Fairness: COVID-19 Grading Solution

July 15, 2020 / magisterp / 2 Comments

Recently, I was reminded of a particular conversation I observed many different teachers having last spring. It went something like this:

“How fair is it to the students who did the work if everyone gets an A?”

There’s a lot to unpack there. First of all, it assumes “the work” was reasonable for all students to complete, at home. Let us not forget that any graded remote work was essentially a 100% Homework grading category—something no K-12 teacher in their right mind would ever consider. So, fairness…

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Grading: A Zero-Autonomy Quick Fix

August 2, 2018August 22, 2022 / magisterp / 9 Comments

After reviewing my NTPRS 2018 presentation with someone earlier today, I stumbled upon a way to demystify the concept while also providing an option for immediate implementation without ANY changes to those pesky school-mandated, unchangeable grading categories (if you’re in that unlucky situation). In each grading category:

Create assignments that do NOT count towards the final grade (usually a check box)
Create ONLY ONE assignment that DOES count towards the final grade
Use a—ANY—holistic rubric to arrive at that grading category grade

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NTPRS 2017 Resources

July 20, 2017 / magisterp / 1 Comment

Here are links to my Thursday and Friday NTPRS presentations, and related posts for a) those who attended and are interested in reading more, b) those who slept in past 8am (I am slightly envious of that), but wanted to attend, or c) those who weren’t at the conference at all, but find the topics interesting just the same.

Presentations:
NTPRS 2017 – No Prep Grading & Assessment (PPT)
NTPRS 2017 – Same Skills Different Game (PPT)

Related Blog Posts:
No Prep Grading & Assessment

Same Skills Different Game

NTPRS 2017: 10 Workshops On Assessment & Grading!

May 15, 2017July 13, 2017 / magisterp / 2 Comments

Assessment & Grading is, by far, the most frequent topic I’m asked about, and this year’s National TPRS Conference features 10 of those workshops on Thursday and Friday! Based on the descriptions, there’s a mix of proficiency people, skill people, tech-tool people, speaking people, rubric people, and more! I’ll be presenting one of those workshops, and have noticed that my thinking is a little different. I do recommend getting to as many of the 10 as you can, so in case you miss out on mine, here’s a brief look at what I’m about…

RLMTL
I have a very simple approach to assessment because the answer is always RLMTL (i.e. Reading and Listening to More Target Language). That is, there is NO assessment I could give that WOULD NOT result in me providing more input. Therefore, my assessments are input-based, and very brief. In fact, what many consider assessments—for me—are actually just simple quizzes used to report scores (see below).

I prefer to assess students authentically.

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Grading vs. Reporting Scores: Clarification

August 4, 2016January 4, 2017 / magisterp / 1 Comment

In the recent sliding scale scheme, Proficiency is given 0% weight at the start of the year. This doesn’t mean that students see “0” in the gradebook. What this means is that their 95, for example (which they see in the gradebook), holds 0% weight because in the sliding scale scheme we’ve placed all 100% weight on DEA for first quarter in order to set expectations and establish routines. By the fourth quarter, 100% of the weight is on Proficiency, and whenever possible, we manually change the entire course grade to that final Proficiency number/letter so nothing else averages throughout the year.