Curricular Design - Grading

Belief:

I believe that grading should reflect students' abilities. There should be a progression of grading from formative to summative within a unit. Students should be able to practice the skills before they are tested on them. Summative grading does not have to be in the form of a test; it can be a project.


Why:

Based on the engineering curriculum that I teach, students are graded based on projects, not tests. However, I have also incorporated quizzes and tests into the curriculum as well. I like to have a variety of summative projects/tests to vary how I am grading the students and give them different opportunities to excel. Also, I believe that students need to practice before they can master a lesson. I give them chances to practice using various formative activities before the summative project/test.

This year in my PLC, we are working on summative based grading across grades. This is challenging since we teach different classes however, the classes are all engineering based. We have identified the standards that we need to meet for grades 6-9. Now, we are in the processing of working on common assessments. These common assessments will be based on the standards that we need to meet.

Actions:

I need to continue to create formative and summative assessments for both of the classes I teach. I feel that this helps reinforce the concepts in a way different from summative projects. I feel that both are necessary for a student to be successful learning.