FAIE Chapters 11-14

All four of these chapters provided very useful insight to the grading process and policy that I may not have considered had I not read them.  For example, I always thought that a zero was a zero and that it had the same effect in the gradebook as any other failing grade, because an F is an F.  Maybe I thought this because I’m simply not a math person and my brain just doesn’t think in terms of averages and numbers and all that, or because I had so many teachers that said an incomplete assignment equaled a zero.  I thought that giving a zero for a missing assignment made sense because zero stands for nothing: there was no assignment handed in.  BUT, after reading Chapter 11 I can totally see how giving a zero for an incomplete assignment could really mess up a kid’s final grade and skew his level of mastery.  In my classroom, I won’t give out zeros for this reason—grades should always indicate mastery, otherwise the evaluation we give our students is inaccurate.  I do, however, feel that including comments on report cards is extremely necessary, because it is important to take things like effort, timeliness, and completion rate into consideration.  If a student knows that homework isn’t graded in any way shape or form, they are less likely to take it seriously.  For this reason, I will include a separate grading criteria beyond mastery when I am assessing my students.  I will also try to use a smaller grading scale whenever possible, as suggested in Chapter 12, because it is more useful and can provide better feedback.  In terms of the different types of gradebook formats presented in Chapter 13, I personally liked the format that grades according to standards.  Not only are standards becoming more prominent in schools, I think that this format allows more specificity to student mastery and are therefore more useful, insightful, and less subjective than categorizing mastery based on assessment type.  Of course, I understand that this format will not work all the time, and it is important to be flexible and tailor gradebook formats to student needs and course objectives. (I also really liked the topics-based gradebook approach because it connects topic to assignments and is quite specific.)  In terms of report card formats, I simply couldn’t decide which I liked best; I think it will depend on my students and the school I am teaching in.