Grading Foerster's Algebra

[Tmisek]

Hello! We are starting our first year of high school and grading is brand new to me. I really appreciate the instructions on grading Carrie has provided in the World Geography guide, but I am still at a loss on how to grade Foerster's (the guide says to refer to the math text, but I don't see instructions in there). Any help is appreciated!

[StephanieU]

There are a lot of options. Personally I like to count homework as an effort grade, making students correct their own work. (They show you their work, you do a quick check to confirm they gave a decent attempt, and then they check and correct their work with another color.) I would probably do the story problems the same way. Then grade the tests as actually percentage grades. In many colleges, tests count for at least 50% of the grade, so I would probably do 50% tests, 50% effort for homework and story problems.

[daybreaking]

There are many ways you could do this. For sake of simplicity, I don't grade the homework assignments, but I do make sure my son completes and corrects all of them. For his final grade, I just take the average of his test scores.

[Tmisek]

Thank you both for the suggestions! I will definitely put more weight on the tests.

[Carrie]

The ladies have done a great job of sharing the ways that they handle daily work and testing. Both of their suggestions would work well. At the high school level, the way that you weight your grades can vary widely. Almost any combination of daily work, reviews, and assessment grading will work.

For example, you could use daily work as 50 percent of the grade or you could change that percentage up or down. As mentioned, daily work can just be earned by effort and completion (and correcting one's mistakes). This is because quite often in daily work the material is new, and as students are trying to learn new concepts they often falter. So, grading students first efforts at something new is not a true grade.

Next, in considering how heavily to weight tests, at the high school level... completion of chapter reviews often take up a portion of the assessment grade. So, I might lean toward 20 percent for chapter reviews and 30 percent for tests. Again, these percentages can be changed up or down.

Another option that is used with increasing frequency is for tests to be open-book. Or, instead you might allow your student to write down on an index card any helpful formulas or notes to be used during the test. This was something that was done in my college math classes. I learned to write very small!!

Even at the college level, where tests are weighted much more heavily, there is quite a bit of variation as to how much other output students are required to complete for the rest of their grade. Some courses are almost wholly test based and others split the grade out more with a large amount of other output. My oldest son's college classes have varied widely in how the grades are weighted. It is often the instructor's prerogative. Since you are the instructor, your prerogative reigns. You just need to be able to justify how you arrived at the grade.

Blessings,
Carrie

[Tmisek]

Thank you so much, Carrie, for that clear and detailed explanation!