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Kelsea Trefethen
Chapter 9 of FIAE had a lot of information. This chapter was devoted to giving excellent grading and assessment pointers to educators. I agreed with most of the suggestions, but there was one I really struggled with. The one titled “Avoid grading practice (homework)”. I feel as thought this suggestion contradict itself, and I did not agree with what it was talking about. “Avoid grading practice (homework)” implies that homework equals practice. The book states “Homework is never to learn material on the first time around.” Well, isn’t that what practice is? Regardless, I think practice should be graded. The grade should not count for much towards the overall grade, but students should be given credit for doing the assignment, as well as doing it correctly. Also, graded homework helps students with what they did incorrectly and helps them to fix the misunderstanding before it becomes a bigger problem. While I agreed with the chapter when it suggests to “avoid withholding assistance,” it made me wonder what to do when students are too dependent on teacher assistance. I remember some of peers, in school, asking the teacher for help on literally every problem on a worksheet we were doing in class. I feel as though those students were not challenging themselves to find the answers on their own and were using the teacher as an easy resource. How will I as a teacher judge when my students truly do need assistance and when they are just being lazy? I agreed 100% with the suggestion to “avoid group grades.” Group work is great, but once a grade is involved it get challenging. More often than not one or to students end up doing all the work and the other get the grade for doing absolutely nothing.

Johnny Buys
Chapter 9: Ten Approaches to Avoid When Differentiating Assessment and Grading Grading is complex for any teacher. The different al alternative techniques for grading are as varied as educational philosophies. While much of grading is dependent on the teacher, students, and school policy, there are techniques that can be employed to grading. First, grading nonacademic factors such as work ethic, behavior, or attendance is unnecessary (113). Students need to be given multiple attempts at mastery of understanding particularly as every student develops at their own rate (113). Teacher attention to this is vital as one-size-fits all education is not effective. Rather, tailor designed and tiered classrooms make for better classroom environments. Wormeli encourages that homework should not be graded (116). This element is important as confabulation can occur, and the nature of homework is designed is to give student’s practice attempts that occur while learning. Grading something midst the learning process is only going to create fossilizations positive or negative. This does not mean teachers should be discouraged from providing feedback for homework (118). In fact, feedback on homework can be the most important element. Scaffolding is always encouraged in the classroom (120). However, this taken to the extreme can often result in inaccurate assessments, which are also strongly discouraged (121). Other discouragements include group grading, grading on a curve, zeros, or irrelevant extra credit (126-129). Group grading and curve grading create unfair disadvantages for students as they are not reflective of individual mastery. Zeros are terrible due to the lack of resistance of averages. Irrelevant extra credit also diminishes the quality of student understanding, which is the focus of education.

Leanne Fasulo
The ninth chapter of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// explains ten approaches to avoid when using differentiating assessment and grading. Two of the sections that I found to be the most interesting were the avoid grading homework and the avoid giving a zero for work that is not passed in. I thought that the avoid grading homework was a good idea. Homework is meant for students to practice, to make mistakes, and to learn from them. If the homework is graded students could have a difficult time taking away the most important part, the learning, and just focusing on the grade. It could cause students to cheat using the Internet, or to not even try at all. If a teacher is to grade homework the grade should come from if it was attempted and completed to the best of their ability. This way the student will feel more comfortable to try and ask questions. The other idea presented in this chapter avoid giving a zero to me seems controversial. While the book said that if you give a student a zero it will make the grade inaccurate overall. Though giving students points that they have not earned feels to me that it is inaccurate also. However, if the grade they get is a 60 then I guess I can see how it can be a compromise. Personally, I would have to think a little more about this before I use that suggestion in my teaching, because students need to earn their grade and not be given it.

Christina L Quach
Chapter 9 of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// focuses on ten things to try to avoid while grading and differentiating assessment. There were some approaches that seemed very obvious to me and others that I had to think about a little so that I could appreciate the different opinion. The first one that stuck out to me was not allowing extra credit. I always liked extra credit because I like to have 100s, but Wormeli is right that a lot of the extra credit assigned does not have to do with the mastery. I think though that at least once a year, a chance for five extra points to do something related to the content is worth doing. Another thing that I think is very hard to judge is assessing group grades or pulling apart group work to determine individual’s grades. I think it is difficult to fully understand every group member’s contributions because I would not be involved in every moment of their project. I think though that is it important to have part of the grade directed towards the individuals. One part that I did not understand was recording zeros for students missing work. I do see what he was saying about how it negatively affects the student’s final grade, but I also think that as a teacher, if the student discussed with me why it was not done and had a valid reason that they would be able to work on it and turn the assignment in for a grade. There are serious situations where students may not be able to turn something in, say they are hospitalized, but there would be a way of working it out. The reason a zero would be in my grade book would be because a student would not do the work.

Evgeni Bouzakine
Chapter nine in //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// explains what teachers should avoid doing while assessing and grading assignments. The chapter focuses on ten things not to do when differentiating assessments. Two really jumped out at me while reading through. First one is to avoid grading non-academic factors, like participation and behavior. I cannot agree more with this, and considering it was mentioned in the last chapter it makes sense. I cannot grade on non-content based criteria. It does not benefit the student in anyway. The other one that I did not like was the one that says; give students multiple attempts at mastering material without penalizing them. I cannot imagine not penalizing them, just because they gave their best effort. How will student learn from mistakes if they do not learn to put in the extra effort to do it right. I will as a teacher for students to re-due assignments, but only if those students really do not have an understanding of the material. If I see no work attempted, than I cannot see the student getting another chance to re-due with full credit?

Tyler Oren
Chapter nine of Rick Wormeli’s book //Fair isn’t Always Equal// is concerned with strategies to avoid when applying differentiated instruction to grading and assessments. Wormeli asserts that it is inaccurate grading procedure to include not academic factors into final grades like in class behavior, attendance, and participation because they do not actually show the student’s mastery of the topic or subject they are working on for understanding. Wormeli also asks that teachers do not penalize their students for multiple attempts at mastery. One of the major goals of teaching is to teacher for mastery and gauge a student’s growth, if we do not allow they to retake tests a failed test will become lost knowledge that they will never strive to improve, if they can retake it though they can work to recover from their failure and eventually gain that essential mastery, not to mention having a series of tests to compare against each other provides a great means to assess growth. Wormeli asks that teachers also avoid assigning homework until their students have achieved a working understanding of the material. Wormeli asserts that if a student is given an assignment to do at home where they cannot ask clarifying questions they will undergo a process known as Confabulation where their brain will attempt to fill in the missing understanding with previous incorrect knowledge that can be highly detrimental to the learning process by requiring them to unlearn and then relearn the concepts. Of all Wormeli’s suggestions I would most readily integrate his suggestion to allow students to redo assignments and tests so that they can work to a more detailed understanding rather than failing an assignment and then forgetting the partial knowledge because it no longer becomes key information since the test has come and gone. If they have the opportunity to rework the assignment it will encourage them to work to a deeper understanding of the material.

Kyle Kuvaja
Chapter nine of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// looks at the “ten approaches to avoid when differentiating assessment and grading”. The first approach on the list is basically chapter nine, not incorporating effort and attendance into the final grade. The second approach to avoid is not to look at students attempts at mastering a topic as part of their grade. If a student has to try more than once to figure something out then that should not hurt them. The next approach is to not grade practice homework. These are used to help students build up their skills and the name suggests that it should not be graded. The fourth approach to avoid is to not providing to students in need. Not providing assistance restricts students’ ability to learn the necessary material and this goes against differentiated instruction. The next approach is to not assess students in areas that are unnecessary. The sixth approach to avoid is to not give out extra credit. Extra credit is an extrinsic reward, which can harm a student’s drive to learn. The seventh approach is to avoid group grades. Students should be assessed on their individual role in the group and how they met the standards. The eighth approach is to not grade on a curve. The ninth approach to avoid is do not give zeroes on homework that was not passed in. The last approach to avoid is using “norm-terms” in “criteria-based assessments”. I felt this chapter was useful. The layout of the chapter helped me keep a running list of what to avoid in my future differentiated classroom. I always think that the “no bonus” policy is interesting. I remember soaking in any bonus points that I could, but when I look at the reasoning for not assigning bonus or extra credit, it makes sense.

Brittany Blackman
Chapter nine is still about grading, but it’s what not to do. According to them you shouldn’t include things like behavior and participation into a grade, because it has nothing to do about mastery (as discussed in the pervious chapter). They also say that when allowing students to redo work, you should not penalize them for this being their second attempt. This means that it isn’t fair to only give half of the points back or to average the two grades. I see where they’re coming from here but at the same time I don’t think it’s fair to allow a student to get full credit the second time. I just don’t agree with that practice. You shouldn’t grade homework. Homework is something you do for practice, and it isn’t fair to give them a bad grade when they are supposed to make mistakes. This is where they learn from their mistakes. I have mentioned this before, but that is why I want to give students the homework problems that are in the back of the book, and allow students to do the other problems for extra credit. Other things they talk about seem very obvious, very repetitious. They talk about differentiating instruction or the test themselves in order to level the playing field. These are things that all of the chapters have mentioned. They say that you should avoid extra credit or bonus points. I don’t completely agree with this. I understand that you shouldn’t give extra credit that has nothing to do with what’s been happening in class, but if the extra credit shows mastery (like in my homework example) then what’s the problem?

Richie Johnson
Chapter nine of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// announced ten factors to avoid when grading. While I am not completely sold on the idea of grading in general, I certainly recognized the points made in this chapter as valuable, and agreed with the nearly the full extent of all of them. I was particularly interested in two: not grading homework (“practice”) and not giving extra credit. Initially I thought that (if we must grade) it would be important to give students credit where credit is due (i.e. giving them a grade for doing their homework). But, after reading, I realized that this contradicts a lot of my own theory- instead of labeling a homework assignment with a grade, it would be far more beneficial for the student to receive constructive feedback… duh! The second, “avoid giving extra credit” struck me as interesting because extra credit is something I’ve been considering a lot (again, if we must grade). I liked the idea of giving students more chances to improve their grade, but after reading Wormeli’s passage, I realized that this may be done without extra credit. Allowing students to revise and resubmit their assignments makes an incredible amount of sense, and is obvious now. I like.
 * //Fair Isn’t Always Equal//: Chapter 9**

Kalib Moore
Chapter 9 of //Fair Isn't Always Equal// discusses 10 different things not to do when grading students' work. Over all, I found the chapter to be very straight forward, and honestly felt that I already knew most of the material that it covered. The only part I did have an issue with was step number 9 "avoid recording zeros for work not done." (Wormeli 129) I believe that if a student fails to complete the assigned work, puts no effort in, and refuses to speak to the teacher about why the work wasn't completed, they should receive a zero. It isn't fair for other students who put the effort in and completed the work and receive 80 and have another classmate do literally nothing and get a 60, 20 points less, because it is more "fair." Besides that, I felt that the chapter gave me not too much to write about in this entry.

Cyril Lunt
Oh look, it's yet another chapter on grading. This seems oddly familiar. Oh well, must press on.

Chapter nine of FIAE is about the ten things you shouldn't do while grading. It's like that movie, "Ten Things I Hate About You", but with less Shakespeare and more grades. For the most part, the ten parts were merely common sense, such as "don't grade on a curve" or "don't forget to add participation into the grade". But some were new, like do //not// grade homework, and merely use it as a feedbacking system, which I like a lot. Hell, I may even use that once I'm a teacher. It's not that I don't like homework, but it should be for practice.

Overall, it just seemed to be a nice chapter that points out the pitfalls of so many teachers. Many of these chapters are basically about that, but it's still a nice way to show us that sometimes, if we've been doing something for a while, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best for the students.