Chapter 14 FIAE: Responsive Report Card Formats

Report cards and progress reports are considered very important to most parents, and also to most students who care about their grades and how they’re doing in school. In this chapter one thing that I really liked and will probably use when I’m a teacher is showing the students personal progress and their achievement against the standard. This way, the student is able to show their parents their own progress as a student in the class, and the parent is able to see how their student measures up to the standard at which I am using to grade them. Number and letter grades can sometimes be daunting, however, if a school or school district says that’s what has to be on the progress report then that’s what has to go on there. It is always nice to add comments to the grade, that way it could possibly answer any questions the parents might have.

Chapter 13 FIAE: Gradebook Formats for the Differentiated Classroom

Obviously when we have grading in the classroom, we’re going to need a place to put those grades. This is where a teacher gradebook comes in. This chapter discussed four particular ways to organize your gradebook. They are: by standard, objective, or benchmark, by weight or category, by date, or by topic. Since I’m a particularly organized person with a slight case of OCD, I will most likely sort my gradebook by date in which the assignments were assigned, the date that the tests were given, and the date that the projects were assigned. I feel like I will most likely have multiple sources in which I use to remind myself of the assignments that are out without grades, and then just use the gradebook for the final result of my students.

Chapter 12 FIAE: Grading Scales

This chapter focused on the different grading scales you can use in your classroom. It focused mainly on the 4.0 grading scale, and the 100 grading scale. It offers both pros and cons to each. However, one thing that is really obvious to help grading by creating a rubric. It says that “In order to create objective, accurate grades, then, we should use a rubric in the majority of our assessments” (153). As a student, the grading scale was something that was always changing. It was infuriating that they grading scale for one class was different from another, and that it was different from the schools grading scale as a whole. I understand that the grading scale for the school is set, however, in my classroom I definitely like the idea of using a rubric to grade, and then using that to create a number grade. The story about a kid missing an A by less than half a point is a little ridiculous, if the kid is working and showing improvement, then they should be given the less than a half a point to get the A. The grades should always be to the teachers discretion, and should not always just rely on the numbers.

Chapter 11 FIAE: Six Burning Grading Issues

Grading is most definitely one of the most challenging things about teaching. The one pressing issue that really stood out to me in this chapter was the question “Do I keep the zero or turn it into a sixty in order to make the grading scale fair?” (137). This is a very important question, and it will be something that I’m faced with in the classroom. There are going to be those students who don’t do their homework, or turn in their project, or just don’t participate at all. As a former middle and high school student, and a future middle and high school teacher, I am quite aware that sometimes life just gets in the way of things being turned in at a timely matter. I like the idea of putting an Incomplete in my grade book for homework that has not been turned in. That way the students will have until the end of the grading period to give me their work. If and when the students don’t turn in their work then I will most likely give them a 60, not a zero.