How to assign grades for work in high school

[jenntracy]

HEllo,
My first-born will be high school next year. I have never assigned grades to anything. The only reason i feel i need to for high school is so that if we need it for scholarships or transcripts etc., we will have them. I would hate not to and then be up a creek when some place asks for grades or GPA.
My question is how do you assign grades?
I understand tests, but some things don't have tests.
English and History especially with writing etc.
I cringe at having to do this. I am stressing already.
i have looked at the World geography guide and seen "what" to assign grades to , but it is the "how" I am really struggling with. I have to be fair and objective
Help please!
I tried to find a thread on this but to no avail. Please direct me if there is one. Thanks.

[snadig]

Hi, I just tried to pm you but it may not have gone through. You can pm me and I can share some of what I did.

blessings,
Stacey

[StephanieU]

Have your read the introduction to any of the high school guides? Carrie lays out a grading scheme there.

[Nealewill]

My oldest will also be in WG next year and I am also feeling a bit timid about the whole grading thing. But....I do teach college accounting, finance and math and there are actually some papers due. When I grade those students, I use a rubric and I grade based off of what was asked. Did they follow the directions? Did they complete the assignments and on time? Did they take care in what they wrote. Sometimes you are just grading for completeness and that is okay. I also at times envision that I will probably just review their work as a whole and think about what type of work it was. For example, if you have a struggling writer who you give a lot of help to for them to complete their papers, I don't view them as an "A" student. I would probably give them a B. Some parents may disagree. And I'm not saying that you can't provide guidance, help and a rewrite. But students who struggle or who can't get through the paper alone probably wouldn't have gotten an A in regular school. Likewise, if my child finishes the assignments fully and they are done well, then I will give her an A. On a side note, my dd is always shortening the length of her written narration. Even though they sound fine, because they are short, I would take off points for this. Any box left blank on the notebooking pages, boom....points gone. I actually graded her math book this year. All of the homework assignments were grade to where she could earn 1/2 credit problems she got incorrectly. Reviews weren't graded. And test and quizzes were grade regular. I noticed that she has a regular habit of skipping over things and not answering them. She only got 1/2 credit on those too. That is how I plan to grade her notebooking assignments and her living library assignments as well.

I know I kind of gave a hodge podge of info but i don't know how much I will formally stick to a rubric. The rubric is helpful and I will definitely start with it. But some of it can be intuition and parental discretion I think as well.

[farmfamily]

I am in the same boat as my oldest will be a ninth grader next fall. I am not worried about grading the "objective" subjects like math, but I already know that, for me, it is worth it to pay someone else to do the grading for my daughter's writing. She loves to write but gets upset if I critique her papers. This year I paid for an over-the-phone consultant to give her a little writing help. It has been great. I see that if you order Essentials in Writing from the publisher you can pay $97 to get scoring services for the year. I will either do that, continue with my current phone person (who goes over the rough draft and gives advice, and then grades the final draft), or pay my local friend who is a high school English teacher to help my daughter with writing. To me it is worth the investment because writing is such an important subject, and I know her writing will be better without straining our relationship. Just my 2 cents!