FIAE+B1+Chapter+14

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Seth
Report cards are report cards. Students dread them, parents always seem to get upset about them and they are a pain for teachers to put out, yet they are one of the most important pieces of paper (aside from a diploma) that students get during their schooling career. I’ll be quite honest when it comes to grading I’m going to be very hard on my students. First off, it’s history so there’s no “scientific method” to follow or any “lab procedures” they have to stick to. Tests, homework, groupwork, and class participation; do well in those and you will do well in my class. Like I’ve been telling others since I decided to major in secondary education, if my students can’t pass my high school level class, they will have a very hard time in college/outside of high school. I’m honestly tired of reading about point curves and giving your students a break every now and then. It’s nice //once// and a while, but not all the time because they’re just going to take advantage of you, I know I would. Surely progress reports would be sent out if a student was receiving a poor grade but if you don’t hear from me, don’t worry. No news is good news, right?

**Casey**
In chapter fourteen I really enjoyed the paragraph about dual approach to report cards. This dealt with grading your students on how far they have come along and improved. Along with this, their actual grades according to the standards of their education. I think it is very important that the student is rewarded for improving because students should not work incredibly hard to improve and then just see a mediocre grade because they are not as smart as everyone else. They should be graded on some sort of personal level as well and I feel as if it is important to incorporate this into their report card.

**Max**
I know how nervous I was when report cards were coming around the corner, even if I knew I was doing well in school so I can relate to the students about them. It is hard when a student who doesn’t normally do bad, gets a low grade. It can really affect a student’s self confidence. But if you get bad grades you have to deal with them and move on. Putting grades on a report card becomes hard when students come close but fall short. Do you give them an extra point or two so they can do better or do you give them what they deserve? It all comes down to effort for me. If the student tried hard to get a C+ and they really want a B- then I think I would be alright with letting it slide but if some kid just showed up and didn’t care and slid through to get a B+ and he/she wanted an A, I might be less likely to give him/her a few extra points.

Brody
In the fourteenth chapter of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal//, Wormeli discusses what differentiation should look like when reporting grades to parents and students on a report card. Wormeli raised the concern about the dichotomy between grading based off of mastery of the standards or grading based off of student progress throughout the year. Neither is as mutually exclusive as they seem however. Reporting mastery and progress can be achieved using the dual approach discussed in this chapter. In this approach, one symbol is used for where the student stands against the standards, A, B, C, D, F, and another symbol is used to record personal progress, 1, 2, 3. While this would be beneficial, I wonder if it would realistically be possible. Restructuring the formatting of report cards seems like more of a job for administration than for a teacher. I would be more than willing to bring reporting issues up in conversation, but I’m unsure if I would be allowed to use different grades than other teachers. If it did not pan out however, I could always provide supplemental information where I could comment on both personal progress and mastery.

**Mike**
This chapter talked about report cards and what they actually mean for a student. Report cards do not show a student's progression through the semester to the max. Report cards are more helpfully for parents to have so they can have an idea of how their child is doing. Having a comment section on a report card at the earliest grade possible is excellent because in a way the teacher can give feedback to not only parents or a student on how their child is doing in the classroom instead of just simply putting a letter on their report card. I think if a parent wanted to know how their child was doing or how their child is progressing as a student in that classroom then they are better off talking to the teacher firsthand. If a parent or student met with the teacher at first hand then they can always get a better idea of what their child or the student need to improve upon in order to increase their grade to something more desirable. As a teacher, I would like the parents to be better informed about my syllabus,so they can have a more of an idea of what their child is being graded on rather than relying on a report card that is not very detailed.

Lily
Chapter 14: Chapter 14 deals with report cards and how the students take them. I agree with the dual approach to report cards because it is hard to truly give one grade to a student at the end of a semester. Although students do need to meet standards they should still get recognized when they are making improvements. A comment section is a great idea because it is a place that teachers can dedicate an explanation for the reasoning behind a grade. An example would be a student getting a C and although that may not look good they started at a D and are making improvements! I do think that sticking with A,B.C,D and F is a smart system.

Kaitlyn Bartlett
Chapter 14 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal talked about report cards and how students see them. As a student in high school, I was always nervous/ excited to see my grades when they came out every quarter. If I didn’t do as well as I thought I had done, the day just never seemed to go any better. In this chapter, I like the grading with a symbol idea. I have never heard of this and it made me think about how we could help students more. It would allow student to know how teachers feel like they are doing, even if their grade isn’t what they expected it to be. Along with the symbol, I really like the leaving a comment part on a report card. I feel like it would show that we care and want to recognize how far students have come rather than just giving them a grade.

Jen
I have always wondered why report cards just had simply a letter grade and did not have the format they did when we were younger, say in middle school where there was a specific area for comments from each teacher. That I think would be helpful to students because they would see along with their parents what they need to improve on. To parents, it's been awhile since they were in school. Trying to evaluate exactly how their child is doing in school based off of seeing a letter in school is difficult. Especially, because what was considered a C to them has completely changed it's meaning now in today's education system. I feel like comments would provide the parents an understanding of their child's mastery of the topic and what they need to work on, especially if it's that the child knows the content but does not hand in the assignments than that is essential that the parent knows that it's not that the student needs additional help on the content but that their attention needs to be focused more on getting things in on time.

Brittany
It is sad but true, teachers are, or should, be mostly concerned with how much their students are learning but parents are more concerned with how their child compares with other children their age. Not to say that parents do not care how far their child has personally come in the past year or so, they are, but for a long time that was not what colleges looked at when they thought about accepting a student into their program. Thankfully, that is beginning to change as colleges has students write essays about themselves and list other achievements and activities that a student has or participates in. So as the focus in education is slowly changing, why do report cards still only report one grade for a student’s entire time in a class? There is no simple answer for that question but perhaps there will be a day when a report card shows a student’s progress as well as how well they are doing compared to other students their age.

Kim
The main point this chapter is trying to get across is that most report cards, as they are used currently, are ineffective. Report cards should be more than just a printout of the final grades for a term. Parents and students need to see what is really going on in the classroom and since most parents are unable to or choose not to be involved in their child’s academic life, they only see the report card two to four times a year. The information presented on the standard report card are not accurate indicators of the rest of the year. I hope that the school(s) I teach at does not use the basic report card and/or allows me to include an additional sheet that gives more information on the student’s progress through the standards or whatever method is being used. What I need to keep in mind is that parents do not fully understand the way the classroom is run, so they need as much information as frequently as possible that will help them to see their student’s progress. I think finding a way to incorporate as many different methods for presenting the information is probably the best way to construct a report card, but it is also the most time consuming, and teachers and other administration just do not have the time to put into a report such as that. Starting a process that would present all of the information is daunting, but if you are able to keep up with it, especially using an online gradebook would be incredibly beneficial for all parties. === ===

Jasmyn ====== Chapter 13 focuses on grade books. I not sure we needed a whole chapter on it, but what I gathered is that the are many types of grade books and some grade books will work for some teachers and some may not. The teacher may find that they need different styles of grade books for different classes. I think that my style of grade book would consist on the assignment, date and grade that reflect the rubrics. Each of the lessons I have created have a rubric so it is not necessary for me to create a grad book that represents understanding levels as well, the rubric will always cover that and it will be formulated into the grade.