What types of practices “distort” grades?

Well, we’ve made it. This is the 6th and final personal reflection of last week’s #mschat in regards to grading. I have to say it’s the first time that I’ve spent an entire week thinking about one conversation. It has allowed me to reflect about it from a multitude of perspectives. I’m realizing now that I […]

Should behaviors be included a grade? Why or Why not?

This post is the fourth in a series of reflection posts from last week’s #mschat on Twitter. When the fourth question came up in #mschat, I immediately rushed to the conclusion that the ‘behaviors’ in question were negative ones. Behaviors such as yelling, disruption of other students’ work, falling asleep, defiance, aggression and/or anger towards […]

What is the Role of Summative Assessment with regard to grading?

Before I start with my reflection today I want to begin with a comparison from Carnegie Mellon University Eberly School for Education’s definition of summative assessment. I’m putting this at the top of this post for anyone to refer back to and compare some of my thoughts and Twitter posts by #mschat participants. Why Carnegie […]

What is the role of formative assessment with regard to grading?

My reflection on #MSchat Question 2: So yesterday I started writing about my expanded thoughts and ideas of #mschat on Twitter thursday night. The chat focused on grading and some of the issues that teachers are forced to think about (but might not always). It was my original intention to write about all six questions in […]

What is the purpose of grading?

Grading has been a hot topic recently. I was in a Twitter chat last night (#mschat) that focused the entire hour on some of the issues and concerns about teacher grading policies. Since my office has construction workers cutting a hole in my exterior wall today, I’m not going to be able to write that […]

Why grading should be about effort.

I’m a big proponent of standards based learning. Having benchmarks for students to reach for is something that instills intrinsic motivation and helps them set goals that are often higher than the ones teachers or parents set. What gets lost in all of this is that each student learns in a slightly different way but teachers are […]