Assessment

The readings on assessment really brought up some interesting things for me. I feel that assessment can be really hard to do. You want to reward students for putting a lot of effort into an assignment, but what do you do if all of that effort doesn’t lead to a product that really matches up with what they should have come too. Recently, I had to teach my first lesson, and then give the student’s an assignment. They turned these in to me this past week and I really didn’t expect it to be so hard to grade them. First of all, it took me a long time. Most of their projects were only 1-2 pages, but after giving them feedback, it really took a while to arrive at a grade. Another hard thing was that the topic allowed for a lot of creativity. As a naive, just starting out teacher, I didn’t expect to have a student write about the legalization of marijuana. The paper was well-written, and she had done a great job. The topic, however, was obviously a little questionable. After discussing it with my CT, we decided that I should just go ahead and grade it. I ended up giving her an A, but I wondered if I sent the wrong message, or if I did the right thing by not hindering her creativity. I’m still not sure of the answer to that question. The grading procedure was also frustrating. I listed exactly what should be in their papers. I then stood at the front, and read an example of my own, which included all of the components. Some students still, however, completely left parts out, which was hard, because I had to take away a lot of points. Their topic would be really good, but it was obvious they didn’t quite understand the style the paper was in. Finally, grading their papers made me wonder if it is better to read through all of the papers first, then go back again, and assign grades. Would this make you less patient, because it is too time-consuming? I was just wondering after the fact. I learned a lot from just grading one assignment. I wanted to give them all A’s, but by following the rubric I made, which they also had, I think I was able to be pretty fair.