Since my oldest daughter has expressed interest in receiving grades on her daily work, we have spent some time deciding exactly how to weigh the grades for next year. While I believe that a test should be the major indicator of how well a child is learning and retaining information, her interest in also being graded daily has made me come to realize that there should be at least some accountability for daily work so that a child can learn that even your everyday work is important. The tricky part is deciding just how important in the grand scheme of things.
So, after much discussion and obtaining lots of opinions from others, we have come up with 70/30. In all individual subjects tests will account for 70% of the final grade while daily work will account for 30%.
However, I reached a wall when trying to decide what to do with Sequential Spelling. With this spelling program, K takes a spelling test each day, with corrections made to misspelled words before going on to the next word. There is not really a periodic assessment that is performed. I inquired about this on the Well-Trained Mind Forum, and someone had a wonderful idea: Give the daily spelling tests a grade of 100% each day, but then group all language arts subjects into one and give spelling a low weight. When I realized that Homeschool Skedtrack has the ability to group subjects this way, I decided that was probably the best way to handle the situation.
So now, all of K's language arts grades will be lumped into one group for report card purposes. Growing With Grammar will be 30%, Winning With Writing 30%, Learning Language Arts Through Literature 30%, and Sequential Spelling 10%.
Assuming I have not forgotten something major, this is the plan for the new school year when we resume next month.Labels: grading, K, record keeping