FIAE+B1+Chapter+7

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Amanda Martemucci
FIAE-Chapter 7: Chapter 7 focuses on what purpose grades actually hold. Too often, a letter grade is all students receive for an assignment or semester. Rick Wormeli argues, “we place a bit too much emphasis on one mark or grade in our society. Grades are inferences, personal interpretations on the part of the teacher, not infallible truths about student mastery” (p. 95). Grades are supposed to reflect a student’s mastery in the subject he or she is learning, not how the teacher feels towards the student or how the student acts in the class. Furthermore, teachers often develop a grade in which the students “exceed” the standard. A student may do all the work perfectly but not exceed the standard and receive that A. It is important for a teacher to clearly explain what exceeding the standards is. I will definitely take all these argument into consideration. It can be difficult to decide how to grade students, especially with the diversity of students I will most likely have.

Bridget Ferry
Chapter 7: The relative Nature of Grades and Their Definitions The way teachers grade, and how they understand the grades they give, greatly affect how they differentiate instruction. In order to grade fairly, the criteria for grades needs to be the same across the board, and be clear to everyone. Unfortunately, grading usually ends up being subjective and does not accurately reflect student’s mastery. According to research on grading, students who are graded have less interest in learning, test worse, and avoid difficult tasks when presented with them than the students who are not graded in school. Grades are just the teacher’s interpretation of the student’s knowledge; they are not concrete representations of a student’s mastery. Grading scales have always been difficult to go by, because an A for one teacher may not be an A for another. Students should know and clearly understand what the criteria are for receiving an A, and work towards those outlined standards. While getting rid of grades one and for all doesn’t seem to be happening in the near future, working towards fair, clear, and better constructed grading scales, tactics, and practices seems to be the first step in the right direction when I begin teaching.

Moe
The main purpose of this chapter was to address grading and force us to revaluate how we view grades, and their relation to differentiated design. A point made by the book is that grading is so varied from teacher to teacher, that you need to seriously think about how you want to grade. They stress that main focus of “assessment” should be feedback, and not grades. I really liked this idea because no one can really tell you how much a student has learned by looking at a list of grades. Constant feedback can track a student from the beginning to the end and measure advancements from the eyes of the person who knows the student in the classroom best (i.e. the teacher). The end of the chapter talked about having students keep track of their own grades and feedback because it gives them the opportunity to be responsible for their actions and gives them a way to know exactly where they stand in the class. In my junior year chemistry/physics class our teacher had us keep an assignment log with the points that we had earned on each assignment. I liked it because the point system is perfect for me (I’m rather competitive so I went all out, most of the time) and I had a simple, handy sheet right in my binder that I could keep track on. I like this idea for my class because it creates an inviting record for students to use because they can look at their own progress as well as see the points.

Chelsea
This chapter discussed that as a society we place too much emphasis on grades. Grades should be used to demonstrate mastery and understanding, using letter or number grades does not give us a clear understanding of student’s mastery. As teachers we need to define what the grades mean for ourselves. Students should understand exactly what is expected for excellence, the highest standard is what we should aim for as the minimum requirement. When grading students that achieve low scores it is important not to draw a frowny face next to the grade because it only increases the amount of shame that a student feels. It is important to understand that grades do not provide the feedback that students need in order to succeed.

Kristen
The chapter begs the question 'what does a grade mean?' Teachers have difficulty discussing grading. Each teacher grades differently and upon different criteria depending on what they are personally looking for and what they might expect out of a certain student. There is no one indication of what an "A" is or what a "D" is but somehow teachers find a way to narrow it down to such an arbitrary letter. Wormelli plainly states that grades are the end result of learning and don't help students to actually learn. Learning is the goal and therefore we need to find a better way to provide feedback to the students to aid them in the learning process. There are a few different ways teachers grade and none really hits the nail completely on the head. If you hold the student accountable for the required grade level learning then the grade is more important than progress the student does make from point "A" to point "B". If we decide to adjust the grade according to who the student is then we say that the student is greater than or equal to that of the grade and or the curriculum. Neither really indicates what we want to show.

Jesika
This chapter is about the weight that the letter grade seems to carry. “We place a bit too much emphasis on one mark or grade in our society. Grades are inferences, personal interpretations on the part of the teacher, not infallible truths about student mastery” Wormelli made it very clear that the definite system of giving students a letter grade at the end of their work serves no real purpose in their learning process. He also believe that grades, as they stand, are arbitrary marks made by the teacher to,supposedly, gauge how much a student had learned. The grading system is inflexible and actual learning is fluid. It's like using cork to measure how much water there is in the ocean. Yes, you could find area, but you could only measure the water by how much gets in the holes, the rest is displaced and disregarded.I feel that Wormelli is right about the inaccuracy of the letter grade, but they are the only thing the world seems to understand. I don't know how we could report learning in a tangible way that wouldn't require everyone to take Practicum.

Christina
This chapter discusses how to give grades meaning. It is argued that letter and number grades in many systems do not accurately describe mastery, and that too much emphasis is put on grades. There were two major points in this chapter that I found particularly interesting. The first in the results of a test that was quoted. It was about how A and B students at an impoverished school tested the same as C and D students at an affluent school. These schools are held to the same state learning standards so why is this? One answer is that it could be because the teachers of the impoverished school have lower expectations. This is unacceptable, it discriminates upon students based on their socioeconomic status. There is no basis for lowering the level of education that is available to students. Another problem described is the idea of a "passing grade". If a student gets by with a D, the lowest grade they need to move on the the next level, then the student does not have mastery of the content. That is the flaw with the system, when we allow students who have not built the skills set forth in the course, to leave without meeting the standards.

Kevin
Chapter 7 is about the nature of grading and begins with a good point about the fact that we take all the knowledge that the student either gained or failed to gain during a given time period and boil it down to one number. When you think about it this way it really doesn’t make much sense. There is one quote which gives three correlations that are found for students when grades are made particularly important. The first is that they display less interest in what they are doing. I couldn’t agree more, I think most people do what they need to to get a good grade and they don’t “waste” time by delving further into the content on their own. The second is that they fare worse on meaningful measures of learning, again I have only ever seen things in my life that back up this statement. The third one is that they avoid more difficult tasks when given an opportunity. This makes complete sense because it is more difficult to get a good grade on something that is hard to do. The author encourages students to try to forget about grades.