Session 5 Report Cards: Grades, Learning Skills & Comments

Administrative: Informational: Guidance: Motivational: Four Purposes for Grading: Administrative: Credits, promotion, ranking. Informational: For students/parents/others to show how objectives are met. Guidance: Select programs, courses, support, levels of work. Motivational: Extrinsic motivation. What is the effect of low grades on student motivation? Does grade inflation provide a false sense of accomplishment?

Grade Book Tips: Grade book may simply be a series of class lists with assignments noted along the top horizontal line to denote the grades in each column. The cells in the grade book may be numeric or letter grades. Colour code your grade book pages according to the term or semester. Example: yellow paper for all Term 1 grade book pages and pink paper for all Term 2 pages. Keep a sample copy of each evaluation tool (test, rubric, checklist, rating scale, etc.) with your grade book pages for each grade column.

Report Card Grades: Base report card grades on a series of evaluations taken from both alternative and traditional assessments. This helps to balance out students’ strengths and weaknesses. To arrive at students’ grades, you will use your judgment as to how to synthesize information. As you decide on how to weigh different kinds of evaluations, consider the summative and formative evaluations. How do you feel about factoring motivation, participation and effort into grades by assigning “+” or “-” ?

Your Grade Book Final Grades: Elementary Panel The report card grade should be reflective of the highest, most consistent grade. What would you assign each student as a report card grade? Your Grade Book Task 1Task 2Task 3Final Grade Student 1 CB+B-? Student 2 B+ B-? Student 3 A- C?

Final Grades: Secondary Panel The report card grade must be determined as follows (Min.of Ed., 2000): 70% of the grade is based on formative and summative evaluations from throughout the course. “This portion of the grade should reflect the student’s most consistent level of achievement.” 30% of the final grade is based on a final evaluation in the form of an examination, performance, and/or essay administered toward the end of the course.