Jace Flores Student Teacher Blog

I think there is no thing both kids and parents are sensitive to then grades. It makes sense, after all these little data points control the outcomes these students have in their academic career. Each number put in nudges each kid’s future in one direction or another. So grading is a very important thing that in my experience requires both a formulaic side and a nuanced side to keep things reasonable for what the kids receive. For most assignments the foundation of my approach was to set up a basic formula.

For instance, lets say an assignment is worth 10 points and that assignment had 5 questions. Each question is worth 2 points, and for each question the kid answered adequately they get 2 points. This I found to be simple yet effective enough to be grading ~90 sheets a day. However, nuances are required. Say a kid is SS. Then it is reasonable to not expect all 5 questions to be answered and instead grade them on, say, 2-3 questions (guiding them to which questions are most important of course). Or if there was simply not enough time to reasonably expect the kids to get to all 5, then I would grade on 3-4 questions. There may also be personal modifications. If a kid does not get to all the questions but participated well in a class discussion or warmup, it doesn’t hurt to give them a point or two. Or if a kid is having a bad day, why make their day worse with a 0?

In consultation with Brian, this grading schematic proved to work well in effectively grading the kids based on various factors, with nothing unjustified. If a kid got a 0, I could easily explain why. If a kid got a 10, I could also easily explain why. There were plenty of opportunities for the kids to make up work as well and boost their grade. A low grade was not necessarily final.