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When I was a student I was very excited about grades.  I graduated with 4.3 GPA and was always at the top of my class. I was very pruod when they would post our rankings and test scores because I was always at the top.  Now that I am a teacher I find it much more difficult and understand that my students are so diverse.  Not all students are motivated by the same things.  I find grading very difficult at this young age and with so many English language learners. It can be difficult to assess if the student understands a concept and just doesn't know how to communicate what they know. 

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When I was a student I was very excited about grades.  I graduated with 4.3 GPA and was always at the top of my class. I was very pruod when they would post our rankings and test scores because I was always at the top.  Now that I am a teacher I find it much more difficult and understand that my students are so diverse.  Not all students are motivated by the same things.  I find grading very difficult at this young age and with so many English language learners. It can be difficult to assess if the student understands a concept and just doesn't know how to communicate what they know. 

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Sara Schussler

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It is a hard task to grade my students as many others have written. Students are below grade level and I do not want them to feel that their effort goes unnoticed because they do not get a letter grade. I would like to become a better grader and more creative in ways for them to feel accomplished.
Seanie

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When I think of grading my students, it is with a heavy heart because they are so behind where they should be. This is my first and only year at this school and a majority of the students want to be better so I have spent the majority of the year trying to catch them up to grade level. We do numerous formative assessments while preparing the summative assessment and I am lucky if a majority of students come to school that day. My gradebook is set up that all the Formative assessments count towards 0% and Summative is 100%. If a student has a bad day concentrating or they are absent, then they are sunk

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When I think of grading my students, it is with a heavy heart because they are so behind where they should be. This is my first and only year at this school and a majority of the students want to be better so I have spent the majority of the year trying to catch them up to grade level. We do numerous formative assessments while preparing the summative assessment and I am lucky if a majority of students come to school that day. My gradebook is set up that all the Formative assessments count towards 0% and Summative is 100%. If a student has a bad day concentrating or they are absent, then they are sunk

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When I think of my grading ability I struggle to grade my students as they are all performing two to three grades below their grade. As a special education teacher I do a pretest to see where each of my student is performing at. This helps me to match them with appropriate activities and helps me guide my instruction. I also make sure to provide them with appropriate accommodations that they need. My students need to be retaught multiple times and also practice a number of times before they can master a skill. After this course I plan to align the goals and objectives with assessments.

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When I think of my grading ability I struggle to grade my students as they are all performing two to three grades below their grade. As a special education teacher I do a pretest to see where each of my student is performing at. This helps me to match them with appropriate activities and helps me guide my instruction. I also make sure to provide them with appropriate accommodations that they need. My students need to be retaught multiple times and also practice a number of times before they can master a skill. After this course I plan to align the goals and objectives with assessments.

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Naila Saleem

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As a special education teacher, I have students in my classroom who not only have different learning styles but are at different ability levels. Also, all my students perform below grade level standards and this becomes a challenge for me to grade assignments which does not reflect proficiency on grade level standard. Usually, I would have a rubric for projects but never for classwork assignments. But after reading articles on grading in this module, I would focus on having a rubric for classwork too. This would enable grading classwork assignments to be more accurate, unbiased, and consistent as well as improve feedback to the students.

Uzma Shah

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When I think of my grading ability as a teacher, I think of all of my students and how diverse they all are. They all learn in different ways and I am responsible for teaching all of them the standards. This is difficult and I would like to continue to work on this process as I move forward. One thing I would like to work on is differentiation in projects to assess student learning. I like the idea of project based learning but I need to work on being able to assess my students on the same standards but also make the project at their specific levels. Another thing that I would like to work on is establishing rubrics or some sort of easy, straightforward way to grade work that my students do in groups or at their centers. 

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When I think of my grading ability as a teacher, I think of all of my students and how diverse they all are. They all learn in different ways and I am responsible for teaching all of them the standards. This is difficult and I would like to continue to work on this process as I move forward. One thing I would like to work on is differentiation in projects to assess student learning. I like the idea of project based learning but I need to work on being able to assess my students on the same standards but also make the project at their specific levels. Another thing that I would like to work on is establishing rubrics or some sort of easy, straightforward way to grade work that my students do in groups or at their centers. 

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Violet Colavito

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As a math teacher its easy to fall into the trap of "all or nothing" grading. However I think the rubric I use to grade breaks down a problem into points and then allocates them in accordance to what a student has done. It basically breaks down to: 1 point for an attempt to start a problem, 1 point for a correct initial set up to start the problem, 1 point for a correct step toward solving a problem, and 2 points for the correct solution (for a total of 5 points). A 1 point deduction could be applied for a simple error etc. Its not fancy and I'm sure that many teachers do the smae thing but I'm happy with it and it works for me.

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As a math teacher its easy to fall into the trap of "all or nothing" grading. However I think the rubric I use to grade breaks down a problem into points and then allocates them in accordance to what a student has done. It basically breaks down to: 1 point for an attempt to start a problem, 1 point for a correct initial set up to start the problem, 1 point for a correct step toward solving a problem, and 2 points for the correct solution (for a total of 5 points). A 1 point deduction could be applied for a simple error etc. Its not fancy and I'm sure that many teachers do the smae thing but I'm happy with it and it works for me.

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Winston Wagner

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Growing up, grades were very important to my family.  I think my parents always felt that grades were a true reflection of how smart I was and that determined whether they were proud of me or not. Now that I am an educator I see grading and assessment as something that the district requires and grades schools accordingly. I see so many students who stress over their grades and that makes me sad.  Many students put a lot of pressure on themselves to get straight A's that they end up sick. I feel that grades do give some students an incentive to complete their work, just like money is an incentive for most adults to have a job.  However, I think there is so much more to teaching and evaluations like seeing a student's face light up because they learned something new.  

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Growing up, grades were very important to my family.  I think my parents always felt that grades were a true reflection of how smart I was and that determined whether they were proud of me or not. Now that I am an educator I see grading and assessment as something that the district requires and grades schools accordingly. I see so many students who stress over their grades and that makes me sad.  Many students put a lot of pressure on themselves to get straight A's that they end up sick. I feel that grades do give some students an incentive to complete their work, just like money is an incentive for most adults to have a job.  However, I think there is so much more to teaching and evaluations like seeing a student's face light up because they learned something new.  

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Gina G.

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When you think of your grading ability as a teacher how would you describe it? 

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When you think of your grading ability as a teacher how would you describe it? 

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Mention somethings you'd like to work on in your new post...feel free to upload a video or picture to tell your story ...please add your name at the bottom of your response to earn points.

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My story as a audio clip..you can do the same if you'd like by clicking on the three ...at the bottom for more response options.

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Growing up, I believed that grades told the story of a student. If I was not receiving an A I was not trying hard enough. When I became a teacher, my perception on grades changed. Working with such a diverse group of students, grades do not always correlate to effort. I try and press this with my students, someone's best effort is different than another and I try and make sure my students know that. -Seanie

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Hello I am Sara Schussler, I am a kindergarten teacher.  We give so many assessments in kinder, but most of our assessments are one on one since most of our students can not read or write yet.  We give only a 1 or 2 either meets standard or approaches.  I think this way of grading is very difficult and does not tell much about a kindergartners abilities.  Most of my students really do not connect with their grades so I do not think this system affects their own perceptions of themselves as learners, however it does affect their parents.

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When I was a student, I had this perception that getting an “A” is a symbol of intelligence, success and a key to pleasing parents and teachers. Thus, I would work hard and put in my best effort to attain this goal of scoring perfect grades. However, now that I am an educator, I see grading and assessment as a way to evaluate my student’s performance and learning along with providing feedback on my teaching methods and practices in the classroom. Besides, it is providing feedback to my students too on their achievement and progress.  Uzma Shah

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When I was a student, I stressed about my grades. I wanted to be the best that I could be and to me that was getting A's. I felt like school was something that I was good at and good grades was my reward. I did not like missing school either. I felt like I was behind and like I had missed so much. Now that I am an educator, I see grading an assessments as a tool to help see where my students are. We use many different kinds of assessments and I try to look at the value behind as many of them as I can. I also try to understand days where my students feel overwhelmed by the testing especially with that I teach First Grade and my students are 6 years old.    By Violet Colavito

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When I was a student I was always nervous to take tests and assessments. I always tried to work hard to score A’s in all subjects.  Every time I would not get an A made me sad. Now that I am a teacher we are constantly conducting assessments to drive our instruction. Our assessments should be reflective of the materials the students know. They should not be a source of stress for them. Naila

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To add to our Class Grading Story  click on the box below then begin with finishing the line :                                                                                                                  When I was student...                                                                                                                                                                            Continue by finishing the statement...Now that I am a educator I see grading and assessments as...                                                        See the example below:                                                                                                                                                                          When I was a student I dreamed of sunflowers and books full of dreams I loved reading and reading loved me. I lived through the pages of characters until I met Mrs. Frank who made me hate reading. She was mean and unkind, 4th grade took me into the world of tests. My dreams died as education became a task list instead of mystical characters and endless possibilities.  Now that I am an educator I see grading and assessments as an opportunity to change all the negatives; my failures with Mrs. Thompson in second grade, the unfortunate happenings of Mrs. Frank. I see grading and assessments as opportunities for change to encourage each child to see their best, to find a way to show true talents and strength .

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Growing up as a students I was always nervous when it came time for testing. I felt like, even though I knew the material, I was going to fail the test.  Grades were very important to me, and when I did not get an A I was disappointed.  There were times when I would study really hard and feel confident that I was going to do well, but then when I took the test I did poorly.  I knew that my job as a teacher, when assessing my students, was to create a feeling of success, not failure. Assessment should be for the students to show up what they can do.  Gina G. .

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When I remember back to my high school days I realize that I had no idea what my grades were. They were something that magically appeared at the end of the quarter. Now that I am a teacher and we have advanced enough technology I see that grades should be representative of what a student knows and tell students their current standing in the class.

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I think I have been better at grading myself since I first started college in 1998. College didn't have standardized tests but HighSchool certainly did. I just think that if we have to teach test taking strategies for standardized tests then it doesn't give an accurate snapshot of how much a student knows. I think that qualitative assessments are much more accurate than quantitative ones.