Hola, Ben!
I feel like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth in the last few months. School and life have both been crazy busy, and I haven’t been able to check in with the PLC as often as I used to.
My students lost two weeks of classes in the month of February due to snow days. It’s an issue I’m sure has affected many teachers, and I think it has had a negative impact on my classroom environment. The sense of community that I tried to cultivate at the beginning of the semester (block schedule) is just not where I want it to be.
Part of the problem is my grading. I tried a new system, where grades are divided more by skills (30% Interpersonal (jGR), 25% each reading & listening, 15% writing, and 5% speaking), but I wasn’t grading jGR as harshly as I needed to be. Students with truly horrible communication skills (blurting, nonresponding, etc.) were still passing my class.
Now, on the backs of my little quiz papers is a self-reflection piece about interpersonal communication. They circle Always, Sometimes, or Never for “Active Listening” “Responding in Spanish” and “Contains Urge to Speak English”. Previously, I assigned an A to Always, a C to Sometimes, and an F to Never, but it was still resulting in passing grades for bad communication. So now that we are in a new quarter, I am assigning a 5, a 3, or a 1, and students can earn a total of 15 points. I think this will more accurately reflect where they are.
I’m curious about what the group thinks. Does this sound fair? Is this a similar system to how others gauge jGR?
Gracias,
Erin