Grading?

[holyhelianthus]

Do you grade?

Why or why not?

If so how?

TIA! :

[shoefairy3]

I havn't been grading my son, it never occured to me to do it. We always go back over whatever he missed or whatever and get it all correct. I do put smilie faces and 100%'s on his papers (since we pulled him out of ps 1/2 way thru school last year, so he liked that stuff )

[holyhelianthus]

The thought never occurred to me either which I suppose is odd. But I found a section of Homeschool Skedtrack that brings it up so now I am thinking about it and if I think there really is a good reason to do it.

[shoefairy3]

I could be mistaken, but it might be a better idea to do it if you live in a state that required record keeping. NE doesnt require much so we dont really need grades. Plus, everything gets done 100% anyhow....well math anyhow, and the rest isnt really gradeable. When we do spelling, we just work on words until he gets them all fluently.

[momtokea]

No, I don't grade. I can't see myself ever grading, although as the kids get older they may take online classes or whatever and get grades that way.
But those grades wouldn't be coming from me. I do give my kids a standardized test every year, though. Not because I believe in it, but because it keeps my school board happy and it looks good.

I really wouldn't be very good at grading them. I'm kind of biased, I'd give them 100% all across the board

[onlyzombiecat]

No.
1. I'm not required to.
2. I don't feel it has much meaning for us. If dd doesn't get something right we discuss it and work on it until she does.
3. I don't want it to have meaning. I would hate for dd to only do as much as she needed to get a certain grade and move on.

[elizawill]

no, i don't use letter grades. for my state, i'm required to do quarterly progress reports though. i use E, S, NI, U (excellent, needs improvement, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory). my dd has never seen the progress reports though & has no idea i keep them (which she does well on them anyway). my kids are very young & i see no need for letter grades in elementary school - as they get older i'll probably need them for records, transcripts, etc.

on another note though, my dd does like me to put smiley faces, stickers, and 100% on papers, lol. i have NO idea where she got it from...but she likes that a lot.

[LilyGrace]

We have two grades here: Knows It and Not Yet.

That's all we need. Letter grades are used in classrooms to figure out how much of the material a child knows without having the time to assess each and every one. Since I'm around my kid all the time, working with my kid...I know my kid. There's no need to rank him or give him a percent. Neither is going to help him in the long run.

[Callimom]

No. Our province doesn't require any reporting.
We discuss math/science/single answer problems until they are clear. I ask my kids if they have put in their best effort on something and talk about what that might look like but thats about the extent of the assessment that they know about.

[Lillian J]

I would never have graded, because I've never thought of learning as something that should be graded. If anyone were to be graded, it should, in my own humble opinion :, be the adult who's facilitating the learning - because it's the adult who should be paying attention to how the child seems to learn best, and it's the adult who should be modeling the joy of learning in such a way that the child just automatically wants to join in. Lillian

[holyhelianthus]

Originally Posted by LilyGrace

We have two grades here: Knows It and Not Yet.

That's all we need. Letter grades are used in classrooms to figure out how much of the material a child knows without having the time to assess each and every one. Since I'm around my kid all the time, working with my kid...I know my kid. There's no need to rank him or give him a percent. Neither is going to help him in the long run.

I like this.

[MyLittleWonders]

No we do not. We don't need to and I have never felt the need to put that pressure on them. My mom once put 100%'s all over a couple math pages ds#1 did way back when ds#2 had speech and she took ds#1 with them. They know what grades are because dh teaches. But, it has never occured to them to be graded for what they do. Then again, they don't ever take tests here either.

[moominmamma]

Never. Why? In school I'll admit that grades serve a few purposes such that they might be seen as a necessary evil. They allow teachers to communicate with each other -- this year's teacher to communicate with next year's, for instance. They allow the school system to be demonstrated in some way to be "accountable" to the taxpayer for students' learning. They allow the school to communicate with the parents about the child's mastery. And they allow a sort of measurement of the deficiencies of the mass-educational approach with respect to the particular student. (In other words, a C minus says "we could only teach your kid this one way and then we had to move on, and it didn't work very well for him. Sorry.") Not that poor grades are really ever interpreted as a failure of the school. But that's what they are, IMO.

Anyway, none of this applies in a homeschooling situation. So that necessary evil becomes an unnecessary evil to me. I would never grade my kids.

Miranda

[VanessaS]

Nope. No point. What would the grade mean, anyway?

[2xy]

I think homeschoolers fall loosely into two camps. Those who follow the school model but think they will do a better job for their kids, and those who oppose the school model.

I oppose the school model. If I wanted my kids to worry about someone else's judgement of their work and accumulation of knowledge, I'd send them to school.

Originally Posted by LilyGrace

We have two grades here: Knows It and Not Yet.

Yup.

[AngelBee]

Originally Posted by magstphil

Do you grade?

Why or why not?

If so how?

TIA! :

No. I believe that it is unnecessary and creates a pressure to "score well" rather than enjoy and play with information.

I do have loose objectives that I want mastered, but those are for my own personal use. The kids also create goals for themselves as wanted.

[AngelBee]

Originally Posted by LilyGrace

We have two grades here: Knows It and Not Yet.

That's all we need. Letter grades are used in classrooms to figure out how much of the material a child knows without having the time to assess each and every one. Since I'm around my kid all the time, working with my kid...I know my kid. There's no need to rank him or give him a percent. Neither is going to help him in the long run.

[caefi]

We start grades in jr high in English, Science and Math. It is the test scores averaged. We have a mastery is more important than scores attitude towards it all. We need grades for our high school transcripts. It can be A+, A, A- and not numbered grades - but still grades.

Giving grades in Jr High is the warmup for the high school years.

[umbrella]

No.