Grading & Assessment

I have really given even more thought to what do grades really mean? Are they an indicator of work given vs work completed? Are they an indicator of correct answers vs incorrect answers? Are they just a number on a scale of 0 to 100? Or do they—or more accurately—should they mean something more?

Having presented for hundreds of people and dozens of school districts, there's nothing that seems to get people riled up more than the concept of the minimum F.

We all know how important comprehension checks are as we are teaching. Without them, we lose guidance on how our lesson is going. Are we going to fast? Are we going too slow? Which students are with us? And which students are lost?

For me, assessing anything boils down to "what can a student DO with what they know?" with the emphasis on DO. So effort and the like have no bearing.

There are a lot of questions on the moreTPRS list regarding various participation systems. This is what I do in my classroom. For me, participation cannot be a graded item. What I mean by that is, that participation, effort, behavior, cannot be calculated into the letter grade of the student.