Standards Based Grading:

I like the overall idea of this article. It is trying to shift from teacher being the dictator, to teacher being the guide. I like this title much better. In less words, why standards based grading? Because it is easier to align the objective with the assessment. This makes grading more accurate, and more meaningful. For students, success will always motivate progress more than failure. That's a given. I like how it gave definitions for what exactly the purpose of grading and report cards are. I also like the idea that report cards shouldn't reflect 0's. This does really mess with a student's overall score and it is very disheartening. I also appreciated the part about basing student's grade on the most recent general trend. If a student wasn't succeeding three weeks ago, but they are by the end of the quarter, shouldn't that be the end result? It shouldn't matter that they didn't get it then, the point is that they get it now! I think that for many students, teachers are not helpers as much as they are authorities. I think that if teachers can make the shift in students' eyes from being obstacles to guides, the educational environment would be a much nicer place.

The part about homework was insightful too. I had teachers in high school who would assign a packet for us to complete at home. We would never have any idea what was on the packet because it was not created by our teacher and didn't reflect what we were learning in class. This was VERY stressful and was a large chunk of our overall grade. I didn't appreciate feeling like I had to carry a backpack full of rocks up a mountain, blindfolded to succeed. Get me? Homework should be practice, or opportunity to continue work already scaffolded in class. That is what is going to help students, not assigning a packet of meaningless work for them to do because you said so.

Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning:

I really appreciated what the author's had to say here. I liked how they explained how easy it is to keep ourselves on the same page with our students,"we can simply demystify the evaluation process by making explicit your expectations or ground rules" (225). I liked that they view assessment in terms of the 'big picture'. They say how we assess depends on how we view learning literature. It is important for new generations to understand that it is no longer enough to know the difference between metaphor's and simile's. Students must know the difference AND be able to apply each of these concepts. Not only do the authors give examples for alternative style assessments, but they also give you tools that help you devise a rubric if you do choose that style of feedback from your students. There were some really cool tools and examples in this article. I will definitely be referring to this when it's time to start putting together assessments and rubrics for my ED classes. Teachers are essentially polite marauders. We may steal your ideas and tools, but at least we give you credit for their genius.