UbDDI+B2+Chapter+8

Abstract Rachel
Chapter 8 in UdD/DI is about grading and reporting achievement. The authors call grading a two-part process. The first involves assessing students using symbolic letters to evaluate student performance and understanding, and the other purpose is to report these evaluations to parents and students. The author recommends six strategies for reporting grades accurately: 1. Base grades and reports on clearly specified learning goals and performance standards. 2. Use valid evidence for grading 3. Base grading on established criteria, not arbitrary norms. 4. Grades shouldn’t include everything 5. Avoid grading based on averages 6. Focus on achievement and report other factors separately Reporting grades using both differentiation and standards is difficult. The author recommends reporting grades on two or three separate factors: achievement, progress, and work habits.

Synthesis
Many of my classmates talked about the importance of grading and related it to the six guidelines. Grades are used to assess student understanding and performance, but often they are used to grade absences or incomplete work. Many also expressed having questions about teaching in a differentiated classroom. I found this website that is a great resource for offering techniques for grading that are worded in a different way than the book. A lot of my classmates also talked about the importance of grades themselves and how they have had teachers that have had teachers who have ineffective grading techniques and how this can hinder the learning environment.

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Jordan
As Tomlinson and McTighe stated, “grading is a conflicted exercise” (128). Add in scaffolding, tiering assignments, student readiness, interests, and learning profiles, and the degree of complexity intensifies even more. In this chapter, Tomlinson and McTighe offer teachers with six guiding principles for effective grading. Among those, they state that “grades should be based on clearly specific learning goals”, “not everything should be included in grades”, “grades should be based on established criteria, not arbitrary norms”, and “evidence used for grading should be valid”, among others. Teachers need to remember that a grade cannot effectively report all that needs to be said about a student’s learning and the system that is currently being used is problematic. Using an average to represent a grade is misleading because it weighs the assessment for learning and the assessment of learning equally. Instead, students’ grades should be reported in three factors: achievements, progress, and work habits. By acknowledging all three of these components, the “grade” at the end is a more authentic representation of what a student earned. As a student, I would have greatly appreciated a more thoughtful and fair grading system. Though averaging is easy and efficient, it reflects very little of how much is truly learned. As a teacher, I want to reflect my students’ true understanding and in order to do so, a better grading system needs to be in order.

Brittany
Most teachers have used grades for many years in the wrong ways. The purpose of grades is to show a form of evaluation that marks knowledge growth. Grades are used so that there is a standard message that is being sent to all of the parties involved: the teacher, student, parents, and administration. Not all assignments that are completed throughout a course should be graded. Some works should just be used as benchmarks to guide the teacher and student as to where the learning should go from that point. Teachers need to take into account the form of assignment that they are grading and grade accordingly. Not all assignments should be graded the same. In the classroom, I intend to have both graded and non-graded assessments. The assessments that I do grade I want to grade so that the grade is a growing point and not a scary number.

**Leah**
Differentiated instruction seems like an easy concept to grasp and very beneficial, but I myself have asked how will I grade in a differentiated classroom? As with previous chapters Tomlinson and McTighe put emphasis on communicating with students, parents, and fellow teachers. Guiding principles were given to lead effective grading. Grading should be based on clearly defined goals is the first principle. The second principle is that evidence for grading should be valid. I feel that the work we are doing on our rubrics is helping me decipher how to collect proper evidence of learning. Principle three some something that I wish would have been followed in my high school. Many times I felt my teachers were grading in comparison and not to standards which made a lot of students feel the grading was unfair which made a drop in motivation. Like with most things, the principles talk about cutting extrenuating information. To help with this faculty should agree on grading factors. One thing I think will help my future students, will be writing notes when reporting grades on achievement and areas they are struggling in to clarify progress.

Scott
When we are grading and reporting achievement of our students we must balance the desire to encourage and be advocates for the students we teach, and the obligation we feel to meet the perceived dictates of the grade book and report cards. The backwards design model applies just as well to grading as it does to instruction. The first part is to clearly identify the goals and to then make sure that grades reflect how well a student reached those goals. This section also reminds us that the grades should not have on base on arbitrary norms, and that there is no need to include everything in a grade. The actual grades that are given, the ones that count should be based on achievement, other factors can be reported or filed separately. Once we begin using the backwards design model to teach, using is to assess will come naturally.

Mykayla
This whole chapter is about the most effective way to grade in a differentiated classroom. Tomlinson and McTighe talk about how there is no absolutely perfect way to grade in a differentiated setting because it is difficult to grade on knowledge. According to this chapter grades should be solely based on a student’s knowledge of the material and not on the extra factors. I can agree and disagree with this statement. Students should be graded on what they know and not how well they can complete a project. On the other hand, how does one grade what a student knows without some sort of evaluation? I do not understand how to grade my students the best for everyone.

Ryan
This chapter was about grading and reporting achievement on our students. One of the biggest aspects of this chapter is that there is no perfect way of grading in a differentiated classroom. This is because students should be graded on what they know and not on other factors, but this is hard in a differentiated classroom to do. Grading on how well someone does on a project or assignment doesn’t mean that one knows the information and that is why it is important to include some sort of evaluation. This chapter made me a little less stressed about grading because it pointed out that there is no perfect way of grading. I will take this information and try to incorporate some of the ideas into the way I grade. One of these ideas will be incorporating isself-evaluation.

Tim
Chapter eight of UbD/DI was all about grading students in a differentiated classroom. To assure a fair evaluation of the students work, Tomlinson and McTighe focus their grading ideas around six key principals. These principals focus on making sure a student not only gets a letter grade, but also gets a quality evaluation as to why they got the letter grade they did. This chapter also recommends using a multipart approach to grading to help boost a student’s motivation to work for the grades and to help clarify why the student is receiving the grade. This chapter showed to me that there is a plethora of problems with the grading system that is in place today and it NEEDS tweaking. It also made me a little nervous about my ability to grade and implement a good grading structure within my classroom that will be able to evaluate students to the fullest.

Kirsten
Having been one of those students who could attend class, avoid putting too much effort into in and then skate by with an A or B, I honestly have not put much thought into grades or how I could make this whole no effort = good grade scenerio (or the opposite--lots of effort = bad grade). I actually haven't put much thought in //how// to grade, either. It just seemed like something that I would just do, no questions required. Clearly I was wrong. This chapter gives a whole new spin on grading and the reporting of grades and progress. At first I was really disturbed by the idea that we shouldn't factor in things like whether or not work has been turned in with the final grade. After reading further, I understand that the authors feel as though the final grade should tell how much the student has mastered the material being taught, not necessarily their work habits. I also thought the idea that people come up with three different grades for three different parts of learning and participating in class. It brings elementary school report cards to mind. At my elementary school, there were several parts to each subject area which were graded, and things like social skills or turning work in on time were graded seperately. I wish we could continue that into the middle and high school years. I definately think grading systems need to change and we need to allow for students and their parents to see a whole break-down of how each student learns and is in school.

Jennie
This is a concern I, myself, had. How do I grade all of this differentiated material? There were two principles I heartily agreed with. Principle 4 is one of them. Having assessments and grading separate is a really good idea. Assessments should be part of the final grade but to have them part of the smaller grades doesn't make a lot of sense. The assessments are to see where they are so that they can figure out what they need to work on to boost that major final grade. On the same note, principle 6 talks about having things like participation attitude and homework be a separate grade. Keeping these away from the classwork and the project grades is a good idea. This way students can keep their eyes on the project and the rest of it will fall into place. This really helped me see what I need to do when it comes to grading my students.

Ryan Snowman
Grading and reporting achievement can get complicated and confusing, especially for educators who teach responsively. McTighe and Tomlinson write that “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” (p. 129). What this means is that at the end of the day, the grade the student gets is not just based on some test. The learning process is also factored into the grade. They break down the grading system into a two part process. Part one is assigning a grade that represents the teacher’s evaluation of how well the student did in a period of time, and part two is simply reporting the grade. McTighe and Tomlinson also outline six principles for effective grading and reporting. They also believe that three factors should be reported in a grade. Grades for achievement, the progress toward the goal and the student’s work habits should all be evaluated and included in reporting the grade. I agree with what the two authors are writing about in the chapter. One of the principles of the grading and reporting is avoiding grading based on averages. To me, this is very true because this does not teach for mastery or for understanding. If the teachers grades on a bell curve, then the students who fall on the outer portions of the bell curve have not demonstrated any mastery at all.

Rachel
After attempting to write two rubrics and having to discuss how I’ll grade my students, I knew that grading was a complicated process. After reading chapter 8 in Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design, it seems even more complicated. As a teacher, I have to use my knowledge of each individual student to grade him or her. For instance, if I have a student who has a learning disability, I cannot take points away for this uniqueness. If I am grading my students over their understanding of outside influences on health, then I should only grade them over this. I also need to clearly specify how I am going to grade my students at the very beginning, before any grading actually takes place. So many times I’ve gotten my report card back as a student and had no idea how I got the grade I did. This has even happened to me in college. And while a low grade sometimes results from sub par effort on my part, sometimes I feel that my grade is not reflective of the work that I put into a class. As a teacher, I want to set my standards high at the very beginning and spend the rest of the year convincing my students that they can meet my standards.

Drew
The difficulty that comes with grading is no new news to me. Although I am not a teacher, having learned about differentiated instruction has caused a big wrench to get stuck in my gears. This chapter lays out six principles by which to grade and states that it is not only important to give a letter grade but to ensure a quality evaluation for your students. We really should not get caught up in a students work ethic when considering evaluation. The importance comes in the mastery of the material, not how much student work was turned in, not turned in, or eaten by the dog and made late. I've never personally experienced an environment where work ethic was not also a judged part of school. Either my work was turned in late or it was penalized or not accepted. Luckily, I was never late on anything, hence my success in secondary school. But, whether I had mastered the material or not is another story. In some units of classes I got by on homework alone with moderate to low scores on the "evaluation". I plan to consider not judging late work in my classroom.

Sarah
In short, this chapter was about grading. While reading said chapter, I began to wonder what initial notion I had had on grading. I suppose I always saw grades as a way to reward good students and send a "wake up call" to the less-than-good ones. This chapter opened my eyes to just how wrong that was and gave me a lot to think about when revising my own grading system.

Corinne
This chapter discusses the dilemma of grading for the rule book, and assigning a meaningless letter or number to a student at the end of the year to put on a report card and show to their parents. Often times to much effort is placed on making a letter or number grade, and not enough on creating learning and understanding. A student can memorize information just to get a good grade, without really absorbing the material. This method of grading does not really motivate student to understand or master the content. The chapter asks teachers to give grades based on clear goals and performance standards. This way the student needs to understand the content and goals, and the grade becomes almost explained instead of just being assigned. This way, the chapter claims that a teacher can use grades to motivate students to understand the content, instead of discouraging them so that all that is focused on is a meaningless letter or number.

Cara
In this chapter, the practice of simply taking the average of all of a student's grades is looked at as being an ineffective way to grade a student. I can remember a lot of my high school teachers doing this, and I had always thought that it was a little unfair. Work from the beginning of a course should either be graded lighter or not graded at all. The student is still new to the concepts and material and should not have their grade lowered because of this. Teachers worry too much about numeric grades. I recall a teacher in middle school taking point off of students tests for forgetting their name or the date. This should not be something the student is graded on; they should be graded on their understanding of the material. Also, there should be a J-shaped curve rather than a bell-shaped curve (imagine that!). I find this very interesting because a lot of teachers I've had had WANTED to have a bell-shaped curve in their class! As a teacher, I will grade students on their understandings, will grade mostly summative assessments and will try to get a J-shaped curve in my classroom to ensure that all of the students are learning.