Jen wrote this and it cuts to the chase big time:
I am trying to spend the least amount of time possible thinking about, entering and scheming the grades. It is such an energy suck. But inevitably I get sidetracked by CI teachers who have these elaborate systems and who address every point in ACTFL 5 Cs and the various breakdowns of that. I do not want to spend my time cross referencing. Ugh! Then I feel inept and lazy because I just want to have Interpretive reading, listening and interpersonal in the grading system and call it good.
I am aware of the universally accepted law that “we do not grade behavior.” And I agree with this. But in our classes we are not “grading”, we are “assessing” and we are assessing specific observable skills that help each individual student attend to the input, in addition to helping the group to maintain an input-conducive atmosphere.
I know this is outside the scope of “the research” but “the research” attempts to describe and quantify the mechanisms and causes of acquisition. It does not deal with individual student’s coping and management of externals (all the distractions that prevent them from physically hearing the input and those that prevent them from processing it). Aren’t these issues the biggest elephant in the whole school system?