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!
