Grading That Builds Hope

There have been times in the past when a student does so poorly on an assessment that I feel like I would be crushing him if I graded it true to how much the student wrote down that was actually of value.

Standing in Kids' Shoes

Imagine getting a paper or quiz back and seeing a huge 5/20 written on the top. Where do you start? You would feel so far behind it would seem to be hopeless. The truth is that there are likely a few concepts in there that you are actually handling at least moderately well, but they are buried in the overall score that comes out to 25% and sinks your grade in the class.

Finding the Silver Lining

In the roughly one month that I've been using learning targets to assess and give feedback to students, I have seen examples like this one multiple times. It is not uncommon to have a student with ratings like this:

Even if the ratings were 1, 1, 3, & 1, wouldn't you respond so much differently than seeing a "6/20" in total at the top of the page? I would. If the quiz in the picture was mine, I would be proud of my 5 and more inclined to focus in on the 1. 

I feel that I can be more accurate in my grading because I know that the grade is giving the student real feedback about what he or she knows well and doesn't know well. There's almost always something the student is doing right that the rating system points out, so I don't have to worry about crushing a student's spirit. Likewise, there's also almost always something the student needs more practice on, which grading-by-learning-target quickly points out. 

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