Hello,
This is a great question! We are knee-deep in getting our new catalog to the press right now, but I wanted share a post I wrote about grading that may be helpful. Mike and I have homeschooled our boys for 20 years now and graduated two high school students from our homeschool.
Our oldest has now graduated from college and our second oldest is mid-way through college. I want to encourage you that it does get easier to find your way through high school and grading! You can read the whole thread where this post originated, at the bottom
So, here's my thoughts!
I think one thing to weigh as you are keeping grades is your own comfort level in how much documentation you feel you need in order to accurately give a grade. This will vary from person to person, and what one person considers a necessity will quickly become an overwhelming burden for another. So, it is important to find your own personal comfort level. By giving you the parameters for grading and showing how each grade is derived in the World Geography Guide, we have given you clear guidelines to prove how you arrived at your grade for any school district or state advisor that may be looking over your high school plan. This lends credibility to your grade and is actually what more advisors are concerned with, much more so than desiring to see your record-keeping in the day-to-day.
Another very important thing that I will share is that it would be very unexpected for a college to ever ask you to show your grade book or prove how you arrived at your grade for any course. Instead, no matter what your transcript grades are, they will be viewed as less important than an ACT or SAT score, simply because your child was homeschooled and colleges need a comparison grade (which is what the ACT and SAT provide). Other times, colleges may have an entrance exam for certain coursework to help in proper placement. This is also an equalizer. Before we get too worried about this though, it is good to remember that ACT and SAT scores carry a lot of weight for all students applying to college, whether they are homeschooled, privately schooled, or publicly schooled. This is because it is a comparison score where all students have taken a similar test in a similar stage of life.
With all of this in mind, I typically try not to complicate the grading process too much or I end up bogging down in the process (and missing the teaching because I'm overwhelmed with the grading). In the end, your time will be better spent teaching and guiding then recording results. You may find that some of the extras you've designed give you comfort in the beginning and then are no longer needed as you proceed. Don't become a slave to the record-keeping, when it is likely that no one but you will ever look it over. Instead, focus on the teaching and keep your grading process stream-lined. You will have more than enough completed work from your child to show, should you ever actually be asked to prove what your child did. Your grade book will never be what an advisor wants to see. Instead, if proof is needed, it is the work that will be shown.
To help you as you ponder what record-keeping route to take, think about teachers in a classroom. Imagine how teachers keep grades for 150 students or more a day. Then, implement something reasonable like that in your own home. Do not make more work for yourself than is needed. Remember that you are a teacher, which means that your best time is spent teaching.
I do not use anything beyond the grading sheets provided in the front of our World Geography Guide. You may or may not be comfortable going that route. I encourage you to weigh what benefit hours spent creating grading sheets gives your child? For me, I require my sons' work to be excellent, and if it is not, I make them redo it. This means that instead of spending time completing a grading sheet over each piece of work, I am spending time sitting with each child going over each part of their assignment and helping them correct it to meet a higher standard of work. This is the same strategy I employed in the classroom during my teaching days in the public school. Over time, my kiddos begin working at that higher standard, simply so that they do not have to go back and continually redo.
I do not spend time keeping a first and a second grade for their work and then averaging the two. Instead, I simply have them redo to fix it right away.
Admittedly, each child's "higher standard" will be different based on what that child truly can and cannot do in a particular subject area. But effort is worth something too, and definitely plays a role. If the subject is a true area of struggle for your child, you will know it going into the subject and it will reveal itself to be so as you progress through it. At that point, effort can make or break a grade bringing it up some or lowering it down some. Some subjects like math and grammar are very easy to grade. Others that are more subjective are subjective no matter how many grading sheets we create or complete. In the end, a certain amount of every grade is a judgement call. This is one area in which you will become more comfortable the more years you teach.
So, there is my take on the matter. Just remember that you need to teach, facilitate, and guide to be a teacher; otherwise you have become a tracker instead of a teacher. While tracking is one part of teaching, if you become too extensive of a tracker and the teaching time is lost, you may quickly find that you burnout. So, remember to teach first and track last. The tracking is just a reflection of your time spent teaching and guiding. It is meant to jog your memory as to the quality of the work or to give a quick check that the work was completed to an acceptable standard.
You will find your comfort level in this as you progress!
Blessings,
Carrie
Here is the original thread:
https://heartofdakota.com/board3/viewto ... =6&t=15348
Another helpful thread:
https://heartofdakota.com/board3/viewto ... 1&p=119629
I'm a little confused. I've looked over the Facebook files and the posts here. Do you give letter grades daily for each box? I've seen a couple of grading spreadsheets that others have shared but honestly I'm not too sure how to use them...?? Points, percentages and letter grades...?? Any suggestions greatly appreciated!!