On Points part 1

Photo Credit: Gary https://www.flickr.com/people/g_b/

I have spent the past couple of years reassessing my grading policy, specifically do I give points or weight grades? I do not really understand how points can be worked out without doing a ton of math and advanced planning, so I weight my grades.  The question that then arises is this: if I weight my grades, what percentage should be given to these grades? and what categories should I use?  

When I first started teaching I used categories like homework, writing, listening/speaking and tests.  These were the categories used by my predecessor and at the time they seemed to make sense.  With more experience and knowledge, I have decided that those categories are too vague and do not indicate what students are able to do with the language.  I have attended workshop after workshop on Standards Based Grading and have changed my grading policy to more accurately reflect what students are doing with the language.  It is not perfect and I suspect that I will change it again this year.  But here it is today, before I start working on changes for the 2019-2020 school year.  The red indicates possible changes, if I am to use current policy.  I am thinking about using the upper level grading policy for all of my classes, but I still feel like it needs revision.

For French 1-3

• 5%  Grammar and Vocab practice (fill in the blanks from the workbook) I may do away with this category all together. This is a topic for another discussion on another day
• 5%  10% Cultural Competency- Cultural comprehension questions and activities
• 25%  Written communication (essays, projects, reading comprehension, blog entries, letters)
• 30%  25% Oral Communication (group participation, small group work, dialogues, listening comprehension activities, oral presentations, flipgrid)
• 20 % Unit tests and quizzes This category will be discussed in future blog posts.
• 15%  Final exam

For French IV/V and AP

10% Interpretive Communication

15% Interpersonal Writing

15% Interpersonal Speaking

15% Presentational Writing

15% Presentational Speaking

15% Tests and quizzes

15% Final Exam

Grading policies are, in many ways, so personal.  They reflect the priorities of the individual teachers. They need to make sense to the students.  Grading policies telegraph to students what they need to do in order to be successful in a given class.They also need to be fair so that each student is able to achieve their potential.  And in the modern language classroom, they need to reflect the ACTFL Proficiency guidelines, which is why I prefer the French IV and AP grading policy.

In addition to revamping my overall grading policy, I am working on revamping how I grade summative assessments and not including formative assessments in student grades at all.  All of the categories above would be summative assessments given at intervals throughout a unit and the semester.  How I will be grading will be included in On Points part 2.  

In summary, grades and grade categories should indicate how well a student performs on various tasks.  In other words, what they are able to do with the language in real-world situations.  They should not be about students reciting grammar rules or memorizing verb conjugations; these will be evident when looking at free-response activities.  Grades and grading need to be fair so that the lowest and highest performing students feels like their grade reflects what they are able to do (and what they need to improve on) and not just about points.