FIAE+B2+Chapter+7

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Abstract
Grading is a difficult process that many teachers struggle with in the classroom. Too often, teachers grade subjectively, by comparison, or on a percentage or scale. When students receive their graded assignments, there is a single letter that symbolizes all that they have learned. Wormeli points out the many flaws with the grading system that is currently being used in most systems. First, by grading using a percentage or grading scale, teachers risk putting the curriculum over the student. Language barriers, learning disabilities, personal problems can be disregarded if the teacher wants to "stick to what the rubric says" without making exceptions. Conversely, teachers can "favor" students that are a member of a particular sports team or club. To avoid these problems, Wormeli suggest that students should not be graded equally. Formative assessment should be provided throughout the lesson so that the student is concerned with learning, not the grade that he or she is earning. At the end of the lesson, the teacher needs to look at the summative assessment as a demonstration of what the student has learned, or how well he or she has mastered the material. Grades should be a good indicator of the student's learning progress and what he or she has mastered. In the end, however, grades should not be the primary focus: learning should be. If teachers can allow students to relax about grades and worry about authentic learning experiences, the "good" grades that students expect to earn would come with time.

[|Synthesis Jordan]
As students, we never really considered what a [|grade] "means". We all knew that an "A" meant that we were doing well, "B" mean that we are still doing good, but there is room for improvement, and so on. Whenever getting an assignment back, a student's initial though is never "I wonder if my teacher realized how much I knew on... (pick your favorite topic)". Instead, students wonder if we have "earned" the grade that was anticipated for the assignment. Mastery is never the [|goal] of the student: the grade is. Many of us feel that grades are necessary (to mark progress), yet inconsistent. What all of us struggle to see is that no matter what our position on grades are, we are going to have to confront our fears and deal with [|grading students appropriately]. In order to do so, we need to provide formative assessments throughout the learning process so that the student is not focused on getting an "A" and is more interested in the final learning outcome. Grading should be focused on a student's mastery and his or her progress within the mastery of the content. Setting another student as a benchmark is simply unacceptable. It is inconsistent and discourages students from doing their personal best. We need to be consistent and demonstrate to students through feedback what they have learned and what they may need to continue developing. No student is going to walk away from a lesson really understanding what they could have improved if they only have a "C" and a[| frowny-face] written at the top of their paper. Grading practices, ethics and common sense are one in the same here: not everyone learns equally, so their grading does not need to be determined equally.

Kirsten
I had never put too much thought into the grades I received in school beyond, "Is it an A?" And then maybe why it wasn't an A, if I had received something lower. It had never ocurred to me how truly arbitrary grades were and how focused students can be. Often times, everything hinges on these little letters, like if you get to participate in sports or other extracirriculars, if you get the 100 bucks from grandma at the end of the quarter, or if you move on to the next grade level. Wormeli gives a good deal of insight regarding how teachers and administrators ought to approach grades. The biggest message was that we need to be consistent and that everyone ought to agree what makes an A, B, C, etc. Grades should be based on content and what the student knows, not what the student knows in comparison to other students, because it's really unfair to make comparisons. I agree that there needs to be a sort of universal idea of what makes what kind of grade, at least from department to department in a school (though it would be great if it really were universal--or if we didn't give grades at all).

Jordan
In this chapter, the discussion of grading practices resurfaces. Wormeli exposes to the reader that grading ethics become complex quickly through reading a student sample and having us grade it. Variables tend to affect how a teacher grades an assignment and much of the time there is question to whether or not the grade is a good representation of what the student learned. If teachers choose neglect a certain student’s situation (such as a language barrier), they are putting the curriculum above the students. Inversely, if teachers alter expectations to benefit the student, the student is then above the curriculum. We need to remember that grading is a multidimensional process and that the same routine is not going to work for every student. Some students take longer to perform the same tasks; some students need to work with information for a longer period of time before gaining a true understanding, while others need consistent feedback to understand their areas of improvement. If we grade our students equally, the grade is unauthentic and inaccurate. So frequently have teachers become complacent with grades that students see them as a burden, not as a measure of their success and achievements. Grades need to measure what a student has learned, not how they performed in their learning process and how long it took them to achieve an understanding. As a teacher, I am going to try and work hard to work towards good ethics in grading in the classroom that evaluate the learning of the students, not outside factors.

Ryan Snowman
Grading is an extremely difficult and sometimes controversial part of a teacher’s job. What defines a grade? Does an ‘A’ really constitute mastery? What happens if a student is great in class, but does not do the homework. Should they get an ‘F?’ Grading, it seems, poses more questions than it answers. I think what Wormeli is trying to say is that grading is on shaky ground. Obviously, teachers must give grades to appease school policy, but does that one letter or number really show everything that the student had done all semester? I don’t think so. This is why it is good to keep portfolios of student work, and very necessary to have many pieces of evidence to assess. Wormeli writes that “Students need feedback and lots of it, but grades are not the best form of feedback” (p. 100). I agree. Grades are final, and when a student sees a grade, good or bad, they will not want to learn further. That is why teachers must give lots of feedback and let students make revisions before handing them a grade

Mykayla
All of these chapters about grading irritate me slightly. I mean if giving an A, B, C, etc. is so bad why are we using that system? The part that irritates me the most is that no “good” grading system is mentioned. They all say that grading is subjective and that is not right. I can see where they are coming from that grading shouldn’t focus on the other aspects, like participation or how well a student writes, but I feel grades are necessary. I know almost every student in my high school based how well he or she knew the material on what grade he or she received. Students, parents, and teachers alike have been using grades to express knowledge. If that’s not the best way to covey this information, what is?

Leah
As with the MI book the UBD book Wormeli suggest that good communication and formative as opposed to summative assessments make the difference between judging and assessing students mastery and ability. Wormeli relates more common threads to the UbD and MI book by stating that grading should be adjusted according to students needs. As teachers we serve as guides to the material we are presenting, it is necessary for us to provide feedback along with charting progress. I'm afraid to let myself long for a school that allows a grade free classroom because I know it is highly unlikely that I will be hired at one. I think it would be very important to develop intrinsic motivation for learning. What I can do to adjust the grading system to meet my student's needs is to offer notes on each evalutation.

Ryan
Chapter seven discusses how teachers should grade and what are the disadvantages to the specific ways of grading. The topic of grading relates to what has been discussed in //Multiple Intelligences// and in //Integrating//. This chapter discusses how grading on letter doesn’t allow teachers understand how much their students have comprehended. More importantly this chapter really stresses the importance of self-evaluating students and giving feedback in order to allow for students to show understanding of material. However, I have always felt that grades allow student to set goals and strive to do their absolute best. Also, the book never gives an example of “good” grading and because of this I feel as teachers we need to test our students into multiple ways in order to see if they understand. I will have to come up with more ideas in order to figure out what is the perfect way to grade my students.

Brittany
It has been established that grades are used as indicators of each student’s comprehension of the material. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong! Getting a clear indication of a student’s progress across the board is difficult because each teacher grades in a different manner and has different standards. In a differentiated classroom, it is very likely that the grading system will not be consistent throughout the whole class. This is because the teachers take into account the needs of each student. Teachers have to be careful not to let differentiation allude to the idea that the student comprehends the material when he or she does not. This can lead to problems later in schooling when teachers are under the impression that the student has comprehension of the past material because of a good grade. The reality in this may be that the student does not really understand the material, but the teacher, for some differentiating reason, gave the student a grade he or she did not achieve. As a future teacher, I want to work with my students to find resolve any grading issues and find a system that accurately reflects their learning.

Jennie
This chapter is an overview of what grades are and how to grade. Some of these things we have talked about in class. For example, the section on the essay about DNA is telling us that we have to be specific when it comes to our rubrics and what we want when we are going to grade things. If you aren't specific, a student could turn in something that is very scattered or possible not even on what the paper or project is supposed to be on. I've had the parents who look at a C and say, "What happened?" I've always gotten As and Bs all through school, but the only time my parents say "What happened?" if I get a C, is if they know I didn't really try. Some times a C is what the best a student can do. I had one class that was very challenging and I got a C in it all the way through. But I worked hard for that C. I feel like an A or a B doesn't tell whether you master something or not. If you do your best and improve as much as you can then that's when the student has mastered the topic. I'd like to try and have this be what happens in my classroom.

Rachel
Students learn so much (hopefully) in one lesson or unit. How can all this learning be assessed with one letter? By doing this, teachers look at all the understanding that students have done, group it together, and give it a rating. No matter how good or bad the grade is, it does not ensure that the student has a firm grasp on each concept. This is why formative assessment is much better than summative, because it evaluates each piece of understanding that a student covers while they are learning it. Is the grading even consistent? What is the difference between a check and a check plus? As a teacher, I don’t want to feel like I am grading my students because I have to.

Sarah
This chapter really made me think about the grading systems I have encountered in the past. When I was in primary school, everything was on a "check plus", "check", and "check minus" scale. In elementary school, it was a 1-4 scale (1 being the worst, 4 being the best) and when I reached middle school and high school, I was introduced to letter grades where an A was a 100-93, a B was 92-85, a C was 84-78 and a D was a 77-70. Then when I hit college, everything remained on the A, B, C, D, F scale, but now the percent values differ with an A being 100-90, a B being 89-80, a C being 79-70 and a D being a 69-60 (a ten point difference from high school on what constitutes a passing grade!). Through this reflecting, I realized just how inconsistent grades have been in my life and how varied the grading system was just from class to class. I feel that this must be incredibly aggravating for students so I have decided to take as much action as I personally can. I pledge to grade my students on the same scale for all assignments (or make an equivalence chart if I need to use a different scale).

Tim
This chapter was all about grading and how grading in our society has turned into just a letter. The letter, whether it is a C or an A, does nothing to show the students mastery, progress or comprehension in a class. The book also showed a teacher in the UK who does not use grades but only assesses her student’s homework on a nightly basis giving her a better idea of where her students are in the curriculum. The book also talks about feedback, and how a teacher should not put something like a frowny face next to a bad grade. Feedback is supposed to be positive and constructive, not negative towards the student. The chapter also really stresses the importance of progressively checking up on a student as the unit presses forth. This chapter made me a little nervous about my ability to present a grade to the student while simultaneously attempting to monitor his or her progress throughout the unit, it seems like a difficult thing to do. But the chapter did open my eyes a little bit more too how grading has turned into just a letter, and how teachers should refrain from supplying students with nothing but Bs and As.

Cara
When I was in high school, I focused on the letter grade for my work a lot. The letter itself does not tell how much understanding a student has for the material. Of course, grades are needed in our high schools, but teachers need to think of different ways to assess their students learning instead of simply putting a letter or number beside their name. It is important to give feedback frequently to students to help ensure them of their understanding and to help me as the teacher know where the student is struggling. I will also learn how to help the student sooner if I am constantly giving them feedback. Grading should also be consistent. I should not use percentages for one assignment, a 1-4 scale for another, and then a simple letter grade for another. 

Corinne
In this chapter, Wormeli discusses how to give grades meaning. It is argued that letter and number grades in many systems do not accurately describe mastery or what students know, and that too much emphasis is put on grades. There were two major points in this chapter that I found particularly interesting. The first in the results of a test that Wormeli quoted, that was taken of A and B students at an impoverished school. It turns out that they tested the same as C and D students at an affluent school. These schools are help to the same state learning standards so why is this? Wormeli claims that it could be because the teachers of the impoverished school have lower expectations. This is unacceptable, it discriminates upon students based on their socioeconomic status.This is no basis for lowering the level of education that is available to students. Another problem offered up by Wormeli is the idea of a "passing grade". If a student gets by with a D, the lowest grade they need to move on the the next level, and they do move on. This student does not have mastery of that first level and so do not have the skills to succeed in the next level. That is the flaw with the system, when we allow students who have not built the skills set forth in the course, to leave without meeting the standards.

Scott
Grading is an aspect of teaching that many teachers do not like to address. Summative grades have little use in helping students expand their learning. When we put a student's grade into a symbol it is immensely over simplifying how much a student knows and what we teach. When we grade things we need to actually define for ourselves what each grade means. There are so many variables that go into coming up with a single grade. This is the reason why we like to assess using portfolios and other summarizing methods so as to have a clearer picture of what the student actually knows. The chapter stresses the importance of self-evaluation as a better means of assessment.

Drew
This chapter covers the fine world of the "letter grade". The letter grade is no more than a symbol: it does not dictate a students mastery or understanding of the curriculum you teach. While a student might be maintaining an "A" letter grade in a class, whether they truly understand the material is a completely other topic. Grades can not be completely scrapped, however, the teacher (or future teacher) can take into consideration the way they assess students in order to check for understanding and mastery. As a current student, I know I have personally taken advantage of the system. During summative assessments, I would cram the night before to get a resulting high grade. However, I know now that I took little if anything from the experience. Unfortunately, I did not realize it much until practicum but, my attempts at information retention were so short term in high school that I barely mastered anything outside of my personal interests. As a teacher, I plan on developing my own unique way to catch whether a student understands or whether a student crams. Of course, I will be fair and before a summative assessment I will let them know that cramming for the test will be fruitless.