I have been postponing the post about grading for as long as possible, hoping that if I ignore this topic it will go away. But alas, just like in my first three years, grading is threatening to give me ulcers yet again. I remember being physically sick for my first round of parent teacher conferences. I wasn't worried about talking to parents about their children, or presenting myself well, or sharing my concerns. Instead, I was mortified at the idea that I had to establish the entire system that determined what grade each student got. I felt like I wasn't teaching students anything by assigning them letter grades, I was just in charge of judging them. I still can't get away from the notion that grades are just judgements. Not to mention, judgements that are taken at a specific moment in time, but are speaking to a process that is dynamic.

I found grading writing especially difficult. If a student took all of the advice that he/she got during conferences and applied the mini-lesson strategies, and grew as a writer from draft to draft then I say A. Who am I to judge?

I have gleaned some new ideas from our dialogue that I will be trying next year to soothe my anxiety. Some of these are still held over from my previous grading model.

1. Give student access to the rubric at the beginning of a project.
2. Allow students to give feedback on the rubric.
3. Require students to score their own work using the rubric. Openly discuss the grade that the students will receive for a piece during a conference.
4. Allow them to rewrite for a higher.
5. Allow another reader to score if they think mine is unfair.
6. Give students a notebook grade--he/she tried the strategy or not
7. Give students a reading like a writer/collection grade.


8. Give a grade for revision process. (I still don't have the foggiest idea what this will look like.)

Oh yeah, I also need to figure out how to weight these catagories so that they reflect the writer's process and product. I still don't know about this...