I weigh Quick Quizzes at 65% of the overall grade and jGR at 35% – those numbers work for me. I would like to share in this post how often I enter grades on Quick Quizzes:
My take is to do as many as I can. Two per week minimum. But I see the wisdom of being aggressive with more, up to four per week, in the first half of each grading period. Just to keep them in line.
The pattern in my school – and we in this group all are in vastly different settings – is that the kids slack off early in each six week grading period. It is urban class cutting madness in my school. Many kids work until 1:00 a.m. so I can’t blame them.
My classes, since I am half time, are usually in the afternoon. The kids don’t come to school much in the afternoon. They have learned to game the system. So if I start out in that early part of the grading period by giving up to four daily quizzes per week I can establish a grade that reflects how slack most have been.
I hope I am being clear here. I need to use grades to keep control of my program. We all do. Then when the kids show up half way through the grading period ready to fix their grade like they do in their other classes, with a smile and asking if they can write a paper or do some other extra credit work to “bring up their grade” I say no and they have to then show up for class the last three weeks and work hard at the CI process.
But we all teach in different schools so that may not apply to you. But that’s what I do, four a week early, one or two a week toward the end of the grading period. My work load goes down at the end of each grading period where for most teachers it goes up.
No projects, no homework, no big tests. Ever. Unless they want to do homework by listening to a French song on YouTube, which many do because I don’t make them. Projects, homework and big tests are crazy and make teachers crazy and are unnecessary in CI classes. They are next to useless in terms of language gains.
The kids have to be in class to learn the language and so I grade based entirely on their being in class. Simple, effective, low maintenance.
But I do have to do the Quick Quizzes. Hey I don’t have to write them – the Quiz Writer does that during class, and the scantron machine in the teachers lounge has become my friend. Quick Quizzes are low maintenance. And, ironically, they are the best indicators next to jGR of what a kid is actually doing in class.