I’ve had this post on my to-do list for months. To be honest, this is the piece of this whole process that I have the most questions about, so I just kept putting off writing it. I’m in a … Continue reading
In conversations with teachers about alternatives to traditional assessment, especially skeptical teachers, I often hear, “there’s no way my students will work without points.” I get it. I do. My journey to here has been lengthy. Paradigm shift does … Continue reading
As a follow up to a previous post about the process my students and I went through to craft our grade agreement for this year, I wanted to share the finalized grade agreement we ended up with. Here it is. … Continue reading
My colleagues and I did our #StopGrading presentation at our state ELA conference a few weeks ago. Seeing as we’ll be doing the same presentation later this month at NCTE in Atlanta, we distributed notecards to the teachers who came … Continue reading
The first semester I went gradeless, I didn’t have in place any kind of agreement with students regarding what would make an A, B, C, etc. once we had to put something in the gradebook at the end of … Continue reading
You know the drill. Parent sits down for a conference at parent/teacher conferences. You pull up your grade records for the student. You walk the parent through the grade data, pointing out what the student is doing well and what … Continue reading
I no longer put grades on individual pieces of student writing for a variety of reasons, but one of the most important ones surfaced this evening. I’m making my way through the first batch of my students’ thorough revisions. These … Continue reading
I am one teacher in a room of thirty (or more) writers. They need copious amounts of feedback to grow, more than it is humanly possible for me to provide for them. But yet, we teachers of writing often feel … Continue reading
Back-to-school night was this past Wednesday, the evening where parents walk through their students’ schedules with ten minutes for each class. This is not enough time to tell them very much, especially if I want to leave time for a … Continue reading
When people find out I don’t put points or grades on individual pieces of writing, one of the first questions I get is what I do instead. I focus on feedback–as much as I can provide, and conferences are a key … Continue reading
