Suggested TCI Schedule – Assessment 3

Quiz #3 – that is, the participation grade, reflects so much and is such a key factor in this entire grading approach. Some on this site have taken the position that grades should only reflect intellectual achievement, not participation.
I seriously disagree. The nature of what we do is that when the kids are consciously making an effort to show up for class, they learn. Language is that way. If you listen to it enough, you will learn it.
Kids being kids, and having learned in most of their classes to earn grades by memorizing, which doesn’t apply at all to what we do, will sometimes run into a kind of mental roadblock when faced with the rules up on the wall.
Those rules have teeth and must be followed for comprehensible input classes to work. But the kids, rather than change the patterning they adopted between 5th and 8th grade in order to survive, might choose to tune out .
If they tune out and are absent from the social fabric of the language class, by definition they are not part of the language acquisition process. This reflects Krashen’s statement that robots don’t converse.
Their decision to opt out of the class and to go only for the grade affects not just their own learning but the learning of the entire group. This may not be true in other classes, but it is true of language classes based on comprehensible input.
Imagine that – a class where communication skills are key. A class in which the good of the whole is totally dependent on the contributions of each individual. Sounds kind of socialist to me. Better watch that teacher closely.
Obviously, there are differing opinions on this, but, since that argument about participation counting as a grade here a few years ago, I have been observing with a fine eye what happens when I really hold the kids accountable for participation, following the rules, etc. and I like what I see.
As long as the participation grades are not lies, inflated jokes of what the kid is really doing, then it forces smart kids who are lazy or lacking in social skills to become a part of the social fabric of the classroom.
When privileged kids are expected to get A’s, which parents tell you in parent conferences, often as veiled threats, you have a situation. This is a particularly noxious problem when middle school teachers have rewarded kids for being good little memorizers but are not really smart in the true sense, having been lied to by too many middle school teachers.
Such kids come into ninth grade, having learned the memorization game, expecting more A’s of the same variety. But, lacking a social bone in their body, they criticize the instruction in ways that display their complete lack of understanding of how languages are learned, and often (usually) with their parents blessing, whose “fluency” resulted from countless verb memorizations.
Sometimes, unbelievably, teachers in a building who still use worksheets, too much output too early, and verb charts will align with parents on this point, targeting the teacher who tries to use the target language in the class over 95% of the time, branding them. It happens.
This cause us to lose sleep and is one of the single most challenging aspects of putting comprehensible input into our classrooms, if not the most challenging because the thing we need most is collegial support of the kind Diana Noonan offers each of the 93 language teachers in Denver Public Schools.
Profe Loca described this unique brand of shittiness here recently and it is certainly a leit motif on this blog. We can’t do much about colleagues who attack us because we try to implement Krashen’s work in our classrooms, but we can address the little memorizers who think that our use of the language in the classroom is not the way to go when everything we have been doing to in our careers as language teachers points straight to Krashen.
The good news on those kids is that time and the general class buy-in wears them down. By the end of their second year, and much sooner in most cases, the kids who think that we learn languages by memorizing have been exposed by the rest of the class – those true participators – and must cop to the behavior of the group or fail. The group forces them to participate. But we must force them to participate as well via the grading process.
When a child first expresses their incapacity to be part of the social fabric and basically try to get us to be like the teachers who rewarded them for memorization in middle school, what I do is point to my rules (posters page of this site). I say this to parents at meetings:
“My classroom is based on these rules. We learn because of them. We need everybody to show up for the discussion and the reading. If your child don’t show up for the discussion, she won’t be able to do the reading. The participation grade is roughly 25% of your child’s grade. Your child is smart. She averages 10/10 on the three quizzes given each week, but, because she has chosen not to participate, she only has a 3/10 on participation*. If you doubt that grade, come to class and observe. So the 33/40 this week is a B in this high school. Look how smart your child is – they earned a B without even participating in class! To earn an A in my class, all your child needs to do is follow those rules up there. Even if your child has a B or even a C, I would probably give her an A if she follows those rules up there, particulary rules 1, 4, 5 and 6, because they are the key to everything we do in this class, especially rule 6. By the way, I am sure that you would want your child to develop the social skills so necessary these days in the work place, right? Talking with neighbors at meetings with their boss at the wrong time, getting up to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes, which shows disrespect, putting their heads on their desk in their office, those are no-no’s in the workplace, right? You want your child to learn more in school than just content, right? I am sure you do. If you wish to take this up further, please do so with my principal. This is the way I grade and I consider the participation grade to be the best indicator of success for your child in the workplace of the future, and not only an integral part of my language program. So when your child follows those rules we are both in a win-win situation. I am sure that you are happy that your child is being challenged in this way in at least one of her classes. My job as an educator is exactly that – to provide your child with skills needed in the workplace.”
So, yes – the participation grade, for me in my world, is the key to everything. Below is the rubric referred to above*, which I don’t fill out on every kid because it takes too much time, but it is there when I need it with certain kids. This is a variation on the original format developed by Donna Tatum-Johns. I will add it to the posters page here when I get a chance: 

 Total grade: _____/10