Overall
Students are having a hard time understanding that the homework doesn’t affect their grade as directly as they’re accustomed to seeing. However, a good number of students are repeatedly asking to redo assignments for better grades. They genuinely want to improve and learn. The grading has a few nebulous difficulties I will describe in detail below, but overall, I am very pleased with the whole thing.
Behavior/Classroom management
Since this is a particularly spunky group of students, it is difficult to determine the effect this system has on discipline. I am hopeful that as the year progresses, the general energy will keep the class interesting as passion is always good thing. The routine of checking for returned papers, recording them in the folder, and updating the journal does work well. It sets a nice tone for the rest of the class period. I hope that this will allow me to review throughout the year and eliminate the need of such large overall review days, particularly at the end of semester.
Grade book
Using the 5-4-3-2-1 system is fantastic in the grade book. I can open my grade book and at a glance tell you who’s struggling and on what. Since I am still making new handouts and coming up with new ideas, my paper grade book and the online versions are chunked only by broad standards. The students’ personal checklist is organized into smaller sub-standards as well. Since I did not know how many assignments I would give on a topic, I did not know how much space to leave in my paper grade book for a particular sub-standard and I do not know how to tell the online versions to do something similar. I was excited to figure out how to get the online version to do larger standards.
Grading
One difficulty that I have encountered is determining the difference between the various levels. Sometimes it is difficult to determine if something is a 2 or a 3. As I cement my curriculum, I will have to come up with specific examples of what a 2 looks like, what a 3 looks like, etc, both for the students and myself. Thus far, I have tried to be conscious of consistency but it is the same difficulty that arises with points. In general, thus far, it is instinctive. Chemistry is fairly black and white most of the time but I do create rubrics for all summative assessments to keep myself honest and to make sure the students are clear on why they earned a particular score.
Final thoughts
This entire process has been wonderfully introspective. It shows quite plainly how many times I assess a particular standard and gives me concrete evidence of progress or lack thereof. Formative assessments also allow me to record things like teacher-student conferences in the grade book as well, as that is valuable information as to a student’s progress and desire to improve. I’ve noticed that I don’t assess all standards equally and I don’t provide near enough feedback for students. I have strived to improve this but I need to come up with a way to provide more than just worksheets. Currently I am going crazy trying to grade everything but that is not terribly different than last year. With the mastery system, the students should have work returned to them fairly quickly so they can see the developing pattern or progress or stagnation. Perhaps, I can have a day where I can give the student a score on a problem they work with me to go in their folder. It is all still a work in progress, but overall, I am very pleased. The first assessment comes next week and that will be make-or-break time.
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