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discover your passions.
As you dig into the new grading policies and procedures, take a moment to reflect on what is best practice for students. Here is a thought from teacher Rick Wormelli, a teacher of change for over 20-years.
Responses to Parents About Grading Practices
Parent: Students that don't work as hard will be "rewarded" by being "allowed" to re-take tests and hand in homework late without any consequences.
Rick Wormelli: We need to change the metaphor: Grades are not rewards, affirmation, validation, or compensation. They are communication; that’s it. If we keep them as rewards, students, teachers, and parents all enter a bartering relationship, and that is incompatible with evidence-based grading. Grades are first and foremost an accurate report of what students know and can do against learning targets, not reward for hard work. Grades have nothing to do with reward. The students who re-do work of any sort may not go on with the rest of their lives until the work is done, or at least they will be burdened with it while trying to take the next steps in their lives. They have a series of re-learning and re-assessment experiences to do, and this re-do experience haunts their every moment until it’s re-done. It’s much, much harder to re-do than it is to do it correctly the first time around. In addition, it’s a false assumption that students build moral fiber and respect for deadlines by slapping them with an “F” or a 0” for work not done. This teaches nothing but resentment and cheating. To recover in full from being irresponsible or from not knowing something teaches way more than attaching a label to the earlier poor work. If we don’t let students re-do assignments and assessments, then we’ve turned over their education to their immature selves, and that’s abdicating our responsibilities as teachers.
More at http://www.adams12.org/files/learning_services/Wormeli_Response.pdf
Preview of Grading...