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I've been grading tests for the last 24 hours and I'm now recording them/posting them to my gradebook. I can observe on main thing among those with low grades: they are not "showing their work."
I bribe my students with extra credit. I do. I admit it. I teach them via warm-ups and other things HOW to slow down and see the details and get the RIGHT answers. For instance, for reading comprehension questions, I teach them to look for context clues in the question to be sure they are finding the right answer in the story. I encourage them to mark off WHERE they are in the site passage on the test, and to do their "thinking" right there on the page.
On sentence completion sections, such as (on the Latin 1 test) deciding whether you need a nominative or an accusative to complete the sentence, I encourage students to be sure to identify what they already have and to think about sentence patterns. On subject/verb agreement, I encourage students to circle verb endings and think about what is needed as a subject or vice versa.
Any mnemonic device that they use I *want* to see in the margins. I want to see them using it.
Every now and then when a student does badly AND has notes, I can see where they went wrong. For instance, one girl just made a chart up wrong and because of that kept choosing the wrong answer. I'm going to encourage her to retake that particular portion of the test. But almost everyone else who did poorly did NOT show their work so I canNOT see where they went wrong.
In all likelihood they had no test-taking strategy but were randomly choosing answers.
I see bright kids who *can* do well who don't seem to realize it because they won't help themselves. So right now as I'm recording these grades I'm trying to think of HOW to get some of these strugglers to do what I'm teaching them to do.
It's not about the extra points, though that helps a bit (usually 3-6 points or so for those who do it). I really and truly think that their grades are raised a letter grade by just the act of showing their thinking.
Sometimes people as whether my grades are inflated. Some. Sure, I'll be honest about that. They are inflated a bit on the top end. On the other hand, I have students scraping by HONESTLY and actually learning enough to get through a second year--and maybe even a 3rd. I'm not passing students with stupid fluff for extra credit--I'm trying to teach skills with my extra credit. I'm trying to get MORE students to HIGHER levels of Latin by teaching them the skills that come naturally to other students.
After all, AP wants us to have more diverse students in our classes--but how can we get them there if we don't teach them the skills they need early on?
The one thing I'm sure of--I never want MY Latin courses to be a weed-out course.
back to my grading
I bribe my students with extra credit. I do. I admit it. I teach them via warm-ups and other things HOW to slow down and see the details and get the RIGHT answers. For instance, for reading comprehension questions, I teach them to look for context clues in the question to be sure they are finding the right answer in the story. I encourage them to mark off WHERE they are in the site passage on the test, and to do their "thinking" right there on the page.
On sentence completion sections, such as (on the Latin 1 test) deciding whether you need a nominative or an accusative to complete the sentence, I encourage students to be sure to identify what they already have and to think about sentence patterns. On subject/verb agreement, I encourage students to circle verb endings and think about what is needed as a subject or vice versa.
Any mnemonic device that they use I *want* to see in the margins. I want to see them using it.
Every now and then when a student does badly AND has notes, I can see where they went wrong. For instance, one girl just made a chart up wrong and because of that kept choosing the wrong answer. I'm going to encourage her to retake that particular portion of the test. But almost everyone else who did poorly did NOT show their work so I canNOT see where they went wrong.
In all likelihood they had no test-taking strategy but were randomly choosing answers.
I see bright kids who *can* do well who don't seem to realize it because they won't help themselves. So right now as I'm recording these grades I'm trying to think of HOW to get some of these strugglers to do what I'm teaching them to do.
It's not about the extra points, though that helps a bit (usually 3-6 points or so for those who do it). I really and truly think that their grades are raised a letter grade by just the act of showing their thinking.
Sometimes people as whether my grades are inflated. Some. Sure, I'll be honest about that. They are inflated a bit on the top end. On the other hand, I have students scraping by HONESTLY and actually learning enough to get through a second year--and maybe even a 3rd. I'm not passing students with stupid fluff for extra credit--I'm trying to teach skills with my extra credit. I'm trying to get MORE students to HIGHER levels of Latin by teaching them the skills that come naturally to other students.
After all, AP wants us to have more diverse students in our classes--but how can we get them there if we don't teach them the skills they need early on?
The one thing I'm sure of--I never want MY Latin courses to be a weed-out course.
back to my grading
