Quick Thoughts on Grading

Published: 2023-09-13 7:58 PM

Category: Assessment | Tags: grading, assessment, reporting, scores, grades

Today was the first day I put standards grades into my gradebook. We took our unit test yesterday and I've generally waited until about then to put zeroes in the gradebook. This is always a shock to students because those standard assignments are only 1 point but they weigh 80% of the overall grade. So, this early in the semester, one missing standard can drop you 15% or 16% easily.

I'm thinking about grading schemes and, more importantly, how to communicate progress to students before scores go in. There are a few things I'm going to try different with this next chapter:

1. More references to their outcomes tracker. I'm updating that regularly and as much as I don't want them to have to go to another site, it's really the best way for them to keep an eye on standards-aligned feedback for everything they do.
2. Paper/pencil tracking of feedback will go into their notebooks. More on that in my last post.
3. Scores for proficient standards will go in before test date so only unmet standards will be blanks (or turned to zeroes) after that test attempt.
4. A better way to communicate overall test results to students. With this one, they had to look at a given standard across multiple questions and it led to some ambiguity about they actually did. A common example was a standard in one question being marked "proficient" while the same standard was "needs work" on a different question. Are they proficient or not? Or is it an average of the two?

Ambiguous.

Grades are motivating to students, but not in the way I want them to be. Grades are a means to an end - if they get good grades, they can do the other stuff. It's early days, but I'm starting that uphill battle of moving students away from, "How do I change my grade?" to "I need help with this concept."

The same story has played out in the past and I know it'll come back, but these early days of scores going in make it hard to remember that the long game is more important than easing a little bit of pain now.