Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Standards-Base Grading: What I've changed this year

This year, I'm on my second full year of using standards-based grading in math.  I've kept a lot of things the same, but am continually tweaking things.  For one, I used to give completion points for homework, just 2 points per assignment.  But, this year I'm not giving any points for assignments, which purifies the students' grades to just scores for standards.  Instead, I am just tallying if the students complete their homework and turn it in.  I hope that I can share this completion percentage with parents and students every so often so that they might see a correlation.

I've also added to the requirements of being able to retake a learning target.  Students must either have a study session with me or turn in some practice problems they did before they can take a retake.  I decided to do this this year because I would have many students in the past that would say, "Oh, I have to take a retake today?"  It was obvious to me that students would not prepare for the retake and often make the same mistakes that they did on the original quiz.  I guess I am forcing them to study, but they need to do some sort of studying to learn what they were missing the first time around. 

If you are using standards-based grading, how is it going?  Have you made any discoveries lately?

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