The Grading and Assessment Conundrum

This past weekend, I had the honor of meeting Mary-Beth Hertz at #ntcamp. While there, we had a session on grading and she has written a thoughtful follow-up post that fits in well with the summer series on assessment. Her post is title, “The Grading and Assessment Conundrum.” Here is an excerpt from her post. I encourage you to go to her blog to read the whole post and comment. It will be worth your time.

This weekend I attended ntcamp, an unconference for both veteran and new teachers aimed at providing conversation for new teachers to learn from veteran teachers.  I sat in on a session facilitated by Jason Bedell about grades that proved to be a thought provoking one.

He created a collaborative document that holds a lot of the thoughts, reflections and reactions from the session. You can access it here.

It really got me thinking about my own grading practices, which I have always struggled with. Part of the struggle has been trying to give grades to almost 300 students that I see once a week for 45 minutes (if I’m lucky).  Part of it is just an underlying feeling that I’m not ‘doing it right.’