In Chapter 9 of Fair Isn’t Always Equal, Wormelli describes ten mistakes that we should avoid making when applying differentiated instruction. The ten tips are avoid incorporating non-academic factors, avoid penalizing students’ attempts at mastery, avoid grading practice, avoid withholding assistance, avoid assessing students with invalid assessments, avoid allowing extra credit and bonus points, avoid group grades, avoid grading on a curve, avoid recording zeroes for missed work, avoid being norm-referenced. These are important pointers to help teachers with figuring out the best grading system for their class. The chapter says that we do not know the perfect day for every student to assess them on. So through our grading system and by using the ideas brought forward in this chapter we can help assess our students on both bad and good days. This will help in giving us the best understanding of student mastery.
Throughout the reading of this chapter many of us seemed to find the same things interesting. Certain aspects brought forward seemed to catch the attention of many such as the idea of homework being practice, so it should only be graded on completion and the effort put into it. As teachers, we should also make sure to give each student feedback on the homework to help them see the areas they did not quite understand and to better remember it for later. However, some seemed to think when dealing with homework it could be tricky to not grade it. This could either go very poorly or be very beneficial to the students, which is why it would be better to grade it in some way like by effort. Some of us seemed to agree that it is important to have students re-do work to get a better mastery of the subject. Yet this should only be partial credit when being re-done instead of full credit. Some believed that both effort and participation were important to helping lead students to mastery and should be added in the grading system. Though they believed they should be added to grading they thought that this grade should be a small percentage of the whole final grade. Many of us agreed that extra credit could be very beneficial to the mastery of a subject. However, it can only be beneficial if it fully relates to the subject matter we are trying to have them master. Many also seemed to think students should be helped when they don’t understand and do something wrong; rather than be penalized for doing it wrong. We as teachers should help our students better understand what they are doing wrong by giving them other tools to help them understand and master the subject such as, graphic organizers, questionnaires, etc. Another issue that seemed kind of controversial was the issue of grading students in groups. Some seemed to think it would be a good method sharing stories of past teachers who did this and it was a success for them. However, others seemed to think it is hard to tell one student’s mastery based on group grading; therefore, they seemed to think it was better to grade an individual on the work they brought to the group. Either way seemed to have evidence to back up the point and both would probably work. Overall this chapter had many issues addressed that we seemed to find important to discuss when thinking about grading students on mastery of the subject area.
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