Getting Sick and Grading Quizzes

In case you were unaware, I've been out for roughly a week because of the flu. It was pretty much the worst. More than kidney stones! Anyway, what did this mean for student teaching? A lot of pretty awful things. I missed 3 days of school (which would have been four if not for the holiday Monday), and I will have to make those up at the end of the semester. I also talked to Nathan, and he said, "At least it didn't happen while you were an actual teacher." Because seriously, who among us has sub plans for that long? It also delayed taking over my first class by a week, which is mildly inconvenient, and means I don't really get to start teaching until tomorrow, even though everyone else did last week.

So there's the explanation as to where I've been all this time. But what do I have to post about from Friday? Lots!

I got a set of quizzes to grade this weekend for 3rd period, since they're now my class for about the next three months. What did I notice? Well, first, Nathan's grading system is pretty much the best thing, and unlike anything I've ever encountered in a math class. He grades each content area on the assessment as a separate gradebook item. Additionally, he grades the entire section on a four point scale:

4 - Exceeds (100%)
3 - Meets (80%)
2 - Approaches (60%)
1 - Falls Far Below (50%)

It's then a matter of assessing a student's work and determining how they performed compared to your expectations. An absolutely perfect paper with no flaws or room for significant improvement gets a 4. If a student seems to have the idea down pretty well, and might have made a few mistakes here and there, they get a 3. If there are a few significant flaws in their understanding, 2. Nothing even close to knowing what the question is asking gets a 1. As a result, something important happens. Students that can produce the right answer and mimic a process with obvious flaws in their actual understanding tend to get caught and given lower grades than those that appear to have a solid understanding of the idea and just tend toward small arithmetic mistakes.

But wait, there's more. The grade items for each section? These get replaced as more quizzes with the same topics occur, with each topic showing up on a quiz until about 90% of the class is getting a 3 or 4 on that section in a consistent manner. This motivation to improve their grades on quizzes makes it so that students are forced to continue to interact with the knowledge even if they fail the quiz on their first try. This is one of the biggest things I think an assessment should accomplish, and it's a great way to create a pattern of students working to improve themselves before the end of a unit. Retakes are an unpopular idea with some (you should learn the material the first time, why should Johnny get an A if he got a C the first time and Belinda worked hard to get a B the first time?, etc.), but getting kids to actually think about what they're learning enough to understand it at some point even if it's not by that first time they're assessed is so important.

That's all for now! Have a great week, and if you haven't yet, get a flu shot!