I work for a fairly large district so there's not a whole lot of flexibliliy in how we communicate with parents and students as to progress. I usually have from 90-11 kids per year and I use an online gradebook that the parents and students can access whenever. (It really makes me keep up with grading.)
We are required to send out report cards 4 times a year and interims every 5 weeks. They are computerized and not very flexible as far as comments go. I break out grades as follows: Homework 10% Classwork 10% Lit Log (reader's notebook) 10% Writer's notebook 10% Tests 20% quizzes 10% Projects 30% It's not perfect and I don't use all categories all the time, but it seems to satisfy the kids and their parents. It doesn't address meeting the standards or benchmarks. The district seems to have slowed the movement in that direction. Karen Onyx Carusi Middle School -----Original Message----- From: Bill IVEY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Bcc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 2:00 pm Subject: Re: [LIT] Grading Procedures "A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades." [email protected]> on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 7:36 AM -0500 rote: Wow -that sounds great (at least in theory). I'm not sure what we'd do if the powers that be actually had us do this though. I can't imagine the work load involved with narrative comments for 125 kids every 4.5 weeks. I do like the sound of how you'll be respoding though - it sounds like everyone will get a complete picture of strengths and weaknesses. Hi! 125 kids would be a lot, indeed. My student load is, fortunately, much ower than that. Also, we only send home report cards six times a year. e're feeling good about this format and hoping it works out in practice s well as we think it will in theory. Our work to develop this new system of evaluation actually came out of eading Rick Wormeli's book "Fair is Not Always Equal." As best as I can ell, his take on our system (which he learned about over on the iddleTalk list) is that it looks like it will work well. I think where he nd various other people run into differences of opinion mos frequently is hen teachers have to synthesize all they know about students into a ingle grade, trying to determine what is fair to include in that one ingle indicator of sometimes dozens of different areas of assessment. Take care, ill Ivey toneleigh-Burnham School ______________________________________________ he Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
