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Ethan Guthrie Herrell
Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Chapter 13

This chapter talks about the differing formats of grading books. While both holding to the standards and to differentiation is something all gradebooks must do, there are luckily a variety of formats that can do this so long as we make sure they are suited to our individual classrooms and students.

The teacher, as a part of the focus on standards, should develop complex narratives and or at least comments that describe in detail what they have achieved and haven’t achieved. For example, “Samuel understands how numbers and superior organization helped the Romans conquer the Celts, but has not shown that he understands the linguistic and cultural changes that set in after the Germanic tribes invaded the Empire.” That is much more helpful than, “Samuel has done well but has areas to work on.” It’s not about the grade, it’s about they know.

The author introduces an idea I had never considered before: having more than one grade for an assignment if the assignment is meant to demonstrate mastery of more than one standard. It seems like a waste of time, but giving grades that don’t the student a clear idea of what they must do and all the blundering about are the real waste of time when you think about it. However, if possible, you should probably make sure that your assignments have focus. toc

Karina Sprague
Chapter 13 discussed the different formats used in teachers’ gradebooks. Every teacher organizes their grades differently, and this chapter gave multiple ideas for how to effectively organize your gradebook. For example, some teachers grade by date so it is easier to see the students’ growth. Other teachers grade by bunching like assignments to see what the students’ strengths and weaknesses are. Every teacher should have a paper gradebook whether they have online grading or not. Having a paper gradebook makes it easy to adjust grades, notice missing assignments, and (as we all know) technology is not great or perfect, so having a back up record of grades is a good idea.

I am a very organized person, but I do not think that this chapter was extremely important. I think this could have been covered in a paragraph or two in another chapter. The only way that teachers are going to decide which organization technique is right for them is by trial and error. There is no way that a book can teach or tell someone how to organize something. Logical thinkers will organize their gradebooks much differently than visual thinkers. Verbal/Linguistic thinkers will record differently than logical thinkers. Organization of the gradebook depends on the class, the teachers multiple intelligences, and the most reasonable and logical way to organize the book for the teacher. However, substitutes, colleagues, and superiors may need to see your gradebook, so it should be organized and legible enough for anyone to navigate. Obviously, if it is too difficult for you to navigate, a colleague will not be able to understand it either.

Sam Leal
Chapter 13: Gradebook Formats for the Differentiated Classroom

There is no one gradebook format that works perfectly for every teacher. A gradebook is a record of all the students’ mastery on specific assignments. The chapter shows many examples of gradebook formats that fit well for different teachers and their ways of teaching. The first format groups assignments into standards. This is very helpful for teachers who teach to standards because it allows the teacher to be able to point out right away what groups are a students weakness and what are a students strengths.

One format that I’m most popular with and saw most when I was in High School is one that groups assignments based on weight or category. For example all test are grouped into one column and the weight of that category is 30% of the total grade. And then homework is all grouped into one category that is worth 10% of the total grade. This is what I’m familiar with, but it’s great to learn more formats because none are perfect and it’s important to strive to find what will best benefit the students learning within the class. As a young teacher I’m still weighing all types and want to learn from teachers with experience what works well for them and what doesn’t always work so well.

Cidney Mayes
There are many different gradebook systems, and what type of system is used is usually dependent on teacher preferences. Gradebooks can be organized a number of ways, from grouping assignments by standard, weight, or category; and listing assignments by due date. All have advantages and disadvantages, and it is usually up to the teacher to decide what works best for them and their students.

I really like the idea of grouping assignments by standard, even though it may require extra work and multiple entries for the same assignment may be necessary. I think that this system accurately portrays student achievement and makes the grades more accurate and useful. You can quickly look at a student and know exactly what standards the have mastered and which ones still need work, and even evaluate class progress as a whole by looking at which standards need to be addressed. This method also re-enforces differentiated instruction methods by breaking down a grade into components that are highly specific, and therefore more easily targeted for potential differentiation. One format of gradebook I would stay far away from would be the topic-based system. Just looking at the figure on page 169 makes me go cross-eyed. There are too many columns and rows for me to effectively organize my thoughts and categorize student grades. Personal preference does play a huge part in choosing a gradebook style, but as long as student interest and differentiated instruction are the main focus, I don’t see any problem in every teacher using a different system.

Elizabeth Sargent
Gradebooks are an important aspect of any teacher’s classroom. They keep track of patterns and changes that students may accumulate over a period of time. Using standards to grade learning is a new and promising way to get teachers organizing in terms of levels of performance. The standards or columns reflect the grade on the assessment of the columns stated standard, not just one overall grade. Assignments should be listed by date to show each students growth over time. As teachers, we should not look at the most recent scores and weigh them higher than scores earlier in the grading period. All evidence, or grades, should be used in the final average and weighed the same. Quizzes and tests may of course count more than homework, but these scores will average out to a median. Thus, showing if the student has mastered the material. Overall, “gradebooks must provide clear, accurate reporting of achievement; be responsive to students’ learning differences’ focus on essential learnings and their benchmarks’ and be easy to manage”(171). Gradebooks are necessary to help teachers organize and look at each students progress with them individually as well as collectively. Scores and missed assignments are all important to each students grade, and a gradebook helps a teacher keep track of who has what, and where they stand in the terms of the class rank. It also lets teachers keep track of which students may be struggling and where they may want to turn their eye for some extra pointers.

Emily Haskell
Chapter 13: Gradebook Formats for the Differentiated Classroom

This chapter was very interesting to me. Here the author talked about the different types of gradebooks a teacher could use to gauge a student’s progress in a class especially as it pertains to certain benchmarks and standards. This was not only interesting, but also surprising to me. I think this is one of the places where I really had no idea what I was doing! I didn’t even know that there were different ways to organize your gradebook.Though it is clear that there is no one type of setup that is “right,” it is up to the teacher to choose the grading style that is fit for him or her. One of the suggestions that I found interesting was that the teacher use benchmarks and standards as categories of achievement rather than individual assignments. This is a very new idea to me and a little scary, but I found this chapter very helpful as a future teacher, especially because the idea of a gradebook was so foreign to me.

Jordan Hale
“First and foremost, the teacher must stop thinking in terms of assignments, tests and activities to which points are assigned, and start thinking in terms of levels of performance in the declarative and procedural knowledge specific to her subject area…”(163). This quote from Ken O’Connor sums up how teachers need to change in order to grade based on performance tasks and differentiated instruction. This chapter suggests a few different ways to group your grading book. The combination of two types of gradebook styles will benefit the teacher, the student and the student’s parents. The marriage of a topics-based gradebook and listing the assignments by time will be the most beneficial for all. Organizing assignments by topics will help immediately show where the students need more reinforcements and where the teacher needs to lead their instruction. A timeline of the students learning, especially with the overall topics, will show how the student has grown. It will help in the long run to assess how the student learns, how they have grown, or declined, as a student.

Either way, I think it is going to be a challenge with the gradebook, especially for the first few years of teaching. There are always advantages and disadvantages to certain gradebook styles, and it will take some time, but eventually I will find one that works for all parties involved. One point I thought was interesting was giving a final grade based on where the student is now, not where they were in September. The assessments will give the future teachers a clearer vision of where that student is within the content. If a student was getting D’s in September and A’s in June, would a C be a good indication of is mastery of the content? Depending on the class, probably not. I am not in full support of this theory because what if the student was performing A’s in September and dropped to D’s? Should I disregard the correct mastery the student has shown and give them a D? This is where experience will be able to tweak this theory to the point of being able to use it effectively.

Colby Hill
Woohoo, grade book formats! Just I wanted to read about! These guys have me from the get go, saying that “everything we do should promote student learning, even when students’ learning is differentiated” (161). I agree with this sentence, but it is pretty much what the whole book has been about. I do like the idea of looking at a grade book as a record of actions (which is what it is) both by us as teachers and the students. I myself like to think of it this way (and maybe I watch too much //CSI// on television): the grade book is a document that needs detail. If I were at a crime scene I would not say “broken glass near the exit” (which is like saying a B). I would describe how the glass was on the inside or outside of the building, how many windows there were, and how it was broken. This is what a grade book should try and achieve as well: detail. Help out the detectives (parents and students) figure out how this grade happened. The various questions that are asked for the teacher to think about when writing in the grade book seem to be very helpful. “Is this easily understood by others” and “Is it an accurate statement of mastery” are two important ones. The formats that are provided on page 163 and 164 are very nice formats, but I’d like to see more. Those seem to be very lenient and helpful for science or math classes, seeing some English specific would be both interesting and helpful.

Spencer Hodge
Chapter 13 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal talks about the four different types of gradebooks a teacher can have. Before this chapter, I had never thought about the fact that there might be more than one type of gradebook, or what type it was. I like the idea of grouping assignments to the standards or benchmarks the students are going to hit when we teach them. However since grading is grouped by the standards, we’d need to record the grade more than once if it hits multiple standards, which could be very time consuming. The second type of gradebook is sorted by the weight of the assignment based on its complexity. This may seem rather time consuming, however, its effective. Listing assignments based on date is the third way to arrange a gradebook and this is the one that I saw a lot throughout high school. While it seemed to work for my teachers, I like it because it can clearly show growth of a student over time. A topics-based gradebook is the final gradebook from this chapter, and can prove useful.