FIAE+B2+Chapter+13

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Tiarra
While many schools now use the internet and grading software such as PowerSchool to record student’s grades, many teachers still keep a book of their own in order to record the data in a way they find most effective. This Chapter of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// gives tips on the advantages of different ways to format a Grade book. As teachers we need to be sure we are recording students achievements not just their grades and one way to effectively do this is to make records based on standards not types of assessment. This also allows teachers to give multiple grades when an assignment addresses multiple standards. One tip I found helpful was that Date listing can help look at student growth but comparisons aren’t always valid, so teachers should color code categories. A topics-based grade book is good for checking mastery of each topic but the final topic score is not always an average of the column scores which makes this method of grading seem unnecessarily difficult. In the end each teacher chooses the format that works best for them and suits the purposes of their students.

Grace K.
In chapter 13, Wormeli writes about utilizing gradebooks in a differentiated classroom and how this can be done in a way that supports our efforts to differentiate instruction and assessment. For one thing, Wormeli suggests using groupings of standards or benchmarks in a gradebook, rather than assignments, tests, etc. In this way, teachers can be sure they are assessing whether a student has met the learning standard, rather than just how well one particular assignment was done. Along this same idea, he also advocates for recording more than one grade for one assignment, if that assignment could theoretically meet two or more standards. This makes sense, particularly in a standards-based environment like the one we will be teaching in. Administrators will be naturally less interested in a grade for a PowerPoint presentation than they would be for a grade related to mastery of the Maine Learning Results for History. Wormeli writes that this strategy could create more work for teachers, but I think this could be combatted if teachers plan their assessments intelligently, and ultimately rely on fewer large assessments that are designed in a way that addresses multiple standards.

Will L.
This chapter was all about how teachers can effectively organize the way they grade students, in order to ensure that they are meeting the required standards rather than just receiving a meaningless grade. This includes making sure that students exhibit some form of mastery in the content area given. One organizational method suggested was using a gradebook to organize all of the assignments and assessments in accordance to those assignments. Although the methods suggested by Wormeli may ultimately create more work to teachers, it will most definitely be better in the end, for both teachers and students.

Danny K.
Chapter 13 covered ways to organize yourself and the way you grade students to make sure your students are learning the material being taught. One tool that should be used is a grade book. Working in practicum at Mt. Blue High School they have a good system called PowerTeacher where you can keep all the grades for your students. While this is a good system I feel you should have a back up grade book because many things can go wrong on a computer system and you do not want to get to the last week of school and all of a sudden lose all of your grades because of a technology breakdown. This chapter talks about a good way of using a grade book; instead of grouping your grades into assignments, quizzes, and tests, you should use groups of standards/benchmarks to see if your students are meeting the learning standards.

Justin C.
When it comes to recording the grades of students, there are many different formats that teachers will take in order to do so. The one format that really stuck out was using a longitudinal approach and recording grades in the order the assignments were given. If eel that this would be a great indicator of how students have grown over time. I feel that this would be the method I would start out using. One twist I would do, though, would be to record homework, tests, quizzes and any other projects all in separate grade books to track growth in each area. Also, I would be able to take a look at homework assignments for a given chapter of the text, and compare the homework to a test/quiz and see if the grades correlated. This could show if students are actually learning or if there are some holes that need to be filled in.

Jonathan B.
Chapter thirteen delves into the nature of the gradebook and how it can be optimized for the differentiated classroom. One of the methods illustrated in the chapter is to group assignments by content area. Another way to set up the gradebook is to group assignments by weight or category (tests, quizzes, homework, etc.). I personally prefer the topic-based gradebook with the individual products listed under each category. This allows me to categorize products into conceptual blocks. Each group-grade could be a rough indicator for understanding and mastery, allowing me to pinpoint content areas students are troubling with. This is a very streamlined and sensible design.

Jen R.
Chapter 13 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal is centered around the appropriate use of grade books in regards to a differentiated classroom. Chapter 13 explains to the reader that grade books should be used to show progression and that teacher’s should avoid aiming focus at any one individual assignment. Throughout the chapter, Wormeli brings to attention a couple different strategies to base a grade book around. The first type of grade book the Wormeli discusses is grouping assignments by standards, objectives, or benchmarks. This strategy allows teachers to clearly show where the student is standing in each section. This way also allows teachers to observe progression over a period of time, rather than basing their understanding off of one particular assignment. The next idea given is grouping assignments by weight or category, I believe that is one of the easiest ways to show a students grades through differentiated classroom because each grade can be shown in any individual way. When used properly, both strategies can be beneficial to teachers and most importantly, the students. Once again, I believe it all depends on the area of concentration and the material being taught.

Grady B.
Before reading this chapter of //FIAE//, I had not given much thought to how the structure of the grade-book would have much of an impact on the experiences of the classroom. However, Wormelli brings up good pints in illustrating that the grade-book should reflect the commitment of the teacher to grade based on content mastery. While I had only ever heard of grading in a chronological manner, the author’s suggestion to group grades thematically would lend itself well to observing a student’s level of mastery in each specific content goal in the class. While a topic-based book would take more effort to maintain, I feel that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, overall. Additionally, structuring a grade-book in this fashion would allow a teacher to efficiently view the entire class’s progress toward specific standards and provide the teacher with clear feedback as to what parts of the unit need more coverage.

Dan B.
This chapter discussed formats that you could use for you grade book. The one that I liked the best was the one where you broke the assignments into different topics. I liked this one because I think that it would make it easier for you to grade your students, and see where they excelled and where they faltered. For example, if you see a student is doing really well on homework, but not on tests it would show you that a student may have test anxiety or a test is not a good way to asses them. If a teacher knows how a student learns best, and how they perform best. This will allow you as a teacher to help a student reach their full potential, which should be the main goal of any teacher.

Chris D.
Chapter 13 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal talks about the four different types of gradebooks a teacher can have. Before this chapter, I had never thought about the fact that there might be more than one type of gradebook, or what type it was. I had always assumed that teacher just simply kept a record of our numerical scores, totaled them up at the end of the semester or year, and then calculated our grade. I like the idea of grouping assignments to the standards or benchmarks the students are going to hit when we teach them. However since grading is grouped by the standards, we’d need to record the grade more than once if it hits multiple standards, which could be very time consuming. The second type of gradebook is sorted by the weight of the assignment based on its complexity. This also seems like a lot of work because it could require several revisions before a fair weight distribution is found and certain circumstances might cause the teacher to be continuously altering the weight. Listing assignments based on date is the third way to arrange a gradebook and this is the one that I saw a lot throughout high school. While it seemed to work for my teachers, I don’t necessarily like it. It is good when you want to monitor student progress and growth over time by simply looking at all of the data in sequential order, however there are times when there isn’t any correlation between a few assignments that are placed in a row and could make us think that something of a student’s growth that isn’t true. A topics-based gradebook is the final gradebook that is presented in this chapter. I would use this gradebook because it can easily display what the students know or what they’re struggling with.