lbodi's blog

What are ethical grading practices in your estimation?

Ethical grading practices  include a fair objective assessment of a student’s ability to demonstrate knowledge.  I believe that a student should always make their best effort as I do to grade fairly.  I record a large number of grades so that there is less significance for minor errors on either my part or the students.  I try to make assessments objective as much as possible so that there is no question about the accuracy of the answer.  Lab reports are graded on a much more subjective level.   Wormeli reminds us that  “grades are inferences, personal interpretations on the part of the teacher, not infallible truths about the students’ mastery.”  (Wormeli 2006).  It is my goal to make grades as objective as possible despite the truth I find in this statement. 

What is your new approach to differentiaing instruction?

My new approach to differentiating instruction is  to make a solid effort to reach every student on their level rather than expecting them to reach my level immediately.  A strategy that I intend to utilize from Heacox is the “Totally 10”  (Heacox 2009) that Carissa Smith uses to differentiate assessment on page 55.  While some of the differentiation methods are geared toward elementary, this could really work in my freshman physical science class.  Tasks are assigned to different values based on Bloom’s taxonomy and students choose tasks that total a value of 10.  

 The six new approaches that I intend to apply include publisher developed pre-assessment from my text and journal prompts drawing inferences from pictures that I create or find as formal strategies of pre-assessment.  I will try KWI  charts  and directed questions as the new informal strategies.  I am going to make my questions directly related to the KUDOs.  Formal strategies of post assessment will include quizzes such as this symbol quiz reinforcing the KUDOs and a graphic organizer.  The informal strategy that I will try is the critical reflection stem at the end of a lesson.  I am also going to try homework scans in lieu of grades.

Further reflection on differentation reveals that some of my projects and labs already incorporate differentiated learning.  My Rube Goldberg project was one example.  Students have to utilize a certain number and class of levers, fixed and movable pulleys, wheels and axels for a tiered grade. Some students go well above and beyond basic requirements. 

References

Heacox, D. (2009).  Making Differentiation a habit.  Free Spirit Publishing Inc.  Minneapolis, Mn.

Hill, Bonnie Campbell, Ruptic, Cynthia & Norwick, Lisa. (1998). Classroom Based Assessment. Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc., Norwood MA

Wormeli, R. (2006).  Fair isn’t always equal:  Assessing and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom.  Stenhouse Publishers.

Artifact Annotations

Holt Winston and Rinehart.(2006).  Holt Science Spectrum: Physical Science. Science Spectrum Inc. Lubbock, Tx. I use has a pre-assessment for each chapter.   Holt Physical Science pre-assessment 

Pictures and images from the text are useful formal strategies of pre-assessments.

KWI charts are useful for informal pre-assessment tools.

Direct questions from quizzes can tell me where students are in the lesson.

This song from Pirates of Penzance is a nice addidtion to any periodic table lesson.

A symbol quiz represents a formal assessment strategy.

This graphic organizer represents another formal assessment.

Critical reflection stems are an informal post-asessment.

Web sites used:

About.com Chemistry. (2011).  Printable Periodic Table.  Retrieved June 25, 2011 from

http://chemistry.about.com/od/periodictableelements/a/printperiodic.htm

 Lehrer, Tom. (2011). Element Song Lyrics.  Retrieved June 25, 2011 from

http://www.ncl.ox.ac.uk/talkweb/elements.html 

Sask School Curriculum. (2011). Gold Dust Kid worksheet.  Retrieved June 25, 2011 from

http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/science9/chemistry/worddocs/eletale2.PDF