Just wondering what people do - I am grading some writing assignments from kids and I am wondering what I should grade on - Either: 1) How well they did as an individual or 2) How well they did in comparison to other ============ I am giving letter grades... Some kids I know they are not cabable of doing top notch work and I see they are working hard so I will give them a little higher grade or should I be fare all around and have A as one standard and B as another and so on?????
I would say always grade how well they do compared to themselves. It's not really fair in writing to grade in comparison to one another. Just my opinion.
Our provincial Ministry of Education has published exemplars that show what level 1, 2, 3, and 4 responses "look like". By being familiar with these, we can try to ensure that we all all grading consistently and that my "B" wil be someone else's "B: as well.
I generally have a rubric that goes with whatever writing piece Ive assigned(generally one finished piece per month, based on my grade level team's writing plan for the year). This ensures that I grade consistently across the grade level, and the students and their parents know what I am looking for on each piece. I only grade/keep one writing piece per month. The students have a writing journal that they keep all of their rough drafts in and I look through that biweekly. I dont grade that, just make comments in it.
Also, giving them a writing rubric ahead of time will help the kids who would not get A's get them. For example: Neatest handwriting may be on the rubric. Well, one kids neat handwriting looks nothing like another, but you can still check off that part in the rubric. The other things in the rubric can be less objective, or more depending on how you create it. This site has exemplars: http://www.thewritingsite.org/exemplars/index.asp It's VERY cool!!! I'm going to use it. At my old school we had these, and now I don't. I just found the site. Enjoy.
I use the state writing rubric and judge their writing based off of that. If it is someone that I know can't make it, I usually take into account the level of the student and grade based off of their level as well.
We use our LEAP writing rubric. I have a hard copy that my parish gave me, but can't find it online as one page. Pages 15 - 17 on this document have it: http://www.doe.state.la.us/lde/uploads/1635.pdf
I do remember getting writing assignment back with "I know this isn't your best work " written on them. You can count on the fact that THAT grade wasn't as high as I'd have liked!
Thank you for this site! I plan to use some of the exemplars not only as a way to judge writing strenths, but also as examples for the kids to look over so they know what I'm looking for.
