B1+Chapters+7,8,9,10+FIAE

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Abstract
All four of the chapters dealt with [|grading]; what should be included in grades, what shouldn’t be included in grades, whether or not students should be able to redo work and how grades should be reported. Chapter seven specifically talked about how grades should deal with more than just how well a student does on a specific test but should also be based on attendance, behavior and class work. Other chapters discussed how you would grade and how to differentiate grading so that it meets the needs for all of your students. Student’s grades should reflect [|positive things] as well as their [|mastery] of the subject matter. Chapter nine suggests some things for you to avoid when differentiating assessment and grading. Some of these being to avoid penalizing students’ multiple attempts at mastery, to avoid grading practice or homework and to avoid withholding assistance when it is needed. The final chapter talked about redoing work for full credit and whether or not it should be done. The chapter also gives some different ways to monitor and keep students on task to completing the [|make up work]. Some of these ideas were to have students create their own calendar on when they will work on it and when it will be done and handed in or to never allow work to be redone during the final week of the grading period. The reason given in the book for avoiding redo work during the final week of the grading period was simple “it just saves teacher sanity.” [|This]is why the current system. Here is a great link on [|differentiated grading]

Synthesis
The class consensus was very clear from our responses: students need to become accountable for their understanding and accomplishments, not just for their timeliness and ability to jump through hoops which play no role in their mastery of concepts. It was overwhelmingly clear that the class agrees that students should not receive points off of their assignments for late assignments except in the form of a separate category for academic initiative. Giving students zeroes for work that is done late does not reflect their abilities accurately, and does nothing but excuse them from completing the work when they do get behind. Paul put it best when he said "The student who says that the work is not present when you ask for it should be talked to one on one and should be asked when the work will be ready. This is throwing the boom back onto them and it makes them feel accountable for their actions. They will not want to disappoint you, just watch." The class also agreed that teachers need to be more careful about what they are grading and what they are grading based upon. Teachers should not be grading work based upon standards which are not a part of that class's academic curriculum, because this makes it unclear what standards the student is meeting and not meeting for that class. Students need to be given the opportunities to show their mastery of content and have their grades accurately reflect that; their final grades should not be a reflection of those things mixed in with random particulars that a teacher is focused upon for whatever reason.

Paul Santamore
Chapter Seven in FIAE defines the relative nature of grades and their definitions as well. Grades have a bizarre nature, because they really have had such a large and influential meaning within our culture over the past century. People in the U.S. view grades as an end-all-be-all version of assessment. The book and I agree that grades should be used as more of a barometer rather than a finite decisions as to whether or not your child is smart or not. The definition of grades within our culture is completely off base, because we grade things in the wrong scales. We should look at things such as behavior and attendance along with effort to determine the final grade of a student, not just how well them performed on a useless paper and pen delivered test. Chapter eight talks about the positive ways to grade, which I just mentioned above such as effort and behavior. The book states that we should always document and congratulated students for being in class, being on time, and attempting each and every assignment given. These things should matter in terms of success and grade, but we should after all not link those two words together. We should also stop punishing students for things that they may not have any control of in the end such as completion of homework and ability to arrive on time to school. Some students have extenuating circumstances at home, but do truly want to be in school learning with their peers. Also avoiding the grading of group work or other collaborative assignments is beneficial because it does not allow for division between students within the classroom. I see the ten guidelines for what not to do in terms of grading as a teacher very helpful in maintaining a respectful environment as well as a positive grading system. The last chapter in this collection of text is in reference to providing students the opportunity to deal with and complete late work without getting a zero. Personally I believe full credit is worthy until the circumstances no longer match up with the assignments rigor or time consumption. When a student says that they do not have their work and a teacher says that it is an automatic zero, that is doing both of them a disservice. We must give parameters to each student, but also be flexible with student excuses. The student who says that the work is not present when you ask for it should be talked to one on one and should be asked when the work will be ready. This is throwing the boom back onto them and it makes them feel accountable for their actions. They will not want to disappoint you, just watch. All of these chapters talk about some form of assessment and grading technique or method. Basically, they all connect in terms of looking at the students’ needs first and then attempting to help them continue or start to succeed, not to shut them down.

Leigh Welch
The seventh chapter talked about the grading systems and how they need reform. The author brought up the point that grades are by nature an after learning tool, where as we need to focus on the learning. The chapter also talks about how to motivate low achieving students, one of the suggestions was to change the grading scale to A, B, C, I where the “I” stands for Incomplete. This gets the message across that you did not do an acceptable job so you are not getting credit. The eighth chapter in Fair isn’t Always Equal talked about grading and reporting. This chapter focused mainly on the quest should you or should you not incorporate effort, participation and attitude into a grade. There were arguments on both sides. Some said this was and inaccurate assessment of mastery, others said that those components could help but no t hurt. Some even said that you should think about the mental and physical components of these topics and determine from there. Overall, the chapter was pretty clear on the fact that these topics are subjective and going to be judged differently for every teacher. This next chapter is a list of ten things you should avoid when using differentiated instruction and grading and assessment. 1) Avoid incorporating nonacademic factors; 2) avoid penalizing students’ multiple attempt at mastery; 3) Avoid grading practice or homework; 4) Avoid withholding assistance if it is needed; 5) Avoid assessing students in ways that does not accurately measure mastery; 6) Avoid allowing extra credit and bonus points; 7) Avoid group grades; 8) Avoid grading on a curve; 9) Avoid recording zeros for work not done; and 10) Avoid using norm-referenced terms to describe criterion-referenced attributes. In all of these sections the authors goes further and tells you why these things are bad and why you should not do them. The last chapter in this combination was chapter 10 of __Fair isn’t Always Equal__. In this chapter the author and other teachers mentioned discuss their views on letting students redo assignments or assessments. This chapter brings forward a lot of good points about letting kids redo work. I had been on the fence about it before but now I know that there is a system where students will not try to take advantage of the redo. I think now after this chapter that I will highly consider giving students the chance to redo some (a few) assignments and assessments. The common theme in all of these chapters is fundamentals in the classroom; making the big decisions. These chapters discuss weather or not to all students to redo work, ten things to avoid while grading, changing the grading to fit the students, and measuring for mastery in grading. These are fundamental things that could be overlooked when thinking about teaching. It is not until we sit down and really think about it that we find out how we feel about redoing assignments, or letting participation be a percentage in an end of term grade.

Mel Christensen
These chapters discussed common debates and concerns educators have about grading. One of the most complicated aspects of grading is also the most fundamental: what do grades mean? If grades are so important to our society and school systems they must have meaning. The point to grading students’ work is to give them feedback on their progress, so labeling a test with a B+ needs to mean something to the student. Unfortunately, there is no common grading system to impart this meaning and even when a common system is used grades often end up subject to the teacher, student circumstance, or overall class progress. Due to the relativity of grading even within a school or department students are not able to derive meaning from their grades and either disregard them or feel very competitive about grades. Grades should be an indicator of progress and what has been achieved. Instead of a student receiving a 70% and looking at it as a label of how smart she is, the 70% should be seen as: “you have mastered 70% of this skill of understanding.” Grades should be read like the status of a download; if it isn’t 100% or complete the process isn’t over. An incomplete process should not be cut off and labeled when there is still potential for completion.

Teachers need to think carefully about what they grade and why they are grading it to ensure grades reflect the understanding they want to measure. It is easy for what looks like an engaging or challenging assessment to include skills or factors that are not related to the content but have effects on the students’ performance. Graded assessments should be things that demonstrate a student’s progress and proficiency, not their learning process. Learning assignments such as homework, pre-assessments, or formative assessments which are designed for students to practice and play with the content should not be graded or graded significantly because the students are in the process of mastering the content. Throughout the learning process students will be at different levels and should be encouraged to work at their level without being punished. When it comes time for graded assessments that demonstrate mastery hopefully all students will have met the same standard.

Allowing students to redo work has pros and cons and can be very effective or ineffective based on the circumstances. If a student was still learning the content at the time of the assessment and did poorly it is very possible that a redo would be appropriate and beneficial if it gave the student a chance to master the rest of the content and demonstrate their progress. Some students may need more time than structured class schedules allow for, and if they can keep working until they achieve mastery they will benefit in the long run. In some cases redos may not be beneficial to students if they do not put the effort into examining their previous assessment and preparing for a redo. This is a waste of time for the student and the teacher and is discouraging for the student. To enforce constructive and proactive work habits, students who are redoing work should be required to evaluate their first attempt and prepare by filling any gaps they might have identified in their original performance.

Bianca Stoutamyer
The four chapters in this section of reading all had to with grading in the classroom. Differentiated grading is the main idea. If you have a student who is proficient in a subject they are should be graded harder than other students who struggle to grasp the concepts. During my time in the classroom I have seen differentiated grading and regular grading. The fact of the matter is as teachers we will have students who are put into our classes but mentally are incapable of doing the work we expect from our other students. Do we fail them? Do we pass them easily? Grading things such as papers are easy to differentiate but grading a test is more complicated. Some assignments cannot be differentiated but I would use differentiated grading in my classroom. If we are going to differentiate the assignments we should also differentiate the grading. Chapter eight about what we grade and if we should grade participation, effort and behavior gave some excellent points on reasons why we should grade and why we shouldn’t. The idea of using grading to motivate, punish and sort students is not appropriate. Not only will it have the opposite affect of what we want but it also isn’t an accurate portrayal of the students work. Later in the chapter it talks about grading participation and how this shouldn’t just include speaking in class. I agree with the chapter that we should have guidelines for how we grade participation and what we include in the participation grade. For instance I would include in a participation grade how they treat their peers, if they are doing their work during class, if they participate in class discussions, and if they participate in labs and activities. Chapter nine gave you ten approaches to avoid when grading. One that really stood out to me was to make sure to not penalize students on re-do work. To me this would be an obvious idea you can’t penalize a student because they misunderstood or had to re-do an assignment they originally did the assignment and should not be penalized at all. Another suggestion that shocked me was the advice of not withholding assistance. I personally can never think of a teacher who didn’t try to help their student succeed so the section of the chapter on it was shocking to me. The final chapter about redoing work for full credit depends on the individual teacher and individual students. Some things that I agree should be universal for the good of the student that no assignment should be done in the last week of the grading period. If we allow this to happen we are teaching our students that we help bail them out when they don’t do things the way they are supposed to be done. If you allow re-do’s on assignments then great because your students can correct their mistakes but if they re-do an assignment that was due at the beginning of the quarter right before grades come out to make sure they get a better grade on their report card we are not teaching our students to do the assignment right the first time we are teaching them that they can re-do anything and that isn’t how life works.

Allison Reynolds
FIAE 7,8,9,10 When I thought of grading before this reading, I always thought that I would grade just like my other teachers had. They would grade your participation on the homework, and you would take a quiz and a test. Isn’t that how schooling works? After reading this, I found out very quickly that it isn’t always like that. Grading today is falling faster and faster as new requirements and standards are being used. The grading system (or lack of a coherent one) used today is almost unhealthy for our students. We need to move to a direction where it is more feedback oriented. Students need to hear feedback because each student is different, and if we grade them all exactly the same with no exceptions, only a small percent will move on to the next grade. I read this and realized that the C average is no longer the average. I knew that if I ever got a C in high school I would be thoroughly disappointed, but I realize it is not only me. So many students are struggling with the fact that anything before whatever scale is used to define a B- is considered much weaker than a B. I really liked Rachel Carson’s idea of getting rid of some grades and doing a scale of A, B, You’re not done. That way, students know that they have to work harder and this lends itself to feedback. I think grading is ready to move towards the directions of no letter or number grades, just feedback. I love this system of passing in my work once and being able to have someone say, “You forgot this…”. I love to edit my work, I just need to be directed on how to. So when it comes to grading, I agree that we need to consider all factors, but most of all it is about how much the student has learned and whether or not the student has arrived at the benchmark. I have not always had the option of retaking a quiz, but I think that I would like to implement when I teach. I know that I would always give feedback, but even after the grade has been done I would allow a student to work with me and see if there is any other assignment or redo that could help them read the level of mastery. I used to think that I could redo only quizzes and tests were final. Why? Why can’t students take a test again? I am a horrible test taker! I would love another chance as a student. I know students have off days so I would love to give them the chance. I think that would help not only the students but the motivation to want to learn and do well. I think that I would be willing to work with a student and brain storm specialized ideas for each student because each student works differently. I know if I had a teacher like that in high school, I may have wanted to do better in English.

Carinne Haigis
All four of these chapters addressed grading policy in school. They all tied in some major flaws with the traditional grading system and expressed concern over the idea that grades do not necessarily determine whether or not a student has fully mastered the material. These chapters also focused in on the subjective nature of grades and how a student who earned a “B” in one class might earn a “D” in another which is definitely not fair to a student who has mastered the material, but may not have necessarily displayed it in the exact method a teacher desired. This is extremely important because as Wormeli writes in chapter seven: “Colleges have to offer more and more remediation classes because high school students are going to college with less and less mastered for their high grades” (Wormeli 99). This further exhibits flaws in the grading system. Grades do not always match a student’s understanding and because of this, students can often be unprepared for life beyond high school. Also in chapter seven, Wormeli writes: “In light of this and other concerns with failing grades, some school districts consider using a grading scale of A, B, C, I, in which the I stands for ‘Incomplete’” (Wormeli 98). I really liked this concept for grading because it is a direct refusal to let a student fail. It keeps a student accountable for turning in his or her work and/or working on improving their mastery of the content. If we as teachers allow students to fail our classes, classes that teach content that we believe is necessary for them to apply to the real world, then are we really doing are jobs? I think not. Giving a student an “Incomplete” rather than an “F” gives him or her a bit more time to learn and demonstrate their understanding of the material and ensures that every student takes away the essential standards from the course. In chapters nine and ten, Wormeli again repeatedly addresses this concept of allowing students multiple attempts at mastery. In chapter nine, he writes: “Imagine the negative impact on a student who needs another route, a few more examples, or another few days to process information before successfully capturing Boolean logic or a geometry proof” (Wormeli 114). This statement caught my attention while reading because it demonstrates how possible it is for a student to be extremely close to mastering a concept, maybe he or she just needs that one “light-bulb” or “A-ha!” moment of understanding and yet, because the deadline for demonstrating their knowledge (the test or project or other assessment method) has passed. Teachers should continue to work with their students even after others in the class have demonstrated mastery of the concept because ensuring that every student has passed the standards and benchmarks is an essential and perhaps even the most important aspect of being an educator. These chapters prove that assigning letter grades to assignments is not an effective way of demonstrating student mastery or motivating students. Feedback and chances for the students to learn at their own speed are much, much more effective and have been proven to bring about better results.

Jason Bragg Many of the topics discussed in these chapters were about grading. How should we grade, what does a grade mean, what are the different components that a grade should make up? One of the more interesting things that I read was how C’s used to be the average grade. Now, a B is considered average. This means that either one of two things has happened. Either students are getting smarter, or teachers have not been adjusting their grading scale to keep up with education improvements.

I also liked how the book said to give feedback on participation rather than a grade. In my opinion, this is the way to interact with student participation because some students, such as myself, do not really enjoy speaking out loud unless we are called on. It is not because we do not enjoy participating. Instead, we simply enjoy listening more than speaking. Of course, to ensure that the students are at least listening, it is important to call on them once in a while to get some of their juicy ideas out.

Another tough decision that I have to make as an educator is whether or not I should grade effort, or the student’s accomplishments. In my opinion, a grade should reflect the student’s learning, not effort. To grade a student based on effort means to say something along the lines of, “You did not do very well, but you tried your best. So I will give you a good grade!” To me, it seems like the teacher who does this is giving up on their students. Teachers should not give up on their students. Rather than grading the student on effort, a teacher should give feedback and help the student correct their work so that they do understand the material. This will help more learning take place in the classroom.

The book also talks about what to do with extra credit. The answer is to not give it. Not to sound like I’m out to get students, but extra credit gives students the chance to boost their grade on exams and/or projects. However, if the extra credit does not hold the same benchmarks as the test or project, then it should be considered irrelevant to the test or project. Therefore, the student should not get the extra credit, especially if the grade is supposed to represent learning in the first place. I know that in my classroom, extra credit has no place. I will make sure that a grade represents learning in my classroom.

One of the tips that I really liked in this book was about retaking tests and quizzes. Teachers should not average the old grade with the new one. The new test represents the student’s current knowledge of the material. If the knowledge is significantly better than before, then the student has learned more material. Since a grade should reflect learning, the student should get the new grade. However, since a grade should reflect learning, I believe that it is fair practice to say that should a student chose to retake the quiz or test and their score is lower than the one before, then the lower grade will be the one that is kept. This is because if the student retook the same level exam and received a lower grade, then they have not learned more material. Instead, they forgot some material.

Megan Hoffman
Chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 of __Fair Isn’t Always Equal__ are all about grading. Chapter 7 focuses on defining the concept of grading. According to Wormeli, “There are some aspects of teaching that we keep in cages in hopes they will never escape. Collectively, they are the “elephant in the room” that everyone can see but no one mentions for fear of reprisals. Grading practices are often this elephant” (FIAE pg 89). As a student, grades drove my education. My parents focused primarily on my grades, like they were evidence that I learned things. It didn’t matter if I truly grasped the concept; as long as the grades were there everything was ok. It drove me nuts. I have often questioned how they can put a number or a time frame on learning. If a student has learned it, isn’t that enough? Then there’s the ever so annoying methods of grading that teachers don’t realize actually hurts instead of helps. For example the red pen correcting and frowny faces next to wrong answers. Chapter 8 focuses on the big question of why when it comes to grading, and where attendance, behavior and effort come in to play. According to Wormeli, there are 6 key reasons why teachers grade; to document student and teacher progress, to provide feedback to the student and family, to inform instructional decisions, to motivate students, to punish students and to sort students. The first three reasons are why grades can work, it provides feedback on progression of learning. The last three reasons are why grades can work against what we want as teachers. If everything becomes about getting the grades, how can we encourage them to learn in real life, when things aren’t on a grade scale? In my opinion, grades are the ultimate rewards system- which the MEL model tells us to avoid. I am more in support of switching to a content mastery scale and doing away with grades like many elementary and middle schools are doing. Chapter 9 discusses ten things to avoid in the practice of differentiation when it comes to assessment and grading. One of the most interesting points this chapter mentions is to avoid penalizing students’ multiple attempts at mastery. I found this quite interesting because my mentor teacher does the opposite of that- in fact he doesn’t let students retry anything at all. Personally, I like the idea of allowing redos- but to make it fair I would only allow a certain number of redos because I don’t want kids thinking they can get away with purposefully not studying. As a student, wife, and part time employee, I know life happens and sometimes it is hard to get things done. That is why I often hold the philosophy of the golden rule. I would love it if I could have that breathing room for mistakes, which as stressful as my life is, happens often. So, I want to give my students that same courtesy that I would like teachers to give to me. We are all human, why cant we bear with each other?

Chris Whitney
The topic of these chapters was grading. What to grade, how to grade, and issues with how grades are given and received in classroom today were all issues brought up during these four chapters. One of the central themes across the chapters is that grades should have a meaning. Every teacher has their own grading system that works for them, and each teacher has their own philosophy when it comes to grades so it can be very hard for students to interpret what that grade means. It is important that students know how they are being graded. The point of grading is to provide feedback, and show the student and the teacher how far along a student is in mastering a certain concept. If the student does not understand the grading system, then how are they supposed to know how they are doing? These chapters brought up another big concern that grades don’t properly represent what a student knows, and that will hurt them later on in life. If a curriculum is too heavily based on grades, it can provide loopholes so that students get the grades to pass, to memorize for a test or spit back information on an essay, but not to actually internalize and connect with the information. The students are not benefitting from this because sooner or later, that lack of knowledge will catch up to them, and then they are behind. Teachers need to present their content in a way that every student can make a connection to the material. Not just be able to pass a standardized test which questions in only a few content areas, or a few concepts.

There are also many pressures concerning grades. Coming from a military family, academic success was always important to my parents, however they were always supportive in how the talked to me about them, because they knew that good grades were important to me as well. As has been started many times before, each student brings a unique background with him or her. Some have parents who expect the best from the children, and some whose parents don’t even see a report card. Teachers should encourage students that grades are for showing progress, not how smart a student is.

Kaite Bukauskas
The chapters in Fair Isn’t Always Equal cover the theories about grades, what aspects should be considered while grading students, ways in which a teacher can be assured that he or she is assessing mastery versus behavior, and ideas teachers can use regarding procedures students should follow when redoing work and what type of credit they should get for such work. Chapter 7 provided an overview of what grades truly are and explained the problems that many districts have with grades. The text advises talking about grades, grading, and report cards openly with colleagues, students, and the families of students. Differentiated instruction is important because it has a strong influence over our grading policies. Summative grades are not a very effective way of assessing a student’s mastery of a topic. The way in which this was explained was through an example of a student’s work being assessed by a variety of teachers. The grades the work received varied from A through D by the different teachers. This shows that grading is not always an accurate or fair way to measure mastery because often at times grades are subjective of mastery rather than being measured against commonly accepted and clearly understood criteria. Had the project been measured against standards, criteria, or rubrics that were understood and accepted among the teachers, he or she would probably have received more consistent grading on the project from the various teachers. Chapter 8 explores the idea of effort, attendance, and behavior being factored into a student’s grade. An interesting point in the chapter was when a group of teachers were questioned on the reason why they grade student progress in the first place. Most teachers replied that they grade students because they are required to do so by the school. Some teachers reported grading as being a time barrier for them to provide true, positive feedback to students because the process of grading works, such as reviewing 180 student essays in a timely matter, is unrealistic when all of the teacher’s daily duties are factored into a schedule. Other teachers reported that they grade students to provide feedback to the student and family and teacher. The text explains that this is a more productive way to provide students with feedback. Further responses included that teachers grade to motivate students, to punish students, and to sort out students based upon grades. These motivations for grading can interfere with the grading process because they encourage teachers to grade mastery inaccurately because their grades are for the purpose of manipulating students, and basing grades upon behavior so that they do not reflect academics. An interesting concept was whether or not effort should be factored in, and whether it would detach students from the correlation between hard work and good grades. Some students may work hard and produce work that is less than those who did not put in the effort but are able to produce better work. Some believe that grading based upon effort does not prepare students for the real world. Another issue is that grading upon effort can be very subjective. Chapter 9 reviews ways to ensure a teacher is assessing mastery by listing several things teachers should leave out of the grading process, including behavior, multiple attempts at mastery, grading homework (which the text states should be considered practice), group grading, and giving zeros for work that was not done. As stated in chapter 10, it can be beneficial to allow students to redo work for full credit. The text advised reserving the right to change the formats of an assignment for the sake of providing a student another attempt at mastering the subject.

Ashton Carmichael
Chapter 7 was about grading policies. The chapter made a lot of good points about the scale system. One idea that really stood out to me was the idea of giving students an A, B, C, I. This idea sounds like it would be a good thing to try and implement in the classroom. As Wormeli points out, “You will not receive credit for something that you have not mastered, but I will hold out hope that you can and will master it” (Wormeli 98. This is a good motivation for the student. The teacher here recognizes that they student is not mastering the work and will not give them credit until he does. This also puts the difficulty factor back into play. A students can’t just back out and accept the F. With an Incomplete the child has to keep trying until he gets a C. I would like to try this in my classroom. Because we stress getting good grades so much, I am afraid that grading will become to much of the focus in my classroom. I fear that students will only do work for the final grade and not really fully master the content. And, what if on a re-do the child scores even worse than on the original? This shows that there is a flaw somewhere, either on the student’s end, or ours as the teacher. A student’s mastery should definitely not decrease in a few days and this would put up some red flags. In chapter 9, the author states that, “When we grade to motivate, punish, or sort students, we do three things: we dilute the grades accuracy, we dilute its accuracy, and we use grading to manipulate students” (Wormeli 103). It’s true that low grades do not motivate students. If a student sees a low grade on the assignment chances are he/she will not try to re-do the assignment, they will put it aside and not think about it, or hide it from their parents. Low grades keep students from wanting to succeed, especially if they receive continuous low grades. If the A,B,C, I policy was implemented, there would still be that underlying notion that they did not do well enough to succeed, but it does not have the same permanence to it as an F. The word Incomplete itself suggests that they have time to re-do something for a better grade. I do not like the idea of grading participation. This seems absurd and like Wormeli said, “If participation is merely an avenue a teacher travels with students in order to arrive at mastery, then it is inappropriate to grade it” (Wormeli 105). Grades are signifiers of the mastery and progress a student makes. Grading based on how that student got to the progress is telling the student that their learning style is measurable. This ties perfectly into the idea of homework, and grading homework. Homework is designed to reinforce concepts, to help students master the content. The homework is not an example of their mastery, but an avenue to get there. I like the idea of just giving feedback on homework. It takes the pressure off of the students and makes them more responsible for the learning; if it is graded, it is permanent, but feedback can be grown on.

Kellie Sanborn
These chapters all focused on grades, why they matter, what should and shouldn’t be included in them, and how they can be made. Wormeli included insights from different educators whom he both agreed and disagreed with, and it was interesting to see the varying points of view on the topics at hand. Chapter 7 brought up the important point that the current grading system is often extremely unclear in what it means. While a C used to be considered average, the average student in the present day would consider a C a crushing blow to their grade and their ego. I thought that this was a very interesting concept which I have often noticed but never really thought about. Grades are so relative and subjective that it is impossible for educators to come to a consensus on what they should be based on and what the scale should be. Connecting to this, chapter 8 focused on the effect of attendance, behavior, and participation, and what this means and should mean for grades. I think that this is a very intriguing concept to which I feel my views and opinions on are still developing. While I do not think that attendance should play directly into grades (how could that be fair to students who have home obligations which keep them from attending school every day?), I do think that it will eventually play into grades passively, which I do not believe should be cancelled out. Like Wormeli stresses, it is important that a grade reflects the mastery of a skill. If a student is not mastering the skill or standard that is being taught, the teacher should do their best to help them to reach that mastery, but the student should not be reported to have mastered that skill. Similarly, a student who does reach mastery of a skill, even if it is slightly later on than their classmates, should be reported as having mastered that skill. I very much agreed with Wormeli’s policies on accepting work which has been revised which he talks about in chapter 10. If a student has put forth the effort to master a concept which they did not understand at first, who am I to not accept that work and grade the student on that work properly? Wormeli discusses this in chapters 9 and 10, reminding educators that students should be encouraged to continue to attempt to meet and exceed standards, even if they did not meet them at the same time that their classmates did. Work which has been revised should never be an average of the first and later attempt, because that is not an accurate reflection of the end result. In my future classroom, students will be encouraged to build their understanding by being given opportunities to prove that they have done so rather than being penalized for not understanding the concept the first time around.