Let's Talk About Assessment and Grading
What does an A really mean to a student? Does a C tell us anything about what they have and have not learned about a particular topic? Is putting 65% D on top of a student’s paper going to tell them that they learned part of what they needed to, or is it just going to make them feel like they haven’t learned enough? Sometimes, the way we grade and inform students of their learning is not actually helping them develop a learner’s mindset. Today, I wanted to focus on a different way of grading that I found useful in my elementary classroom, and I hope you’ll find it useful as well. Every student is different, and every student learns at a different pace. They also have different abilities to take what they do know about a topic and transfer that knowledge to a new topic. That is why my assessment of a student’s knowledge of a topic was never saved until the end of a unit. When we got about a week to a week and a half out from when we would normally take a unit assessment, I woul