FIAE Chapter 14

Report card should be more then just a grade given to a student at the end of the grading period. Chapter fourteen explains that report cards should be based on the students mastery of the content, what they need to improve on, and what they have learned corresponding with the standards. I always thought that the notes next to the grades were what I was looking for not. I found that the overall opinion of how I was doing in the class from the teacher reflected more then the grade.

FIAE Chapter 13

Grade book formats can be organized in many ways. Through listing assignments by the date, category, or objective, teachers may find themselves just adding in one grade for each assignment. This does not show the learning curve of the student. By taking the overall grade and breaking it down to what you graded on the rubric, students will be able to make an adjustment to their work habit. They will be given more than one grade. This in turn will allow students to see that they need to participate more or focus more on the content than the product. Specific detail is always better then an overall analysis.

FIAE Chapter 12

Chapter twelve mentions many different grading scales that teachers use in schools. One of the scales that this chapter seems to dislike is the 100 point grading scale. By using this scale, students have a higher percentage to fail. Using a smaller scale, like a 4-point scale is a better tool to measure students abilities. A teachers who uses a rubric to grade everything for students is deemed as a better teacher because they are allowing the student grades to be based out of a scale that is fair. Making a smaller scale can take out the sixty point margin of failing and give students a better grade range to fall into. Yet, until a school does a complete overhaul on a grading system, students will still be subjected to mixed views of the scale.

FIAE Chapter 11

This chapter focuses on how a teacher grades students who do not do their homework. Because homework is suppose to be for practice, students should not be getting homework to take home and learn new things. Students have other roles that they have to take on when the leave the confines of the school. This chapter mentions that students should still get a failing grade for not doing their homework, but not a zero as a grade. If a teacher puts a zero in the grade for students that do not do their homework, their grades will be dramatically skews. By teachers using sixty points instead of none, the overall grading of the student that gets a bad grade will not have a skewed grading. I believe that more students will be able to pass through grades without needing to retake a class. I have observed in the classroom that the only reason why students fail classes is because they have three or four zero’s in the grade book. Most of them would have passed if given a sixty.