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Ethan Guthrie Herrell
Understanding by Design: Chapter 8

This chapter is meant to serve as a guide teachers who use standards based curriculum and differentiated instruction and want to make sure that reflects in their grading. They feel that the percentage based grades are unfeeling and rigid additions to a process that is supposed to be governed by awareness and flexibility. A big-no-no is grading on a curve. While it removes the problem of a teacher expecting too much and having everyone fail, it creates an atmosphere of competition and where students, even when they achieve mastery, are punished for getting one or two more questions wrong than another student. It’s ridiculous and absurd. The grade is measure of what the student is able to achieve. Unfortunately, many grades on report cards are depending a several things that the teacher is unclear about and the student is completely unaware of. If we grade all students without any differentiation of where they were at when they first arrived in our classroom, we just put them in a cycle of unfair assessment and failure, falling further and further behind until they either starting hating the school or hating themselves, or both. Either way, a student will end up abandoning education. toc

Alex Randall
UbD/DI Chapter 8

This chapter is all about grading and reporting efficiently. The chapter is broken up into several smaller sections that talk about the principles of effective grading and reporting. The first principle is "Grades and Reports Should Be Based on Clearly Specified Learning Goals and Performance Standards." This goes hand in hand with the backward design teaching model because, in the backward teaching design, the logic is that we begin with a set of preset content-specific goals. Kind of makes sense; it is pretty straight forward. The second principle says "Evidence Used for Grading Should Be Valid," which makes perfect sense (and is pretty obvious) in and of itself. "Grading Should Be Based on Established Criteria, Not on Arbitrary Norms" is the third principle and also seems pretty to the point. The other principles touch upon other reasons why grades are and are not a big deal (or at least should not be taken as seriously as they are). Reading about all of this grading makes me think about how I am going to be assessing my future students. It also makes me think about how intimidating grades can be and how, sometimes, they are completely useless. Grades rarely accurately tell us much about the student. The only thing that grades really show is whether or not a student can do what they are told. Some students might even cheat to get the grades people think they deserve. Other students can know the content more and can apply it in more effective, real world ways and have a D- in the subject. Grades can be viewed as pointless but without them we would have nothing to go by.

Sam Leal
Chapter 8: Grading and Reporting Achievement

Chapter 8 in UbD/DI brings up one of the toughest parts of teaching, grading. Grades mean so much to many students (and parents), often to the students it means more than learning the material itself. Grades in a structured sense are a two-part process: the first being that the student receives a letter grade that defines how they performed with the material during a learning cycle, the second part is that grades are a way to report evalutation from the teacher on how the student performs, to the student and his/her parents. Because grades are so important lots of thought and time needs to go into appropriately grading each student.

Chapter 8 goes over the most important principles of grading. 1: Grades and reports should be based in clearly specified learning gorals and performance standards. 2: Evidence used for grading should be valid. 3: Grading should be based on established criteria, not on arbitrary norms. 4: Not everything should be included in grades. 5: Avoid grading based on averages. 6: Focus on achievement, and report other factors separately. (Tomlinson and McTighe page 129-133)

One thing to me that I believe about grading that makes it better for the students to understand is if they know what to expect with grades. I’m a big believer in if they know ahead of time the students will worry less about what their grade is going to be and more on trying their very best to learn the material. Grades are also very important in motivating many students.

Cidney
This chapter deals with grading in a differentiated classroom. The authors phrases grading as the necessity to “communicate to important audiences, such as students and parents, high quality feedback to support the learning process and encourage learner success.” (129) When grading, some of the most important aspects are to base assessment on learning goals and performance standards, the evidence for grading should be valid, and grading should be based on clearly established criteria. Also, grades should not be based on averages, and they should be focused on achievement while other factors are reported separately.

I wish so much that we could get away with not using grades. I really prefer the idea of students learning to standards and showing mastery of material through portfolio and projects that meet criteria and standards for learning. A grade should not be a label, and yet it automatically becomes one when you give it to a student. I think the best compromise that I can make as a teacher is to really push portfolios and standards-based assessment and grading in my class, then have those grades transfer to whatever the school system requires. Hopefully some day, we won’t have to deal with letter grades and we can just focus on the standards.

Jordan Hale
“Clear, fair and honest communication of standards-based achievement that concurrently honors the uniqueness of individuals” is the overall goal of reporting achievement (139). There are six guiding principles of effective grading and reporting starting on page 129 and going to 133. They are:
 * 1) Grades and reports should be based on clearly specified learning goals and performance standards
 * 2) Evidence used for grading should be valid.
 * 3) Grading should be based on established criteria, not on arbitrary norms.
 * 4) Not everything should be included in grades.
 * 5) Avoid grading based on (mean) averages.
 * 6) Focus on achievement, and report other factors separately.

If educators use the backward design model than there should be clearly defined goals from the beginning that will help shape how teachers can report achievement. In summation, reporting achievement should look at the standards used to shape lessons and the overall learning process of the students. Grades have always been a part of school. I think it is time for a change. Assessing a student’s knowledge should be based on learning achievement and learning standards. The switch to a standards-based assessing system would take some time and some fighting, but overall would benefit the students much more. The six guiding principles are pretty much pointing educators to use a standard-based assessment rather than grade-based assessment. One major roadblock to this major change is the school districts themselves. They talk about how school districts create the grade-based assessment tool that their teachers must follow. Therefore, in order to change the system, we must get support from the big wigs in the educational realm.

Karina Sprague
Chapter eight of the UbD/DI book suggests ways to grade students based on differentiated instruction. It is pretty clear that students should be graded individually, and not based on their level in the class. One thing in this chapter that really stood out to me was the idea that students need to be graded on what they learned, and not what they already knew. For example, if a student comes into a class knowing everything, they will get a good grade if the teacher is grading students on what they know. If the student already knows everything, they can pass the class without learning anything knew. This is where differentiated instruction and pre-assessments come in.

First of all, pre-assessments should never be graded. They are merely a tool for teachers and students to see where they are at the beginning of the class. Secondly, all assessments should be altered to fit the student. If you give the same assessment to every student, the students who are struggling will do poorly, and the advanced students will not be challenged. If you differentiate tests, you can better assess how much each student has learned.

I think it is a really good idea to grade students based on what they have learned. If I think about assessing like this in my future classroom, I know it will be a good push for me to differentiate my assessments. The grades will also help me see how well my teaching skills are. If all of my students improve their knowledge and their grades, I will know I have taught them well.

Colby Hill
Ubd/di chap 8 From parents (or at least my parents) to the teachers to the students, grading and grades are a very controversial thing in school. My parents believed one thing, my friends another, and my teachers something different than that. Parents want good grades because it shows you are learning. Bad grades equal some sort of punishment. My teachers believed that grades were important but didn’t really show what the students were learning, and were a low representation. And, of course, my friends thought they were stupid. This chapter talks about grading and reporting achievement. One of the first suggestions is treating it like the course itself: have clear goals and standards chosen prior. Luckily for us, that is what we are doing with the syllabus. The other principles hold knowledge. We should make sure the evidence for grading is valid, established criteria, and the idea that not everything needs to be included in grades. I think the last of those three is one of the most important ones. When I was in school I believed that if I was not being graded on something three things: 1. It took off some stress. 2. It probably wasn’t that important if there is no grade. 3. I don’t really have to do it then. Only one of those three is a good thing to think. I wish that this idea stuck more, though, because if everything is graded it adds both stress to you and the students, and it is still completely possible for students to learn without being graded.

Elizabeth Sargent
Chapter eight of //Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design// talks about ways for teachers to keep using a differentiated classroom technique and integrate a useful grading technique using differentiated instruction. Grading content can be organized around big ideas and organizing principles just like when using backward planning and differentiated instruction.

While I agree that diagnostic assessments and pre-assessments should not be included in grades, they should give an indication of where the student is and where he should be. If the student isn’t where he or she should be then they need to be then they should be brought up to speed as quickly as possible. I do believe that formative assessments should be included in grading, otherwise why would we use a formative assessment to see if students have attained mastery? Assessments do help teachers make instructional decisions but they also show teachers where students are with content mastery. With a mastery of content students should have no problem cruising through a formative assessment, it shows their content knowledge, therefore, why shouldn’t it be graded? While I do agree that formative assessments help the teacher more than anything, it is important for the student to know where they are content-wise. Summative assessments should go right along with formative assessments. When checking for understanding whether through a checklist or a rubric it is important to give a student a grade for what they are accomplishing. A summative assessment is important towards the overall grade, while the formative shows where the student is and helps them know, with feedback, what they need to work on. = =

=Emily Haskell= Chapter 8: Grading and Reporting Achievement

This chapter really spoke to me mainly because I find grading and assessment one of the most confusing things when it comes to teaching. It seems to me that I am always afraid that I am either being way too harsh or not being harsh enough. On top of that it seems that it is not always very easy to give constructive criticism and I think that when it comes to giving positive feedback it can very often seem fake or not genuine.

One thing that I thought of while reading the chapter was the story that we heard in class about the school with a three point system. If the system is still in use then it must work. I think that there is some value in letter grading, but at the same time there are students who will do what needs to be done to get the grade rather than actually learning the information. So then why do we still rely on this system? I think that we as teacher need to really focus on constructive criticism and positive specific feedback rather than on letter and number grades. We should watch a student’s progression and not compare them to others. =

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Spencer Hodge
Chapter 8 of UbD/DI was all about grading rules and regulations. It gave many do’s and don’ts about how to grade. My favorite part in the chapter talked about how a student shouldn’t be penalized if they mastered something in say week 7, and in week 2 or 3 they didn’t have a clue about it. If a poor grade (say a C or lower) was achieved on a single test, yet the other tests, including the final, were a B or better, then the lower grade would be ignored because it was obvious that the student had practiced their struggling area and made an effort to master the material. This is something that I definitely would want to incorporate into my grading structure. I firmly believe that what students learn is more important than when they learn it.