FIAE+Chapter+13+Block+2

** Abstract: Gradebook Formats for the Differentiated Classroom **
Wormeli believes “gradebooks keep records, reporting what was achieved, not specific strategies, differentiated or not” (161). Finding a record system that adequately reflects progression in understanding rather than raw data is a must for the differentiated classroom. Wormeli also states, “At any given time, a principal, a parent, a student, and, of course, the teacher can ask how a student is doing regarding particular benchmark, objective, or standard, and see all the date gathered in one place” (162). With growing technologies in the classroom gradebooks and grades are becoming more and more transparent. This transparency encourages teachers to find an organizational system that adequately expresses the educational philosophies of the teacher clearly demonstrated for all the parties. Gradebooks can be revealing about progress when they are structured accordingly rather than just chronological averages. To hi-lite assessment focused on summative assessment rather than formative, Wormeli suggests marking an F or S and using the F’s to register progress while the S’s formulate the grades (162). Benchmark gradebooks also allow for grades to be more accurately reflective of learning rather than mere averages (165). Wormeli also discusses the benefit of weighting grades in the gradebook for particular students in the spirit of differentiation (166). A commendable gradebook structure is the topics gradebook approach which uses topic mastery as being scored in the variety of assignments that test or involve some mastery or understanding of it. The final topic score then can often differ from the column average revealing students’ understanding consistencies. Attention to the failure of the average's resistance to outliers compared to the benefit of mode (repeated number) and medium (central number) is a shift teachers will have to begin to make. Another consideration Wormeli addresses is that “if students do different tasks in order to learn the material or demonstrate mastery, that’s fine. We’re still focused on the benchmark, and it is from that benchmark grade that we will determine the final grade” (170). This approach will become more and more important in developing effective gradebooks as Massed Customize Learning becomes more and more the norm. This also encourages using a variety of more explained and verbalized lists of understandings and simply comparing understanding to those lists.

Synthesis :
What stood out in reading everyone's responses to chapter 13 on gradeboooks was how diverse the preferences for personal gradebooks. In true testament to differentiated learning each and every gradebook methodology that was responded too would be adequate to incorporate into classroom organization. While analyzing different gradebook styles may appear tedious, particularly in the digital era, it is certainly not. As standards based curriculum becomes the norm (think Common Core State Standards) producing the evidence of meeting the learning understanding is going to become more and more important. Transparency similarly will dominate gradebook selection particularly with the internet. Attention to these organization factors will be necessary to the 21st Century teacher. toc

Leanne Fasulo
The thirteenth chapter of Fair Isn’t Always Equal is about different types of formatting a teacher could use in grade books. The one format that I found I would probably use would be grading by date. This way a student will be tracked on their growth and performance. A teacher will be able to see the learning and be organized at the same time. If a student was missing a day of school a teacher could easily check which date they were absent and have all the assignments the student missed in an orderly manner. As a teacher this just feels like the easiest and most organized way to keep a grading book. However, most of the grades are done online now and have their own way to organize the grading format. If one does not go by date there are easily different buttons to change the formatting. Truthfully, I feel like this chapter was a little too long for the topic. How a teacher formats the grades are the least of what a teacher should be worrying about. Especially since what matters more than formatting is the point system and scaling that was talked about in the previous chapter. As long as the teacher is organized and can express the students’ scores to the student, parents, and administrators easily there should not be a lot of attention put on how it is done. This could be up to the teacher’s discretion and what they feel comfortable with.

Christina L Quach
Chapter 13 of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// discusses grade books and how to find the best one for recording students’ achievements. One technique that I found very interesting was grading on a trend. This was the idea that the summative grade for a student was focused on the more recent grades of a student while not taking into consideration grades from earlier. I thought that this could work, but I also believe that there are downsides to it. Teachers should not be grading what a student has not learned yet. So the grades a teacher records should be a representation of content mastery throughout the entire class. I do not see why these parts of the summative grade should be dropped if they really do represent true understanding of the content. Another thing Wormeli mentioned was recording multiple grades for assignments. He said, “Recording more than one grade for the same assignment is more work, but the grades are more accurate and useful (165).” This I am not sure if I agree with either. I guess I could see pulling apart an assignment because some of it represents content mastery, and other parts may represent participation or timeliness. I also feel though that the way that a teacher determines how the student will be grades should be accurate and fair enough so that multiple grades are not needed. Wormeli also brought up adjusting formatting of grade books to clearly represent the student’s learning. I agree with this, and I also liked when he said, “The problem then is, what to write in our grade books if we’ve changed the format for some students (170).”

I never had any experiences with the techniques that Wormeli mentioned, so maybe that is why I do not completely agree with them.

Richie Johnson
So, I’ve sort of realized that in order to move on, I am going to (at least for now) have to be more open to the whole idea of grading. Perhaps if I learn all of the little bits of it I will feel differently towards the concept. Anyhow, this chapter, number thirteen, is all about different ways a teacher may arrange their grade book. I particularly like the idea of grading the same assignment multiple times under different guidelines- it certainly seems fairer to separate aspects of a grade, like timeliness, presentation, product, participation, etc. The grading by the date idea makes sense, and I think it may be pretty common amongst teachers- in the United States at least. Maybe not. But, that’s probably how I’ll end up doing it. I feel like grading by date will allow for an easy way to reference past assignments and whatnot. Oh, and it’d be good for students too (if they have access to looking at the gradebook in some fashion) because if they missed an assignment, or even a class, they could be referred to the date of it. Wormeli really does have a lot of interesting ideas and theories, and I think that (given the likelihood of me being forced to grade in the future) I will refer to his work while I am teaching.
 * //Fair Isn’t Always Equal//: Chapter 13**

Brittany Blackman
Chapter 13 is still about grading, but more for the teachers’ organization, than the students’ grades. I liked the idea of teachers giving multiple grades on one assignment. I think that it wouldn’t be very difficult to have multiple rubrics and be checking for a variety of things at once. In fact, we had to make multiple rubrics for our performance tasks! It would be just like that! I think that this process would be easies to implement in say English essays than math, but I think there are some times were I could use this tool.

I loved the idea of giving students a median score instead of a mean score. As a struggling freshman and flourishing senior, I can sympathize with students who feel like their freshman year weighs their GPA down way too much! I also understand that, if they have a consistently high score in the end but low scores in the beginning, they end scores more clearly demonstrate their mastery of the course. It isn’t fair to say that they only somewhat understand the material (a C) if they are getting straight A’s on the last assessments. For these reasons, I think I would organize my grade book by date.

Kalib Moore
"Our Gradebooks are records of our actions." (Wormeli, 161) I felt that this was a great way to start off chapter 13 of //Fair Isn't Always Equal.// I felt that from the get go, Wormeli was setting a tone that gradebooks are a very important aspect to the classroom. Whether it is through a computer software program on the computer, or just a pen and notebook with a gradebook template, gradebooks are worth putting time into. It is a chance to reflect on how your students understood your teaching. If you look back onto an old quiz or test that you assigned and students struggled with, you know that you made need to tweak the lessons leading up to the test to help better prepare them for your test, or just modify your test to fit the lessons. The type of gradebook that I plan on using in my future career is the "listing assignments by date" template in which the row on the top has the assignment as well as the date, and then the first row is the list of the students in the class. Then I will just plug the score the individual student received, and I will make totals on the very last column.

Tyler Oren
Chapter 13 of //Fair isn’t Always Equal// takes a turn away from the precedent set by the majority of the rest of the book. While the rest details methods for teaching or teaches empathy and understanding to teachers as well as techniques to use in specific circumstances this chapter instead deals with the administrative grading side of teaching, and offers advice for keeping and efficient grade book. Wormeli first suggests grouping assignments by standards and labeling them with an “s” or “f” for summative or formative, because formative assignments are meant to teach concepts wormeli agrees that they should not be considered in calculating final grades since they do not actually test for understanding but teach it instead. It is not fair to students to grade them so harshly on an assignment that they are not meant to fully understand as they work to complete it. It is expected that they understand the concepts upon completion. As such it is only fair that they be graded on summative work that actually is meant to test and gauge understanding. Wormeli also suggests grading students based on their current level of development. As young individuals students are often changing and will clearly be a different person by the end of the year than they were entering it. Students can mature a great deal and master concepts much more deeply as a result of this. It also makes sense from a status and learning checking method. Teachers and parents want to know what level their students are at presently, not their performance from months ago. So why bog students down with results from months ago. It is unfair to them to be judged against a standard that could easily no longer apply to them.

Evgeni Bouzakine
Chapter thirteen goes over ways to organize yourself and the way to grade their students. Wormeli talks about utilizing grade books in a differentiated classroom. Wormeli also mentions how this can be done in a way that meets our teaching. If we are to become differentiated instructors, we need to utilize our grade books. Wormeli proposes to use standard in a grade book, rather than assignments. Teachers need to focus on students understanding and not a particular assignment. As teachers we will be assessing students on more than one standard, it could be easier to grade a single assignment on multiple standards. If teachers can have a single assignment that can cover more than one standard would benefit the students. It would give teachers a little more work to make these assignments. That would be worth it to me. I think I can see myself doing something like this. I can try and avoid larger assignments that only cover one standard. I want my students cover many standards with one assignment, test, or a type of assessment.

Johnny Buys
Chapter 13: Gradebook Formats for the Differentiated Classroom Wormeli believes “gradebooks keep records, reporting what was achieved, not specific strategies, differentiated or not” (161). Finding a record system that adequately reflects progression in understanding rather than raw data is a must for the differentiated classroom. Wormeli also states, “At any given time, a principal, a parent, a student, and, of course, the teacher can ask how a student is doing regarding particular benchmark, objective, or standard, and see all the date gathered in one place” (162). With growing technologies in the classroom gradebooks and grades are becoming more and more transparent. Gradebooks can be revealing about progress when they are structured accordingly rather than just chronological averages. A commendable gradebook structure is the topics gradebook approach which uses topic mastery as being scored in the variety of assignments that test or involve some mastery or understanding of it. The final topic score then can often differ from the column average revealing students’ understanding consistencies. Another consideration Wormeli addresses is that “if students do different tasks in order to learn the material or demonstrate mastery, that’s fine. We’re still focused on the benchmark, and it is from that benchmark grade that we will determine the final grade” (170). This approach will become more and more important in developing effective gradebooks as Massed Customize Learning becomes more and more the norm. This also encourages using a variety of more explained and verbalized lists of understandings and simply comparing understanding to those lists.

Kelsea Trefethen
Every time I start a new chapter a new idea or concept I had never considered is brought to my attention. I can honestly say I never even knew gradebooks had a format. Now that I think of it, it makes sense. I love the organization part of teaching so this chapter was very fun for me to read. There was a quote in this chapter that I really love; it says, “Flexibility, not rigidity, enables trees to withstand the changing winds.” Not only is this a great quote for grading, it is a great quote for teaching and life in general. Honestly, I think flexibility is one thing I need to work on. Being mathematical and logical, I think I tend to schedule and organize everything perfectly. This could be problematic, but I’m not sure yet. The gradebook format I liked the most was the one that organized assignments by goals. I think this would be very organized and easy to reference. I also really liked the format that organized assignments by date. I organize all of my binders by date. Most of my peers have always organized theirs by notes, quizzes, tests, homework, etc. My freshman year, one of my teachers suggested I organize my binder by date because it would be much easier to study since everything was in order. The only format I really didn’t like was the one that was organized by weight. I just don’t see how that would be very beneficial.

Cyril Lunt
More. Grading. Chapters. Stuff. But hey, at least this is the second to last one, so who am I to complain?

Chapter thirteen of FIAE is about grading, more specifically, the gradebook, and how to organize it. While I was at the middle school, I actually graded papers and put them on Powerschool. It was a sort of surreal experience, because my entire life, I've always been the one watching the teacher do both things. Now I'm the master! Muahauahuahuahha!


 * Cough* Okay, enough of that. Anyways, I definitely like the idea of grading a project several ways. It's almost like using a rubric, of which I enjoy. It gives much more feedback to the student than merely slapping a grade on it, not that the students will necessarily be able to see the gradebook, though as a teacher I'll be sure to give students an opportunity to at least give it a look-see. I don't see why not.

Kyle Kuvaja
Chapter thirteen of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// is about gradebook formats for differentiated classrooms. Wormeli says that there is no one gradebook for every situation. It is suggested that many different ones are looked at and evaluate how effective it is as the year goes on. Gradebooks that are for classrooms that teach to standard based classes will be different from ones that don’t. The book has room for students to improve. Other grade books have headers for teachers with assignments that are graded on weight. Topics based gradebooks have spaces to assess assignments in more than one area. The bottom line is that grades should be clear and that students should have options in a differentiated classroom. Gradebooks will be different depending on the assignments and it will take time for a teacher to understand which one works best.

This chapter feels very technical and boring compared to many of the other chapters. While I understand it is important to decide what gradebook will be used, I feel that there are many chapters on grading and that the gradebook will be a fluid organism that will develop according to the content and projects. I have no idea what I will be teaching as of now, so the chapter is not that useful.