Tag Archives: grading
A Love Letter to Teacher Spouses and Life Partners
Dear Teacher Spouse or Teacher Life Partner,
Remember all the August nights and weekends where we sat in on the floor of our living room, watched rented movies, and cut letters and shapes for my bulletin boards? I don’t remember what was worse: the permanent marker fumes or the blisters you had from cutting construction paper for hours. When we finished, I dragged you up to my classroom so you could staple butcher paper to my walls. You are so much better at it than I am and I’m not just saying that so you’ll do it again next year. Continue reading
Grading and Student Engagement
The personal connection between student and teacher is vital to student achievement. When that personal connection exists, the student is more likely to be engaged in the learning and willing to perform the tasks the teacher sets to achieve lesson objectives.
Look around your classroom at the students who have habitual behavior problems. Are they engaged? Do they complete assignments? Do you think they look forward to class? Do you have a personal connection with the student? Continue reading
Addressing Academic Dishonesty in the Classroom and Through School Culture
For many teachers, the excitement and energy of a new school year are among their favorite aspects of working in education. However, soon this excitement is overshadowed by the business of managing time and balancing competing priorities. Teachers assign papers, projects, and tests, while students become preoccupied with extracurricular and social activities. Competing priorities often collide, and the pressure for keeping up with assignments, studying for tests, and getting “good grades” leads many students to take shortcuts that equate to academic dishonesty.
Research indicates that many of our students are using deceitful methods to complete their school work. A recent poll by commonsensemedia.org found that more than one third of teens admit to cheating with their cell phones and about half admit to using the internet to cheat (http://www.commonsensemedia.org/hi-tech-cheating). Perhaps even more disturbing, about 25% of the students polled do not think that using a cell to get answers for a test isn’t cheating! The results of the 2008 Josephson Institute survey support these statistics. 64% admit to cheating on a test during the previous year and 36% admit to using the internet to plagiarize, yet 93% are satisfied with their personal ethics or character (http://charactercounts.org/programs/reportcard/2008/index.html).
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The Exit Slip as an Informal Assessment Tool
In my class, I often gave out an exit the last five minutes of class. It’s a simple half-sheet of paper with four questions on it for students to answer. I used the exit slip as an informal assessment of what my students learned and what I still needed to teach. The exit slips are quick for students to complete and quick to grade, too. When the bell rang, I stood by the door and asked students to hand them to me on their way out.
As for grading, I looked at three things: 1) complete answers, 2) thoughtful answers, 3) knowledge of the lesson. It’s not a quiz, so I didn’t look for correct answers; I looked for the correct vocabulary and concepts. It’s O.K. for a student not to understand, but my goal was for the student to explain what he didn’t understand using the language from the lesson.
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Do You Grade Class Participation?
Grading class participation or giving students a daily grade is beneficial because these grades hold students accountable for their learning in class. If a student is chronically absent from class or sits in the office for most of the period, her participation grade will suffer. These grades also reward students who come to class and stay on task.
But, grading class participation can be tedious. It’s also tough to make it fair. What makes good class participation and what is just merely warming a desk? Continue reading
Managing the Stack of Ungraded Papers
I have a collection of old student essays that makes me smile. One of those essays is, “Taxidermy Changed My Life,” by Pete. (I am not making that up.) Another gem is from Kevin who wrote about wanting to become a math teacher. Kevin wanted to teach math because he could leave work at 3:30 and be at the country club for a round of golf by 4 p.m.
Kevin didn’t stick around after school long enough to see the lights on at 8 p.m. in his teachers’ classrooms, didn’t watch as the teachers left the buildings with their briefcases full of papers to grade, and didn’t come to school on the weekends when teachers set up labs or planned lessons. Kevin was a smart kid, but he had an inaccurate picture of what a teacher’s workday looks like (and paycheck, too). Continue reading
How Do You Handle Extra Credit?
I’ll be honest. I don’t handle extra credit well. In fact, I’m so lousy at it, I offered just two projects each year. If you’ve ever tried offering extra credit, you know the problems it can cause:
- Students might focus all their energy on the extra credit project and neglect their everyday work.
- Students will ask for extra credit projects the night before grades are due.
- Too much extra credit can skew a student’s grade to the point where you’re not sure if she mastered the material or just knew how to play the game.
- You get slammed with extra credit projects in addition to your end-of-quarter grading and have no time to sleep.
The Pros and Cons of Rubrics
I read on Professor Maryellen Weimer’s excellent higher education teaching blog, The Teaching Professor, a post about a discussion college teachers were having about the pros and cons of using rubrics to grade student products.
It’s an interesting discussion and probably something you and your teaching colleagues have discussed before: do rubrics guide both teacher and student or do they limit student creativity and independent thinking? Continue reading
Here’s What I Do: Zero Papers for Missing Work, Part Two
Hemet, Calif., middle school language arts teacher Syndi Carlson uses a system she calls Zero Papers to encourage students to turn in assignments. Students who have not completed the day’s assignment turn in a piece of paper with the assignment name, the date, the reason they did not complete the work, and their parents’ phone number. Carlson calls parents about the missing work. Continue reading
Posting Homework Online: Is It a Benefit for Students and Parents?
Lexi (named changed) has ADHD. She writes her assignments in her assignment notebook, but she doesn’t come home with all the books and materials she needs to complete her homework. Nearly every night Lexi asks her mother to drive her back to school to collect a missing book or packet.
Some nights Mom spot-checks Lexi’s assignment notebook against the homework the teacher posted online. It helps prevent missing assignments, Mom said. Continue reading
