it is important to inform parents at the beginning of the year that that is how you will be handling make up work throughout the year. I also don’t think that the redo assignment needs to be the exact same as the original assignment, especially if it was something that the student put a lot of time and effort into creating. In that case, I would find alternate assessments that will still show that the student has mastered the concept. I had a teacher who allowed us to revise essays after we turned them in, which was fairly easy to do, but when we revised projects, sometimes all we had to do was write an explanation of what we would change and why. Writing the explanations caused us to consider the content and material again and gave us another opportunity to show that we do understand what we learned. I think these conditions will certainly be a part of my classroom policy on redoing work.

FIAE Chapter 9

This chapter had a good list of things to avoid when grading in a differentiated classroom, and one of the points that seemed to stick out to me was allowing students to make revisions or retake tests for full credit. We’ve all had classes where the teacher allowed us to redo work if we scored lower than a passing grade, but our two grades would be averaged. This chapter argues against that policy, saying that everyone learns at different rates and cannot be expected to master the material at the same time as everyone else in the classroom. Some students just need an additional day or two in order to fully understand the material, but we should not penalize them because they don’t learn through the same methods as everyone else. If a student needs a second or third opportunity to show mastery of a concept, then they should be able to take those opportunities and not have to worry about how it will affect their grade. We don’t want students to feel as though they are not capable of learning the material at all and refusing to let them receive full credit for something that they should have gotten right on their first try sends this message. As teachers, it is our job to educate the students and to create comfortable learning environments, but we often do just the opposite when we tell students that they can’t have a second chance at proving their mastery. Another point that this chapter made was to avoid grading homework that is simply students practicing a concept. Certainly, students should receive credit for doing the work, but teachers should not give it a letter or numerical grade. A lot of students think that this means that homework doesn’t count at all, but that is not the case. Homework does count, but it only counts for a very small percentage of the grade. These two points will help me as a teacher because I feel that students should have the option to redo and revise work as necessary to show mastery of the content, and I don’t think homework should be graded like an assessment would. Homework should be used mostly to give students feedback and help them to understand the concepts being taught.

FIAE Chapter 8

Participation is not an indicator of a student’s knowledge, and it should not be assessed as such. I understand how difficult it is to find a way to make participation, which included attendance, effort, behavior, preparedness, etc., a meaningful grade. Students, especially in high school, should be held accountable for these areas, but they shouldn’t be used against students, or used to motivate them. Effort can be evaluated in individual assignments and participation can be evaluated for other assignments such as debates, but effort and participation in regards to the class as a whole should not be included in the academic grading system. Every student is in a different stage developmentally and some just are not ready to contribute to discussions while others are. Some students even feel intimidated when trying to contribute and shut down because of it. Should these students be given poor grades because of that? I do not believe so. If I feel that those particular students need to contribute, more I will find other ways, such as online discussion forums that will allow them to contribute in a more comfortable environment for them. I think the important thing to take from this chapter is to be careful about grading students for participation, effort, and behavior because it mostly makes things worse for you and the students.

FIAE Chapter 7

This chapter focused on pros and cons of giving students number or letter grades. It made a lot of good points about why and how grades can be detrimental to students, especially if they earn low grades on their work. I find it interesting to think that in the 70s and 80s a grade of C meant that the student was an average student because it’s the “middle” grade, and it was a good thing to be a C student. Now though, a C is a bad grade and does not mean that the student is an average student. To be considered an average student, one must earn a grade of at least a B. One of the issues that this chapter mentioned is the inconsistency of grading among teachers, not only in the same school, but also in the same department. One teacher might be giving out As and Bs consistently for a particular assignment while a teacher down the hall grading the same assessment might be giving out Cs and Ds. I definitely feel as though there needs to be more unity among grading systems, especially with teachers in the same school. As educators we are supposed to believe that every student has an equal right to an education and the right to learn, yet we don’t offer those students the right to be graded and assessed equally. I certainly believe that every student is different and must therefore be assessed differently, but the same student should not receive two different grades from two different teachers for the same assignment. My high school English department clearly lacked continuity among their grading, and as students we were aware of this. Sometimes we took advantage of it, knowing that one teacher graded a lot easier than another, so we didn’t see the need to put that much effort into our work if we were going to get an A anyway. When students start slacking because they know you are not going to give them a grade that is truly reflective of the work they did then something needs to be done about it. What this makes me realize is that I need to be incredibly aware of how I am grading my students and seek out resources to assist me in making sure that I am grading each student fairly. I also need to remember to give good, constructive feedback to every student so that they know what they need to do to make improvements.

UbD/DI Chapter 8

The beginning of this chapter brings to light a very good point about grading in a differentiated instruction classroom. How can we assess students using a differentiated method when report cards and other similar tools are mostly standardized? While teaching using differentiation might show that a student has remarkable strengths in one area, the evidence as reported at the end of a term might suggest otherwise and is therefore inaccurate. The authors go on to explain the two types of grading, the first using the letter or number system that many of us are familiar with, and the second being sharing evaluations with students and parents. I like that they believe the “primary goal of grading and reporting is to communicate to important audiences, such as students and parents, high-quality feedback to support the learning process and encourage learner success,” (129). I wish that more schools could follow similar beliefs and forget about the letter/number grade system. Certainly there might be instances where using number or letter grades might be necessary, but I think it is more important to give high-quality feedback to students. Giving a student feedback on how he or she could improve his or her work would realistically be more effective than telling him or her that the grade earned was a 47. Where in the real world will your final product earn you a 47? Where in the real world will you receive feedback on your performance or your final product? A number grade might come as a secondary form of evaluation, but the feedback is something that can be used to improve on. While I don’t know what my school’s policy will be on grading, I hope that I will be able to incorporate a lot of feedback into my grading system so that students have a better idea of where they stand in my classroom.

MI Chapter 12

This chapter takes the multiple intelligences to another level by showing how they can be used to help students think. As the chapter suggests, what students think about is not as important as how they are thinking. Using the multiple intelligences, we as teachers can push their thinking further using them to enhance their memory skills and other cognitive approaches. For example, if a student is struggling to remember a fact, concept, or skill, then they might just need another method to learn it. If reciting it multiple times doesn’t work, then maybe they need to draw a picture of it. This same idea can be applied to other areas that the student struggles with. Using the strategies of multiple intelligences can help students to increase their strengths. It can also help to push their thinking into new realms and levels that they had not previously encountered. I am in favor of using multiple ways to help students memorize information, and I think I will use it when I teach vocabulary and other similar topics. A former teacher of mine uses a graphic organizer for vocabulary words that asks students to define words, find synonyms, and draw pictures, all in one assignment, so I know that it is possible to incorporate multiple strategies into the classroom without dedicating hours of class time to one idea. I would also like to use the multiple intelligences to push students past the boundaries of their thinking so that they can really get into the depths of understanding.

FIAE Chapter 11

The first concern in this chapter is whether to give students a zero or a sixty for incomplete work. The argument for giving a sixty is strong, suggesting that a sixty provides a better understanding of the student’s mastery, while a zero does not. This makes a lot of sense and does not seem as though you are rewarding students for doing nothing, but I think it applies to specific cases only. A student who never does any of the work should not receive a sixty for every assignment just because he or she did not feel like doing it. If it were a once in a while, occasional occurrence, then I certainly see the benefit. But a student who receives only sixties for everything should not be. Students that do not do any of the work should instead receive “Incomplete” for each assignment, that way they are not being given a grade for something they did not do and also not showing any kind of mastery for something they did not do. Another issue that this chapter deals with is whether to grade gifted students differently and how to do so. I really like the idea of teachers providing supplemental information on a student’s progress that gives more detail than just a letter or number grade. It helps to show exactly how a student is making progress and what kind of progress he/she is making. Many parents/guardians do not know what goes on in a classroom, so they see a number or letter grade but do not know what that number or letter means. The idea of taking off a full letter grade for late work is one that I don’t agree with. I think late work should be dealt with on a case by case basis that has a general policy the teacher refers to, but I do not think that a complete letter grade should be dropped for every day that it is late. This causes some students to stress over turning an assignment in on time when it is incredibly difficult for them to do it due to some personal reason, but they do not want to lose a complete letter grade.