LM_NET 02/22/98: No Subject

From: Roberta Ricci <RRicci4009@AOL.COM>
b 22 16:37:40 1998
Subject: HIT: ACADEMIC GRADES 2
EST
From: Roberta Ricci <RRicci4009@AOL.COM>
Subject: HIT: ACADEMIC GRADES 3

I'm required to provide students with a letter grade in grades 4,5,6.
Personally, it involves a lot of work but it's worth it.  It gives my
classes some credibility.  I grade them on projects that they complete
in my class. (I have every gr. level once a week for 45 min.)If you want
to know any more information, just e mail me and I can fill you in.
Hope this helps.

 In our elem school, I meet with the students for consecutive sessions
to do a research project.  At the end of the week, the project is graded
and the grades turned in to the teacher. The teachers then count it in
with the lang arts grades.

I am required to submit grades.  I see 5th graders for 8 weeks, and
their grades are definitely academic, although I use O (Outstanding), S
(Satisfactory), and NI (Needs Improvement).  I say these correspond to
A, B or C, and D or F.  For 2nd and 3rd grades, there are some
variations to these designations.  I grade more strictly on academics
for 3rd than 2nd.  Basically, I've been told that 2nd graders can't do
lower than S although no one would put this in writing.  Therefore, I
don't give out O's very freely.  Students in 2nd and 3rd do written work
for me now and then, and I make notes in my grade book about students
who really seem on the ball or not.  I laugh ruefully to myself when,
all of a sudden, a 3rd grader is being checked for inability to do
his/her work when I see no change from 2nd grade.  Helping the kid
earlier would be better.
We do have a written curriculum, and it's up for revision--and should
be.

   I came into an K-8 library the first year library grades were insitituted.
They range from O(outstanding), VG, G, S, I(nsufficient) and U(nsatisfactory).
I was given no guidelines, the curriculum I found was old.  I decided to give
effort grades to Grades1-3, with all receiving G.  I give grades based on
library assignments to grades 4-8.
That is not to say I like it.  I feel that many times I structure an
assignment based on the necessity of having a gradable product, rather than
the best way to do it.  Some of the classes I see every other week, which
makes things more difficult.  If a paper is not completed during library, if I
let it go home, chances are I won't see it again. Then begins a cycle of
disciplinary actions that becomes vicious.  I try to make my library
activiites collaborative and curriculum centered, most are designed by me
rather than taken from a handbook.  With a student population of almost 600, I
generate a lot of paper.  I feel giving grades, gives me more equal status in
classroom teacher's eyes, but it is a lousy tradeoff.  After three years, I
still agonize over it.  Thanks for the chance to vent.

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        Hi Roberta, I am in a grade 1-5 school. First and second graders get a
single number grade, 1-6, which encompasses behavior, following library
procedures, etc. Third through fifth graders get two grades, A-F, the first
one being a skills grade and the second a conduct grade. Student grades are
derived from our skills lessons (written work) on the card catalog,
encyclopedia, almanac, atlas, dictionary and thesaurus, etc. The district
does have a curriculum that I have to follow. Although I hate having two
days per quarter to do over 400 report cards, I think that giving grades is
a way of saying that library skills are important.

I am fighting this battle right now.  I don't believe that there should
be grades given for the library at all.  Library skills should be
integrated into the curriculum, it is not a "academic area" that should
be receiving grades.  In the high school, I do not give grades.  They
are graded on their research skills by the classroom teacher based upon
the assignments they are given.  I am attempting to keep it that way at
the elementary level.  I hope you are not giving "library lessons" but
that all instruction is done through the classroom teacher in their
daily assignments.

We have only effort grades in our district at the elemtary level.  Thank
goodness!!!  Library is not a subject but a place.

With seeing 620 kids every week, there is no way to give anything other than
a participation grade in my school.  Everyone who is not on the LONG overdue
list gets a VG (very good).  Other special teachers do this also.  Only the
art teacher evaluates each kid individually, and since she complains so much
about doing it, the rest of us don't know why she bothers!


        I say your request about academic grades on the listserv on Feb. 10.  I
was just wondering if you got any responses.  I am going in for my
mid-year evaluation tomorrow and I have been trying to getting our
library grading system changed.  Right now, we give grades 1-4 using
E's, S's and N's.  There are 3 blocks on the report cart for each
grading period.  The first would be for the academic grade, the second
"Progressing according to ability," and third "Maintains a cooperative
attitude."  A lot of this is subjective as I do not have a gradable
lesson every week.  Sometimes I just want to share good literature.  It
is really an impossible situation to be fair to all as many just slip
through the crack.  At 3rd and 4th, it is better as we really do
havelessons that can be graded.  At 5th and 6th, I have 44 students in
the library at one time for an 1 1/2 hr. research block.  As this
research is assigned by different teachers each 9 weeks, they give the
grades.  My part of that is to teach bibliography card and note cards.
I grade those and turn in the grades to the teachers.  We do use the
first 9 weeks to review sources and research skills for 5th.  For 6th,
we review the 1st two weeks

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