Categories

Even if you don’t weight your grades (and I really don’t believe you should), you no doubt have categories your assignments fall into. For me, there’s:

• Assignments
• Vocabulary
• Do Firsts/Reading
• Writing

All of the work in my class fits into one of those categories. A few years ago, when I stopped weighting grades, I figured out the percentage of the final grade for each of those categories. That’s changed in a big way this year.

Points

In the past, roughly fifty percent of the total points available in the course have come from assignments in that Writing category. For me, those are formal writing assessments, places where I actually examine the quality of the writing, not just the quantity or existence of it. Those are the dreaded essays. Fifty percent of points, writing that I try my best to hold to high standards with as much objectivity as humanly possible when grading the subjective craft of writing.

This last semester? Roughly thirty percent came from the Writing category. Out of 2347 points available, only 745 came from writing, so about thirty-two percent.

Questions

Is that why my F rate went down? Is that why students’ grades are better? Is that the way it should be? For a long time, I’ve thought that the writing grade in an English class should be THE grade. I’ve even said that the grade a student earns in writing should be the highest grade the student can earn in the course. Since this is not the case, I’m worried that I’m sending students on with inflated grades. Or maybe I’m worried that I’ve always sent them on with deflated grades.

So that’s how I’m starting semester two, in the same existential crisis I’ve been in for years and years. I’ll let you know how that works out.Similar Posts:

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• The Conversation
• After Day One Of Finals
• Why You Should Change Grades
• Why Can’t I Get This Right?

While the day-to-day activities have been smoother and more planned out (I think), it seems like my ability to keep up with grading has taken a significant dive. I only now handed back something to my sophomores that they turned in at the beginning of October. One of those sets of essays I have from my juniors came in on October 21. The last time I graded Read Journals for my sophomores was about a month ago, too.

Yikes! I must have taken a grading vacation for this past month. Still, we’ve done some good work in class during that time and I feel like we’re building to having the types of discussions and activities I want to have in second semester. This semester’s grade is simply going to have a lot less writing on it than years past.

This is all as a result of some significant changes in my personal life (all good stuff, but distracting nonetheless) and the increase in students on my rosters. The slacked grading pace bothers me to such an intense degree that it seems to force me into focusing more on the daily activities. At least there’s some good to come of this: I’m more inclined to work on that handout I’ve always planned to make or to implement that review idea I had last night.

How about you? What have you noticed this semester? What are you doing more or less of? How does that make you feel? Now tell me about your mother. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, no. Please go ahead, I’m listening.Similar Posts:

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If you want to skip the discussion of how I got here, I understand. Here’s the spreadsheet and the rubric. Take a look at them both and get back to me with any questions or comments. If you’re curious how I worked this out, read on, my friend.

Weights

Some rows of the rubric are more important than others. Since I know what each row on the rubric should be worth in the final score, it’s about dividing the score I want each row to be worth into six. I cranked out some numbers and figured out the computations for my scale:

Not Equal

A six-point rubric works like this (at least, it does to me):

As the rubric score drops, a certain number must be added to the sum in order to keep to the percentages. Four out of six equals 67%, not quite the grade of C I have in mind. Five out of six equals 83%, close to, but not quite, the grade of B I have in mind. I figured out how to manage that (in this case, N2 is the cell with the rubric score):

=(N2*5)+(IF(N2>5, "0", IF(N2>4, ".5", IF(N2>3, "2.5", IF(N2>2, "4.5", "5" )))))

Solution

As I read, I focus on comments. After I read, I focus on the grade. Matching up the best description of the writing to the score on the rubric, I enter scores and let Excel do the math. I keep this all electronic, which means printing out somewhere near ten pages and making good friends with the paper cutter and stapler each essay. But all that is probably faster than the bog of adding numbers with a calculator and entering scores onto each paper. Anything that gets me moving to the next one faster, while still giving time to the current one, is a good thing.

On the scoresheet I’ll print out (see image above), the Writing Percentage is the grade on the paper without the score for MLA format figured in. It’s my actual assessment of their writing skill, something into which the ability to format a paper doesn’t/shouldn’t factor. But since MLA format is a requirement of the writing, the Final score is the percentage earned on the assignment. In a nod to Dan’s method of assessment, I’ll be entering each score into the gradebook separately so that we can see development on each area of the rubric across the school year. This should give the students an idea where they need to spend time and me an idea what to review and re-teach.Similar Posts:

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Some of these are small but exciting changes for me. I think I already see that excitement transferring to the students and the positive feedback loop makes for a great day.

• Word Count: On just about everything, I’ll assign a minimum word count. It’s arbitrary, but I’ve made my peace with that fact… to some extent. I’ve tried the “it needs to be as long as it needs to be” stance for about the last 4 years now. That ain’t working.
• Direct Instruction: More handouts with examples and less assuming they know what I mean. My MLA format handout (PDF) is a perfect example of this, something I created years ago and haven’t handed out since. Don’t ask me why.
• Grade Scale: For a long time now, my Ds have bottomed out at 64%; a 63% or lower earned an F here. I’ve changed my scale to be in line with the traditional grade scale, even adding A+ to the grades for the first time ever. Adopting a scale everyone is familiar with is more of my quest for total transparency in grading. I’m also thinking we should have a grade scale agreed upon within the department, if not the whole school.
• In-class Writing: Anytime there is a writing assignment pending, I give five minutes to write each day in class, convenient or not. This time is in addition to the roughly five-minute Do First.
• Creativity: We’ve already started with more creative writing (PDF) than in years past. I hope to work that creativity into all styles of writing. I also hope to teach more than my usual genres. Literary analysis and narrative, most prompts are really just shades of those styles. This year, radical change in the styles required, read, and taught.
• Limited Choice: Going back to what I did about three years ago, student choice is moderated, yet still encouraged. With just about any writing assignment, there are at least two pieces of information in the prompt: the genre and the topic. Though I will provide a writing assignment sheet with both of those detailed, I’ll tell students which of the two they can change if they want. If they don’t want to or don’t have any better ideas, stick to the assignment sheet provided. As we get closer to the due date, if you haven’t chosen yet, write about what I gave you.
• Democratic Dates: We set due dates for drafts together. I provide the deadline and number of drafts I want them to create. After a day to vote, I release the due dates. Ownership is important, but within reason.
• Opening Writing: Dailies have changed to Do Firsts. These come in three flavors right now: Quotation, Question, and Writing Challenge. I’m thinking of a fourth flavor (Graphic Challenge) working with one of Dan’s many ideas that gnaw at the back of my head. Students write about images, sometimes rationalizing why they think something is fake or legit ($1400.00 for a Swiss Army knife), other times it’ll be something to describe (I’ve been in love with morgueFile for years), still other times it’ll be something else (Um… I’ll just show the image). I’m excited about how this redefines the opening writing time.
• No Freewrites: I’ve done away with Friday Freewrites. Some of my students wish I would have done this years ago.
• Portfolio Revisions: Portfolios will return this year. I haven’t started them yet, but I plan to get the Portfolio Goals Statement (PDF) ready for next week.
• Reading Models: Just about everything we read will be because it’s a model of the kind of writing we will produce. The Great Gatsby will be read as a way model not only character sketches, but writing a comparison, both of which we will also do. I hope to apply this all year long.
• Reading POV: Failing reading something as a model for what we’ll write, we’ll read to add ideas to an essay on the same topic. The Scarlet Letter becomes a discussion of how society treats outsiders. We write about our ideas on the topic before reading, then add to the essay as we read the novel. At the least, catalog the author’s ideas about the topic; at the most, use those ideas to expand your understanding.
• Blogs: How do I treat reading blogs differently this year so they don’t kill the joy of reading for students who are already readers?
• Late Work: I’m still thinking that late work completed in class after school, from inception to finished product, will be accepted for full credit. This will likely apply more to writing than anything else. Thoughts on this would be much appreciated.
• Record Keeping: I’m keeping better track of my lessons than ever before. I email copies of everything used in my English 1 Support class to someone at the DO. The idea there is that if all teachers did that, we’d have a great resource for next year’s teachers of this course (of which I hope not to be one). I record all the Do Firsts in School Loop. I jot notes in my planner just about every day, quite often in between periods to remind me of what went wrong/right and timing. And though it’s not flashy, that’s the best planner in the entire world, by the way.

Unfortunately, much of this means I’m putting in sixty hours each week, minimum. I left yesterday near 4:15, but that’s the earliest I’ve left school since two weeks before school started.

I’ll discuss my juniors and zombies in the next post. It’s been a cool way to start the year. The first part is due on Wednesday. Let’s see how it goes.Similar Posts:

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I struggled with how to grade this. Since this class counts as an elective and not an English class, and since so much of the point of this class is tied up in letting the students see success here so they will see success elsewhere, I decided to let the number of errors do the work:

The Scale

At the top of the paper, I’ve written whichever of the following presented themselves as problems in the paper: punctuation, spelling, capitalization. On Tuesday, they’ll work on a rewrite. I’ll also share the above scale so students will have a good idea the number of errors I saw. Hopefully, with awareness of the areas that were problematic, knowing the number of errors, and a few days’ distance from their writing, they’ll be able to fix a few things. I also hope that a lot of what I saw was simply sloppy writing as opposed to lack of knowledge.

Can I Get A Remedy?

Grades are posted. I have a host of problems using this method and only a few solutions in my head right now. I want to see what you think about this. Remember, this is a class full of students who scored one to two years below grade level. As freshmen, they are with me if they’ve demonstrated familiarity with seventh or sixth grade standards; those that demonstrated familiarity with eighth grade standards went on to English 1 and those at fifth grade or lower are in READ 180. So how do I grade their writing? How do I grade any of their work? Does the fact that this class counts for elective credit have any impact?Similar Posts:

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