This week we discussed about grading and student evaluation. I enjoyed reading the first part of the chapter that explained how ironic it was to spend long hours reading, listening to lectures, notetaking, writing paper, and attending classes are invariable reduced to one of the five letters of the alphabet- A, B, C, D, and F. The first part of the chapter also mentions about different grading systems in schools and institution and especially among teachers. One institution will be generous with A's and others are quite stingy with A's so B's are the next highest.
The chapter also mentions that are educational lives are greatly governed by the grades that are greatly determined by tests reasons why I chose the quote above. A student can be the most brightest and most intelligent student. However, when it comes to tests, the student struggles taking the assessments, they just don't care, or they move to fast and make careless mistakes which affects their test grade. I know a student who is extremely smart in math and can calculate problems quickly, however, on his math tests he scored below an A due to careless mistakes and not wanting to double check work.
The chapter also explains about alternatives to letter grading. I am new to the school system, but according to the book teachers are able to determine what the letter means and how much percentage is labeled in that letter group such as 90-100 is A. Alternative grading may be useful for many of the different types of learners, especially ELLs. The alternative grading may take some time, but when it all comes down we teachers always give a letter grade at the end.
I agree with how grades often reflect student effort rather than student ability or achievement. My oldest brother earned very poor grades especially compared to my other older brother and I. This was not because he was less capable or understood the material any less. He was arguably the smartest of the three of us, but he was also the laziest: he did not like to check his work, he did not do assignments if he felt that he already understood the material, and he was not bothered by his earning Bs and Cs even though he could do much better (and it made my father crazy).
ReplyDeleteAlong with being careless or just not caring, some people are just not good at taking tests. For some reason, these people get really nervous during a test and tend to miss passing only by a few points. I worked with some people in the past who knew a lot more about my previous job field than I did, however I did a lot better than them on tests about our job field. Some of these people took various versions of the same test almost a dozen times but still missed passing by 1 or 2 points.
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