Bonita, I really liked what you said in your response. I think a completely standards based checklist would be very lengthy. I believe I've been determining each student's effort grade in a similar matter to you. Each student earns their academic way via tests, quizzes, post-it notes, etc. However, when I record a student's effort grade I look over the notes I've taken throughout the trimester and my gut feeling on whether or not that student is putting effort into that assignment. For example, I had a student last year who consistently earned Bs on each of her spelling assignments. Although she did not earn an A in the class, I put recorded her effort grade as a 1 (our highest effort grade) because she put so much effort into earning that B. She worked much harder than some of my students who breezed right through the spelling tests. Is this making sense to anyone? Sometimes I feel like I'm in no man's land with all of you smart teachers out there! I love it when you help a newbie (like me!) out! :) Lisa/IL/5th
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think I get what you are saying, Ann. Unfortunately, benchmarks and standards in reading in our state are not really written in a clear enough manner to determine what, exactly, constitutes an "A", "B" or "C" especially in something so difficult to rank as qualities of reading at a particular grade level. Unfortunately, we do not have a standards checklist as a reporting method in our school district and there seems to be no interest in doing do. So our report card method and the standards as they are written provide little help to us in terms of providing an objective measure of evaluating a reader at a particular grade level, nor in terms of motivating students, nor in terms of communicating with parents. If California did turn the standards into a mastery checklist that would be one awfully extensive report card and it might still be too wiggly to use as measureable. The state would need to be much more defined in terms of what specific differences they are looking for at a given grade level (they look very similar from grade to grade in the reading arena). So I am left wondering what the purpose of our report card really is. We do have fluency benchmarks, but that seems an unfair way to determine an entire reading grade just because fluency happens to be so easy to put a number on. Instead grading could be a ranking system of what fifth graders are doing in my class--but this is also quite subjective and not exactly defining how a child is doing in reading. Hmmm, math is so much easier with all those percent grades (of course as soon as I consider math communication, math gets sticky, too). I guess I could just give comprehension quizzes and use reading comprehension grades--th at would make it much easier on me. But not much closer to the reality of a child's reading in my classroom. Plenty of children answer poorly on a written comprehension test that actually read quite proficiently. I decided, instead, to begin to include effort as part of the reading grade--though I do not use homework nor every reading assignment to determine effort--nor do I let effort determine the whole grade. I do use checklists and assignments and such that align with what I am trying to achieve in reading instruction. What I am looking for ALSO is effort at applying what I am teaching about strategies and reading. Students can get immediate feedback from me on this in most assignments and I see no reason to leave it out of their grade. I felt better about doing this after hearing/reading about the research on effective literacy teachers. In the research they talked about the effective teachers commonly include effort in their achievement grades. Then I felt a little better. If teachers of that caliber are doing it, perhaps I am not all wrong to do it as well (of course, perhaps I misread the research and someone on this list will quickly set me straight:)--I am always open to heari ng it differently). Ideally, I would probably prefer a standards-based mastery checklist to the traditional report cards that my district uses. Then effort could be more easily separated and I could understand why teachers would be comfortable with that separation. In my case, I think effort and achievement need not be so severely separated due to the equally amorphous nature of any alternative that I might choose when trying to grade reading with an A, B, C, N or U. -- Sincerely, Bonita DeAmicis California, Grade 5 > I also forgot to add that effort should never be used in a grade. What state > has a benchmark for effort???? Using your state benchmarks as a guide, you > need > to set up a checklist of skills/strategies, or lists of assignments that > correlate. Teachers need to remember that we are assessing whether or not > students meet our curricular standards which should align to state > benchmarks. > That will help make your classroom planning and assessing clearer. > Ann _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. --------------------------------- Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2ยข/min or less. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org.
