FIAE Chapters 11, 12, 13 & 14

These chapters of Fair Isn’t Always Equal focused mainly on grading scales and the place they have in the classroom. These chapters were really informative and really helpful for me as a future teacher, especially because they had plenty of graphics when they were introducing something they knew that readers would be unsure about. The first chapter was all about sixty vs. zero and the effects that either the sixty or the zero would have a student’s overall grade. The argument the chapter made was that, while zeros would impact the final grade more, students who don’t do anything and still get sixties aren’t going to be motivated to get their work done.

One of my favorite things said in these four chapters, was that whatever grade scale is used, should focus more on the learning and the progress than just on the grade itself, which is what it should be about. When students receive their report card at the end of the grading period, they should be thinking more about what kind of learning they achieving, instead of just on the grade itself. For this kind of response, Rick Wormeli suggests that the 4.0 grade scale be used, as it’s less focused on letter grades.

Another really useful chapter in this section was the chapter about how to arrange the grade book. As a teacher, we’re going to have a lot of students and a lot of grades for each of those students, and there are many different ways that we can organize these grades for not only our benefit, but also for the benefit of the student and the student’s parents as well. Grade books are an important part of teaching, because students are always curious about grades and it’s important to keep all those things organized, so when the end of the grading period comes around, everything is available to you.

This section was extremely informative, with chapter 11 including a lot of different tricks to grading and information that many people might not immediately think about, like grading late work, grading kids with different needs and intelligences, and grading English work versus science work versus math versus social studies. All different subjects are going to have different requirements for grading.  A math assignment is going to have less focus on grammar and more focus on the mathematical process, unlike an English assignment, which is obvious going to have a heavier grammar focus.

Overall, I thought everything presenting in these chapters was extremely helpful and informative with information that I hadn’t necessarily thought about before. Hearing ways to organize your grade book was definitely something I had never considered before. I also think, as teachers, it’s important to understand the different grading scales and the pros and cons of both, so we can use the one we find best in our classroom.