This comment/question from Corinne kind of ties in with Angie’s question so I’ll pull it out of the queue and publish it here. I agree with what she says about the jGR. Her question is subtle and I hope we can give her some quality responses in the comment field:
Ben,
The discussion around the Great Rubric has been so helpful. The conclusion that it’s about learning to negotiate meaning was a light dawning moment for me (the penny dropped, as we say in UK).
This may seem dumb, but to some parents it may appear arbitrary how we assign grades for comprehension and for output. I mean, who says what is a level one question (particularly as we in CI are pushing the potential of our students beyond what anyone could have expected with the textbook)? So what do we mean when we say a student has A in comprehension or output skills at a given level? This was touched on when you talked about the end-of-class quizzes you have kids write (that is turning out to be GENIUS, by the way !!) just with true/false answers and more challenging ones, inference questions for example, only included if the student had devised them.
In readiness for Back to School Night on the 6th, I’m wanting to put something up on my webpage about grading. Although I have a clear professional picture of what an A,B,C,D,F looks like, I wonder if there’s been discussion yet about how to make that a bit more explicit for students and parents? A= outstanding, B=as expected doesn’t give a very clear target to aim at. And the posters about rigor and self-assessment may not go far enough for some of my GPA-blinkered parents.
Sorry if I’ve missed something obvious!!
Many thanks,
Corinne