What My Grades Mean...

This may sound obvious, as it pertains to most teachers, but on the outset, my grades mean that a student has either understood what I was trying to teach or has failed to understand the required content. I believe that this is a simple analysis of students grades but a good one. To delve into this concept a little deeper, for me, grades do not always consist of just whether or not student shave understood CONTENT, but also that they have acquired skills that I was aiming at building. School is not just a place where students acquire a bunch of information that they may deem useless to them. In fact, I totally understand why students would believe this notion. Many teachers do not make it clear that school is an integral place for developing the skills necessary to succeed in the real world. Having this mindset, I am able to show students the importance of their grades to their development as a person intellectually as well as socially.

Nitko and Brookhart wrote that “some persons work for concrete, tangible rewards; others work with and for symbolic rewards” (340). Within my classroom, skills are rewarded as well as intellectual knowledge of the content being assessed. Some assignments require that a grade be given, while others are solely used for the purpose of developing social skills needed to succeed in the real world. For example, at the end of the unit on Shakespeare’s Othello, I require of senior students to do two projects, one, a group project, aimed at developing social skills and creativity, the other an individual writing assessment to display their understanding of the play. The group project is graded based on the students skill level at working with other people and being able to present with a group in front of the class, while the writing assessment allows for each individual to display their knowledge of the story itself. Although both parts of the project are graded, the group project allows for me to assess different skills than the individual project thus creating a more complete, holistic view of student progress. Students are aware of this fact as I clearly communicate the different skills being assessed before beginning the two projects.

During a unit, I tend to provide feedback to students through the use of verbal communication. Not ALL assignments are graded. Instead, I use inferences based on student performance to assess the development of certain skills. For example, during a public speaking unit, I communicate immediately following speech rather than grading the students and returning grades to them the following week. Activities within my classroom are also “graded” in this style. Activities are used to show development of understanding but are not always graded. Instead, these forms of assessment are only observed, and allow for me to provide one on one feedback to each student without hindering the progress of the other students in the class. In a way, I have created a “multiple reporting system” as Nitko and Brookhart suggest (346). Students get immediate feedback in the form of words while parents can measure student achievement by reading their child’s quarterly report card.

Following this type of grading style, I am able to determine whether or not students have acquired certain skills that I am teaching. Sometimes, low grades do not necessarily mean a bad thing. Students may have acquired the necessary skill that I had set as a target, but may have failed to understand all of the content. This allows for me to review or re-teach the content but to move on from teaching and assessing the skill being assessed.

Of course, grades are sometimes critical. In the case of my classroom, senior students need English 12 to graduate. Scores become critical in this situation. Therefore, it is important that grades make sense to the students and are quickly reported back to them. For this reason, I have developed a grading system based on points rather than averages. Allotting certain point values to each assignment helps students to see the importance of assignments in relation to other assignments being given. It also allows for students to determine which assignments are more important for them to complete in order to succeed in class. Although, as a teacher, I would hope every assignment would be completed, this is not always the case. The point system allows for criterion-referenced feedback. “When a student understands what a high quality performance looks like, and how his status differs from that high quality, he will be encouraged to put forth greater (or sustained) effort to achieve the standard” (Nitko and Brookhart, 349).

I think that it is important for students to take ownership of his/her achievements and successes. At the same time, it is important for them to see and understand where they could perform better. Grades using the point system and feedback within the classroom allow for them to build this self-preservation skill, a skill that all students should have mastered by the time they graduate high school.