So the board decided not to let us talk tonight and we were given the directive to have grades in our gradebook be the traditional way of reporting grades by a week from Monday. I literally cried in front of one of our superintendents when I told them that they are adding at least 3 hrs of work and having to do separate data collection now. And I lead the group of teachers that are under fire by the Gov for not meeting AYP. She responded with "we didn't take our jobs because they would be easy." I was ready to punch her in the face and I'm not a violent person.
I'm not giving up and I'm not stopping but I need all the ideas and help from you guys. I'm not sure how to do this exactly but just cause they say I can't do it one way doesn't mean I'm going to rename it something and still do the same stuff. Any ideas or suggestions on how to do this on the DL are highly appreciated!
Hello Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI've been doing SBG on my own for the last 4 years; I would recommend that you keep your SBG grading system open, just convert those grades into the 0 - 100% method in some reasonable fashion. This way, you allow students the opportunity within your classroom to improve as they have been, you keep the motivations as they are, but to outward appearances, you've complied as the man wants.
Keep up the fight,
ecv
e's advice is sound. I too was the only teacher in my district to adopt in 2001 the SBG grading guidelines recommended by Ken O'Connor in his book Grading for Learning.
ReplyDeleteMy guidelines are here, if you're interested...
http://repairman.wordpress.com/sbg-grading-guidelines/
I'd be privileged to correspond with you if you want to hear more: hughodonnell44 at gmail dot com.
Thanks guys so much, We now have been told that our gradebooks are to have grades in them under the categories "major" and "minor" (my PLC has renamed them "Assessments" and "Work". I wanted to have only one category called "work" :) ) I'm still going to have my students track their learning and break their test grades up after their done. Now on our tests the only thing we can put next to the questions is the point value and the TEKS number.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a big disappointment having all of this pulled out from under us but at least I know I can keep parts of it in my classroom. I'll definitely being checking out your blogs and resources!