Reflections and Looking Forward

Well, I did not keep up with this blog as I intended. I still enjoy writing in paper journals. Oh well. There is always next year.

This year is nearly over, a little over a month to go. I love where I work. It truly is a joy to go to school each day.  I am thankful for the dedicated teachers (as well as administrators and staff) at our school. As our campus contains two schools, this goes for all our teachers - elementary and high school.

I truly enjoyed this group of kids. They are bright, and they were prepared for seventh grade. They are outspoken and do not mind asking questions. I feel they will do well in the rest of their academic endeavors and life, in general.

Our English standards changed to a more rigorous set of standards, so I felt the stress to catch up and overcome the gap. I feel like all of our teachers (elementary and high school) felt this way. (The math curriculum changed last year, but I know there are still gaps between the old standards and the new that are being addressed. I can only speak from my subject area though!)

We also blocked reading and grammar for seventh and eighth grade this year. It was interesting, and I really did enjoy it. Besides teaching grammar, reading, writing, and research, I was able to add more speeches.  It was great to add more speeches this year. I think it will be beneficial to our students, and it is in the new curriculum as a major strand, rather than as merely one of many objectives to teach.

I also think that my parent communication was a bit lacking this year. Part of the reason for the "lacking" is my own educational pursuits this year. In addition, I got rid of my original classroom facebook and did not start a classroom group page until late in the year. I do like the group page better; I don't see all the other posts, but my information is out there.  Because I started the page so late, I was not in the habit of posting everyday. This needs to change.

This year I tried Remind101. It was great, except only about 5% of my parents signed up to receive messages. It is kind of disappointing, but perhaps the percentage will increase next year!

I am looking at an online lesson planner (for next school year) that has a setting that allows parents/students to see the basic lesson plans. I may use that next year. I will try it over the summer to see if I like it.

With some of the pedagogies we have spoken about in my classes, I may switch up some of the teaching strategies I used this year. I do tweak each year, but these classes have opened up a few new ways that I have not considered in while, if at all.

With regards to changes in lesson plans, I need to consider which novels I want to teach next year, as well as if the About Me project will be assigned. There a few snags this year. I may just tweak the project, and start assigning the parts earlier in the year, maybe one part a month.

Oh well. I will be working on more changes over the summer.

Grading Policies......

What are the grading policies where you teach?  Ours? No zeroes. Now I leave zeroes in place for the midterm progress report, but for the final report card, I replace the zeroes with a 50 as board policy dictates.

As for other grades:

• Homework/Classwork - Introduction to skill/rough drafts: This is where students practice new skills or get their thoughts on the paper.  Students should not be afraid of making mistakes. This is how any person learns, making mistakes and how to correct them. Most of the time students grade their own papers. On occasion, I mark the incorrect answers for students, rather than letting them grade their own. These are turned in for a participation grade. 
• Homework/Classwork - Review: These are graded for correctness. Most of time students have already been tested on this material. It is purely review. Students are also usually told the assignment will be graded for accuracy.
• Sub Work: These assignments are usually graded for accuracy. Most of the time they are critical thinking skills (i.e. puzzles, riddles, following direction word games, etc. that review skills already learned this year or previously) or review of skills already completed.
• Tests/Final Drafts/Projects: These are graded right/wrong or by rubric. If they are graded by rubric, the rubric is discussed with students prior to the assignment.
• Retake Tests: Any written test (not final drafts, projects, speeches) students are able to retake a test, if they show they have completed additional study. Since this was the first year I have tried this, it seemed to work well. The two test grades were averaged, and the higher grade replaced the lower grade. Many students took "retake" tests. 

One other topic with grading: if I notice that several students missed the same problem, I will usually add that number of points back into the grade OR drop that problem as an outlier and recalculate the percentage. For example, the word puzzles my students did with a sub last week. There were several that had the same answer for several of the problems. The answers were incorrect. I added those points back into the grades of every student. 

Perhaps in preparing students to be College and Career Ready, I should look at homework/classwork as most of my college classes did:

1. It needs to be completed, but no grade is assessed for the classwork/homework. Continue grading as participation OR
2. Every problem is graded right/wrong AND
3. No retake tests.

I am not sure. I guess I always assumed classwork/homework is practice, learning where the breakdown of skills may be or where skills are weak. This could even show strengths the students have with a particular skill.  I also know that many students will not do homework/classwork unless there is a grade associated with the assignment. 

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I am facing a conundrum. /sigh

EDIT: Board policy states that tests/assessments are 70% of the grade and classwork/homework is 30% of the grade. So, classwork/homework is not going away. It will be graded. The conundrum is whether to continue using as a participation grade or to grade for accuracy.