Assessments and Grading

July Blogging Challenge Day 16

I am in the beginning stages of planning for the upcoming school year and one of the things I want to work on is the way I assess and grade students.  So to satisfy my goal of blogging every day in July (already missed 2 oops) I'm going to write a little about some of the things I've been reading and thinking about.
Then to make things even easier for me, the #eduRead article this week was all about grading and quizzing and was awesome!  Check this out now: Why I Stopped Putting Grades on Papers

What I really liked and took away from the article is that I don't have to go full out with SBG and can just work with the quizzes to start and its a way to get my feet wet.  I also love the idea of not putting the grades on the quizzes.  This is more about mindset then sbg, which is another thing I am focusing on in my classroom this year.
So here is what I'm thinking about -making my list of skills and using quizzes and other formative assessments for students to work towards.  I am hoping to not use a ton of paper/pencil quizzes for these formatives and hopefully use conferencing a lot more as in math workshop.  I am not going to use unit or chapter tests, only the 4 benchmark tests that I am required to give.
What I'm not sure about is what I'm putting in my gradebook.  I will use the benchmark as a test grade and since they fall a few weeks before the end of each marking period I can have a retest day on the learning goals that were not mastered.  But I can't just have a test grade as the only grade I give.  I hate the idea of grading homework, 1) this should be practice only 2) its a pain to grade! 3) it can be easily copied, but I know that if I don't my kids won't do it.
I like what I read (I think) on  Jason Buell's blog http://alwaysformative.blogspot.com/p/standards-based-grading-implementation.html  (which is an awesome resource no matter what!!) such as assigning the academic work formatives and summatives 90% of the grade and behaviors homework, notebook check 10%  I can see that working for me.  Then do I wonder if I should give the summatives/formatives different weights or use a points scale which I've never done before.
What I need to work on is how to enter a grade for the formatives (that I'm not putting grades on for the students)   I've seen entering the median score but then again I'm not 100% sure I'm going to use a 1-4 scale. Or just grading them out of 100 and letting students and parents know that it can change often as mastery is obtained.

Back to my list of skills, I took a look at the Parcc website and was wondering why I couldn't use a variation of the PLDs?  It seems like everything is just laid out, why not use it?

Wow made my challenge goal for the day with 30 minutes to spare!