Grading is a concept that many teachers have a hard time grasping, especially new and upcoming teachers.

This could be seen as a hard concept to grasp, because many people would probably agree that at one point in their educational career they were unfairly given a grade that they did not deserve and more than likely they were never told why they were given that grade. So when teachers think about the different events that have taken place in their educational careers when it has come to grading they are uncomfortable because they do not want to make their students go through the same situations, but how do they prevent this from happening? After doing a lot of research and learning about effective grading in class here are some questions that teachers may want to ask themselves when they start thinking about how they want to grade their students: how as a teacher can I grade fairly, how can I use grades to motivate students, how do I properly communicate grades with all necessary stake holders, what grading scale do I want to use in my classroom, and how do I involve students in this process and can I even involve them in the grading process. These are just a few of the many different questions that all teachers need to answer when thinking about how they are going to effectively grade their students. Purposes and Principles of Effective Grading According to Ken O'Connor (2007) the two primary purposes for grading are as follows: Bailey and McTighe (1996, p. 120) state that the primary purposes of grades [is] to communicate student achievement to students, parents, school administrators, postsecondary institutions and employers. Brookhart (2004, p. 5) suggests, Secondary purposes for grading include providing teachers with information for instructional planning, and providing teachers, administrators, parents, and students with information for selection and placement of students (emphases added). (p.8) OConnor (2009,) then goes on to write about the importance of having a shared vision at the district and school levels about the primary purposes of grades, which again is the communication of student achievement with all stakeholders. He states that achievement should be defined as performance measured against accepted published standards and learning outcomes. (p. 8). A students grade will follow him or her where ever he or she goes. The students grades will follow him or her through elementary, high school, they will determine if he or she gets into college and possibly if he or she gets a job or not (Allen, 2005, p. 220). What does this mean for teachers? I believe this means that not only do teachers need to be careful when determining how they are going to communicate student achievement, but they also need to be careful on how they are going to assess student achievement. Below are the different components of grading that teachers need to address when communicating and determining student achievement. I will also address these components in my grading beliefs and Effective Grading Statements section.

Teachers should only communicate student achievement in a students final grade. Both Ken OConnor (2007, p. 19) and James D. Allen (2005, p. 220) believe that including student behaviors in a students final grades do not clearly communicate how much a student has achieved on an academic report. Allen (2009, p. 220) states the following: The purpose of an academic report is to communicate the level of academic achievement that a student has developed over a course study. Therefore, the sole purpose of a grade on an academic report, if it is to be a valid source of information, is to communicate the academic achievement of a student. If other factors about the student are deemed important, such as a students attitude, level of effort, or social behavior, then other appropriate forms of reporting these factors must be made available and used. Ken OConnor is in agreement with Allen when he (2007, p. 19) states that: Grades are broken when they do not accurately communicate achievement. The fix for this is to make grades as pure a measure as possible of student achievement; that is, make them reflect only student performance in mastering the public, published learning goals of the state/ province/ district/ school. This is the only way that grades can act as clear communication. If a teacher feels that it is important to communicate information on student behavior, effort level, and social level he or she can create a separate document to attach to a report card to send to parents or other stakeholders if deemed necessary. Another option would be the teacher could send home a weekly or monthly report on one or more of the items listed above to the parents. In order to have students involved, teachers could allow students to self-assess as well. I believe absences should be considered in this section as well. In all honesty, I believe that every teacher would agree that attendance is very important when it comes to student learning and student success. Ken OConnor (2007, p. 43) states that even though many teachers hold attendance to such a high importance it should not be directly or indirectly related to a students grade. He states that it is still very important that teachers record and report days absent and present, but it is just best to do it separately since it does not reflect student achievement. Teachers should grade students fairly. In education we have tended to think of fairness as uniformity But students are different in many different ways and treating them the same can actually be unfair, (OConnor, 2007, p.9). This then makes fairness a really difficult concept to grasp. How can a teacher know and determine how to fairly grade each student? Lee Ann Jung and Thomas R. Guskey (2010, p. 31-2) came up with a model that teachers can use to help grade exceptional learners; exceptional learners are students who have a disability or students who are English language learners. This model has five steps and it can be very useful at any grade level. Directly below is the direct instructions written for each step by

Jung and Guskey (2010) and after this scribe document there is a flow chart of this five step model. Step 1: Ask whether the standard is an appropriate expectation without adaptations. For each reporting standard, the key question is, Can we expect the student to achieve this standard without special support or changes to the standard? If the answer is yes, then no change in the grading process is needed, and the teacher grades the student with the same "ruler" he or she would use with any other student in the class. Some exceptional learners, however, may not achieve certain grade-level standards without special services and supports. For example, an IEP team may decide that a high school student who has a learning disability in the area of written expression needs extra supports to reach standards that depend on this skill. When an instructional team determines that the student will not be able to achieve a particular standard without special support, they move to step 2. Step 2: If the standard is not appropriate, determine what type of adaptation the standard needs. For each standard that will require support, the instructional team asks, which is neededaccommodation or modification? Accommodation means that the content of the standard remains the same, but the method for demonstrating mastery of that content may be adjusted. For example, to meet science standards, a student may require an audiotape of lectures in science class because of difficulty in taking notes. In addition, he or she might need to take a social studies end-ofunit assessment orally. Although the format for answering questions would be different, the content of the questions would remain the same, and the student would be judged, like all other students, on the content of his or her responses. Modification, in contrast, means changing the standard itself. A 3rd grade English language learner, for example, may have strong oral communication skills, but may not be ready to work on the grade-level standards for writing. For this student, the instructional team may decide to provide additional support in the area of writing and to expect the student to master 1st grade writing standards. To determine whether a particular type of support is an accommodation or a modification, the instructional team must consider the circumstances of its use. An accommodation in one subject area might actually be a modification in another subject area. For example, consider extended time on assessments, one of the most common adaptations. If the purpose of the assessment is to measure the student's knowledge and understanding of particular concepts, then extended time is an accommodation. But if the assessment is designed to measure the student's speed in problem solving, as is sometimes the case with certain math assessments, then the provision of extra time would likely be considered a modification.

If the instructional team determines that a student needs only accommodations to reach a particular standard, then no change in the grading process is required. But if modifications are deemed necessary, the team goes through the remaining three steps of the model for this standard. Step 3: If the standard needs modification, determine the appropriate standard. The appropriate standard is what the instructional team believes the student could reasonably achieve by the end of the academic year with special supports. The team records these modified standards as goals on the student's IEP, 504 plan, or ELL plan, along with other goals the student may need to achieve in order to function in daily classroom routines. A student with cognitive impairment, for example, may not be ready to work on 4th grade science standards in mineral identification. The IEP team may choose to develop science standards on the skill of sorting and classifying that are fundamentally related to the 4th grade science standards but are also developmentally appropriate for this student. Similarly, a 9th grade English language learner's ELL plan may call for 7th grade vocabulary standards rather than 9th grade standards. Or a physically injured student may have a goal on a 504 plan that requires her to demonstrate an understanding of the rules of a particular sport orally or in writing, but not through actual participation. Step 4: Base grades on the modified standard, not the grade-level standard. It would be futile to grade a student on an academic standard everyone agrees the student will probably not meet. Take, for example, the student who has cognitive impairment and who is working on sorting and classifying objects by simple characteristics rather than working on the grade-level expectation of mineral identification. There is no need to report a failing grade in science based on the student's inability to identify minerals. Nor would it be fair or meaningful to simply add points for effort or behavior. Instead, the teacher should grade the student on the standard the team determined was appropriate (for example, Student will sort objects in science by size, shape, and color with 80 percent accuracy). The same is true for the English language learner who is working to build 7th grade vocabulary in a 9th grade class. Rather than adding points for homework or promptness in turning in assignments, the teacher should grade the student using the same "ruler," but on the 7th grade vocabulary standards that the instructional team deemed appropriate. Step 5: Communicate the meaning of the grade. Finally, teachers need to provide additional information for modified standards, communicating what was actually measured. The report card should include a special notation, such as a superscript number or an asterisk, beside grades that reflect achievement on modified standards. The accompanying footnote might be worded, "based on modified standards." The report card should direct families to a supplemental document, such as a progress report, that lists the modified standards on which any grade was based and a narrative of progress on each. This lets everyone know, as federal

legislation requires, how the student performed on appropriately challenging learning tasks. (p.32-4) Teachers should not give zeros, penalize late work, or punish academic dishonesty. Thomas R. Guskey (2004) wrote many teachers see zeros as their ultimate grading weapon, using them to punish students for not making adequate effort or failing to show appropriate responsibility, (p. 32) and he also states the following, Teachers also use zeros as instruments of control. (p. 33). OConnor (2007) believes that there are three problems with giving students zeros for grades and the problems are as follows, 1) zeros give a numerical value to something that has never been assessed and that therefore has no basis in reality; 2) they can have counterproductive effects on student motivation; 3) they involve inappropriate mathematics (p. 86). Both Guskey (2004, p. 34) and OConnor (2007, p. 87) agree that the best alternative for giving a zero is to give the student and I for Incomplete and then give the student the requirements needed to complete the work. This then puts the responsibility back on the student at the same time as still motivating the student to be successful. Teachers should not give extra credit that is just about more points. OConnor (2007, p. 34) states that extra credit points can miscommunicate a students level of achievement and that teachers should be careful about how and when they allow students to receive extra credit. Teachers should not just give out extra credit points because all students came to school that day or because everyone came to school prepared. Instead teachers should give a student extra credit if he or she demonstrates evidence of achieving a higher level of performance. Teachers should only rely on summative assessments to determine grades. According to Ken OConnor (2007) it is important that both teachers and students are aware of the difference between formative and summative assessments and when both of them are to be used. He states that formative assessments are primarily for learning and summative assessments are primarily of learning. Teachers should only use formative assessments to help the students learn the material and to help both themselves and the students to see where more instruction may be needed. This means that homework should not be graded. Summative assessments should be graded and used to assess what the students have learned at the end of a sequence of instruction (p. 96-7). Teachers should involve students in the grading process. OConnor (2007, p. 111) believes that students must be involved in all stages of the assessment process and should understand (age appropriately) from the outset how grades will be determined. By involving students in the grading process it sets them up to be more successful. I feel that students will also be more motivated to learn because they will know what is expected of them and more than likely they will feel more comfortable if they need to ask for help.