C4T Summary

C4T #1

For my C4T assignment I was given #TomSchimmer as my teacher. The first blog post that I read of Mr. Schimmer's was titled Accurate Grading with a Standards based Mind Set. In his post Mr. Schimmer describes how grading is and how he thinks it should be. His blog post is a summary of a webinar that he posted right before, that can be seen here. He talks in his summary about the differences in elementary, middle, and high school grading standards. He also talks about what he calls the "Standard-based Mindset". The standard-based mindset represents the "heavy lifting" of the grading conversation. As he says in his post, "Once we shift how we think about grading, the implementation of standard-based grading is easier, since the way we think about grades, how we organize evidence, and what we think is most heavily emphasized is different". Mr. Schimmer thinks that it is more important to grade a student thoughtfully and meaningfully than just giving them a grade solely on test and percentages. He hopes that all teachers will start having a standards-based mindset.

In the comment I posted under Mr. Schimmers post, I completely agreed with what he had to say about grading. Grading should not be based only on tests, quizzes, and written exams. The way a student may or may not learn goes beyond just how they score on a test. I also talked about how I learn as a student and how I, myself am one of those "not so good at tests" students. Even after studying hard, doing all my homework and assignments, ect. I could not always keep up with my peers when it came to high test scores. I hope to see, as well as Mr. Schimmer, teachers in the future that start grading students not only based on scores but by what they learn in other ways as well.

C4T #2

The second post I read of #TomSchimmer was titled "Points over Practice?". In this post Mr. Schimmer talks about the troubles with grading homework. He addresses the questions like should homework be assigned, how much is too much or too little, should it be graded and is it formative. Mr. Schimmer speaks about these topics at conventions and recently spoke at the Pearson's ATI's-20th Annual Summer Conference on the subject. He believes that homework should be for practice and used formatively instead of as a part of report grading.

I love the way Mr. Schimmer thinks about homework and grading, and hope to be a model of the kind of teacher he is someday. In my comment under this post of his, I talked about how I agreed with his thoughts on the subject of grading homework. I also explained my point of view, stating that all students do not learn at the same speed, meaning some students may not make a good grade on homework for material they were taught the same day. I think good ideas on grading homework could be to give bonus points to students that complete their homework or to just give a completion grade for their homework. Even if you use these ideas you should still grade the homework so you can see what each student needs help on. I have enjoyed reading Mr. Schimmer's post's and am excited to read more!