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I just re-read the long discussion about grades for WG from awhile ago. I am trying to get my grading organized for starting in a few weeks. Carrie, you said that you only use the WG grading pages for tracking your grades. I am looking at them and wondering how exactly you do that and if you could provide more information. For instance, let's take Logic. One of the grading topics is "Completion of Exercises from the Fallacy Detective (25%)" What do you write in the blank before that? Do you just put a check mark there? Do you put a percentage grade like 90%? Since there is not a place to record grades for each exercise, are you tracking that somewhere?

Another example would be from the Expedition Journal Entries. Where it says Research - what would you write in the blank before that - a percentage grade or just indicate it was completed satisfactorily which would equal an A? Same question for the map drawings - what do you put in those blanks?

I truly do want to keep this as simple as possible, but am feeling confused again about how to do this in the best way. I don't think I did a great job of grading last year, since I knew that my daughter was doing A work. Now, I'm more concerned about how to do this properly.

I appreciate any help you can offer! Thank you!

Good question! Eagerly anticipating the response. I'm sure it's just me, but I still can't quite figure out how to do the grade thing. I would love to keep it as simple as I can.

Tiffini,

For the Fallacy Detective exercises, I believe there is a note in the grading portion of the guide to the effect that since this is the student's first exposure to the fallacies that as a parent we are to allow our kiddos access to the answers to check as they complete their exercises and allow for leeway in any grading. So, for those exercises, I just checked them off without giving a grade. My boys needed help with these, as they got many answers wrong for quite awhile! However, once we got to Art of Argument, I did more formal grading (and they did better by then)!

As far as the Expedition Journal goes, for my own boys I made sure that they met any standards set forth in the guide for each assignment. If it wasn't completed to my standard, they corrected or redid until it was up to standard. I expected my boys' Expedition Journal to be an 'A' for them or I did not accept it. This may differ for different families. I have just always expected work like that to be done to a high standard. I even expected this in my classroom during my public school teaching days. So, some kiddos just had to redo more than others. They do learn not to just slop things down on the page this way though!

As far as the maps go, again since they are done freehand in pen on blank paper, I gave a pretty wide berth as to what I accepted. I did not accept a mess or crossing out of any kind, but I did leave some leeway for exactness. I did want the countries to look the correct shape though and be in the correct proximity as much as possible. This to me was a '+' or a '-' in my checking system.

As you can see there is not "one" right way to keep grades. I just do what is comfortable for me, and I try not to make extra work for myself in the grading.

Blessings,
Carrie