Nuts and Bolts
Grading & Assessment
Formal grading and assessment is a very large indicator of how my students are performing in my classroom. School districts prefer numerical data and other ways to show growth in the content knowledge of students. While I must remember that my data in recording student mastery of different concepts should be comprehensible to those unfamiliar with my classroom, I will also make it a priority to look at my students’ work through asset-based thinking. A worksheet may not be completed, but deducting points for incompletion wouldn’t accurately display a student’s comprehension. It would also be incorrect to reward full points to a student who randomly fills in the blanks to fulfill the aesthetic appearance of having completed their work. I would hope that my students complete as much of their assignments as possible, but when grading, I would take into consideration the quality of their work over the quantity.
I see it perfectly reasonable to only select a few specific activities or areas of the assignment that cover the different concepts they are working on without having to grade everything that is turned in for each assignment. I would not tell my students what would and would not be graded, but by randomly grading only key points of their assignments, I could save myself both time and energy in looking to see where my students stand in their knowledge of the content. This is not to say that the ungraded work is pointless, for this work provides further practice for students to really work with and understand what we are studying in class. I would also like to maybe periodically write little notes of encouragement on my students’ work in order to show them that I’m truly interested in their achievements.
A large portion of assessing my students’ mastery with different concepts will be in the form of projects. When I talk about projects, I am not only referring to the group projects that take days to put together and must incorporate multiple facets of the unit we are covering, but also smaller works that may take only a day to create. In my mind, a project is something that could be presented to the class (but doesn’t have to be) and would be graded with a rubric. I understand that rubrics take a lot of thought and energy when putting them together, but I am willing to take the extra time to create rubrics for different visual, oral, or kinesthetic representations of material we have covered in class. I want to make sure my students are doing more than just regurgitating what they’ve learned in class in the form of fill-in-the-blank worksheets and multiple choice activities. I want my students to be working in all areas of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Another way to gauge my students’ understanding is in the form of quizzes. I would not have pop quizzes because I feel that these discourage students from feeling that they can succeed in my classroom. I like the idea of having bi-weekly quizzes that briefly cover vocabulary and grammatical concepts. A specific example that I really admire from chapter 4 of Marzano’s Classroom Instruction that Works is the idea of rewarding students with “symbolic tokens of recognition” if they receive a score between 90 and 100 percent, or scored 10 points higher than their previous exam (Marzano 59). As Marzano states, “Reinforcing effort can help teach students one of the most valuable lessons they can learn- the harder you try, the more successful you are.” (Marzano 59) By having a very routine schedule of quizzes, students may have time to prepare for them. Having regular quizzes may also help prepare students for the bigger exams that come less periodically throughout the semester, but carry more weight.
I understand that I have previously stated three very concrete forms of assessing my students’ progress: homework, projects, and quizzes. These three forms of summative assessment will be very helpful in analyzing students’ growth in their learning, but they will certainly not be the only form of assessment in my classroom. I think the most important way of looking into the minds of my students is through formative assessment and conversing with my pupils one-on-one. Summative assessment may numerically show where my students need to improve, but I feel strongly that formative assessment should be employed to understand why my students are having trouble understanding an idea or expanding on a concept. Some quick and fun ideas to assess students formatively is to have them converse with one another in Spanish, talk with me about their weekends in Spanish, asking follow-up questions to anything mentioned by my students, and allowing for fun activities in the classroom such as using finger puppets or allowing free reading time. By observing and interacting with my students on an individual and personal level, I may identify what works for them and what I could do to change my instruction and better meet all of my students’ needs.
Discipline
Student behavior is very malleable and very strongly influenced by other factors in the environment. I hope to eliminate stress, anxiety, and frustration, among other instigators to bad behavior, by emphasizing a strong community and comfortable environment in my classroom. I will work my hardest to adapt to my students and learn what I could do best to make them feel most comfortable and receptive to learning. I believe that by holding high expectations for my students and creating engaging lessons, I can minimize the presence of poor behavior. In the instances that a student does act out or misbehave, I will indeed have a way to respond. I feel that the consequence should match the behavior of the student.
If a student has misbehaved in my classroom, I would have a series of responses to rely on. I would first verbally ask that a student stops the disruptive behavior. This could be quietly in passing his or her desk or slipped in between the words I am speaking in a lesson to the class as a whole. If the student persists, I would call him or her aside during class when other students were working independently or there was a transition in the lesson. If a student continued to have problems, or if there was not an appropriate time to talk to the student in class, I would ask that he or she stays after class to discuss further whatever was happening during class. Depending on the severity of the behavior, I would call parents to inform them of their child’s behavior in class. Whatever the case, I would try not to focus solely on the actions of the students, but also the reasoning behind such decisions. I do not see problems being solved effectively if I am not actively pursuing the root of the issue at hand.
I have stated previously that I will maintain high expectations for my students and I will try to eliminate the sources of distractions in my classroom, but there will be some things that I am more lenient with when handling. I must keep in mind that a few whispered words thrown back and forth between students during instruction doesn’t automatically mean the students aren’t paying attention because they could have just been clarifying something or expanding on a concept that was just taught. I will also trust that my students know when to appropriately leave their desk to sharpen their pencil or grab a tissue. If the noise level begins to get out of hand at any given time, I will have a system where I ring a bell if students are too loud. For any given situation, I will ask that my students work in one of the noise levels zero through three: zero would be defined as absolutely no noise, one would be quiet whispers among students, two would be talking at regular voices, and three would be a rare level where students could be heard from other nearby classrooms. I would try to avoid being in the noise level three. If students begin to abuse these privileges, I will take them away, but I feel that trusting and respecting my students in the classroom will help set a strong foundation for a respectful community.
Another aspect of discipline that I need to address is that of late work. I would like to set firm due dates for all assignments. I would only accept work one day late, but if this was abused, then I could refuse to accept late work, except for in the cases of illness or other legitimate excuses. Having said this, I would also allow my students to “pass” two eligible assignments per semester. I will try to assign homework often so that a student could “pass” an assignment that he or she either doesn’t want do or they could save their passes in case they forgot to do an assignment. Having extra passes left at the end of the semester would not be carried over and they would not be translated into extra credit. Their purpose would be to allow some sort of leniency in the collection of homework, but it would still provide stable guidelines for the students to follow in terms of completing and turning in their work. Projects and other big assignments would not be eligible for passes.