Joining the Convo Most students hate homework. I do not think homework should be graded.

I am not saying I do not do my homework but I do not see the purpose in grading something that is just practice of what I learned in class. I know people that never did homework for any class but did the classwork, projects, and tests and did well on all of them but were still looked down on because they did not complete their homework. If homework is going to be graded I think it should be weighted at approximately 5%. I do not think it should take up a big chunk of a students grade. My inquiry question is: How should certain work i.e. homework, classwork, tests, and projects be weighted/graded? Should they be graded? Once I started I started to steer more towards the grading of student writing. From my research and observing Ive noticed students do not necessarily want a letter grade for their papers, but for their teachers to give them feedback on how they could improve or what the teacher really liked about their paper. It also seems like some teachers feel the same exact way. They do not want to stamp their students work with a letter grade because it may discourage the student on a piece of work that they were very confident about. For my inquiry proposal I decided to write a narrative. In my narrative I had characters, who were authors of books on my topic, discuss and argue how they felt about said topic. I used the books from my research as my primary research. I skimmed over each book and took out small quotes that I thought could be used in a form of an answer to the question I was asking. I had a made up character mainly spark the arguments, Gretchen Smith. I tried to somewhat portray my thoughts through Gretchen while at the same time act as the mediator, which is the Narrator. The characters start off by discussing grading in general. For the second half of the narrative I decided to add more characters; authors of more books and the results from my field research. For my field research I made up surveys for both teachers and students. Seeing that I do not know the names of the people that responded I made up their names so that their thoughts could be included as well.

Characters: Susan M. Brookhart- author of Grading Thomas R. Guskey- editor of Practical Solutions for Serious Problems in Standards-Bases Grading Gretchen Smith- made up character Jim Perry- student survey participant Alice Cox- student survey participant Lucy Twitchell- teacher survey participant Tom Russell- teacher survey participant Amanda Lucas- teacher survey participant Mary Alexander- teacher survey participant Nathan Smart- teacher survey participant

Sam Larry-made up character Narrator-played by me Act One

Setting: The setting is in a conference room at a college campus. It is around 10 a.m. and sunny outside. All of the professors and doctors have met with the narrator to discuss their thoughts on grading. The table is set up for a debate (round table). Narrator: Good Morning everyone! Lets start off by introducing ourselves. My name is Janavia Cousins. (looks to the person to her right for them to introduce themselves and so forth). As you know I am hosting a study about grading. Now that we have gotten that out of the way I think we can start debating. What does grading mean to you?

Brookhart: Good Morning. My name is Susan Brookhart. Well I think the primary purpose of grading, for both individual assignment grades and report grades, should be to communicate with students and parents about students achievement of learning goals.

Guskey: Good Morning, my name is Thomas Guskey. I think grading is something that requires careful planning, thoughtful judgment, a clear focus on purpose, excellent communication skills, and an overriding concern for students.

Smith: Good Morning, my name is Gretchen Smith. To me grading is what one does to determine the quality of work. As far as communication goeswhat is there to communicate about once the grade is recorded? Do you think your mind will be changed once you talk to a student or parent and that their grade will improve? (looking at both Brookhart and Guskey waiting for their responses) Brookhart: Grades are only one way to communicate student achievement and should be used with additional feedback methods.

Guskey: Agreeing with Susan I might add the communication process after grading is to help the student improve on the next assignment, not to increase the grade of the already graded assignment. Grades based on specific learning criteria and standards have direct meaning and serve well the communication purposes for which they are intended.

Brookhart: Thank you Thomas. Referring back to the additional methods of communicating are portfolios, narratives and conferences. Each can be accomplished through setting a purpose, planning the logistics, collecting the evidence, interpreting the evidence, communicating the information, and listening to the response.

Smith: Your responses seem to be weighing more towards more in depth school work. Essays perhaps?..

(Narrator sees that Smith was getting ready to ask a debatable question and kindly interrupts)

(Smith rolls eyes)

Narrator: This brings us to my next question! How should certain pieces of work be graded? For example, should a personal essay be graded on the same scale as a research history paper? And so forth. Smith: Absolutely not. How can one grade someones personal thoughts and feelings? I dont think personal work should be graded at all, evaluated maybe, but not graded. Brookhart: For work that is to be graded or scored, several types of scales can be used. Points or percents and rubrics are the two most common ones. Factors other than achievement should be assessed, but not graded. For these other factors, ability, effort, attendance, and attitude, the best feedback is verbal and self-referenced.

Narrator: I think this is a good time for a recess. When we return I have a few more guests that want to express their thoughts on grading. Im very excited!

Act Two

Setting: Same exact setting from Act One except for it is around 1 p.m. and eight more people have been seated at the round table.

Narrator: Welcome back (looks in the direction of Guskey, Smith and Brookhart) and Welcome! (looks in the direction of everyone new that has entered the room) For this segment of my study I have asked these professors, authors, and students to join us. (holds hand out to show the new guests to their seats). Im going to change it up a bit (smirks). Since there are a handful of students and a handful or teachers I think we could really get a debate going! Im going to ask a question and whoever answers first, out of teachers and students gets the table first, agreed? (everyone nods) Alright! Question number one..Do you feel like personal writing..hmm..for example essays be graded or evaluated? Perry: (raises hand swiftly) I'd rather know what is good and bad about my paper. People put a lot of effort into their papers and come out with C's. If we were getting our papers evaluated we would get critiques of our strong and weak points of our papers instead of receiving a low grade because it wasn't good enough. Cox: Yea shes right, like who do teachers thin they are? Who are you to tell me that my feelings/personal thoughts aren't valid enough. That is what teachers are basically saying when they grade our personal writing.

Larry: (responding to Cox) Us teachers are the backbone of education, without us how could you have learned to write a personal essay in the first place?

Cox: (stands up) Excuse me?! Narrator: Whoa there! Lets all calm down (looks back and forth at Cox and Larry; Cox sits back down) Next question, this one is more for the teachers, How do you feel about grading a student's writing?

Alexander: Grading writing is something very difficult to do. It isn't like a multiple choice test where there is a right answer or a "best" answer pre-determined. Writing is situated in and against conversations. It's difficult to judge without thinking about power and about the value systems on which that judgement is based. In fact, most real writing isn't judged, but is placed (published) as part of particular moments within conversations. Unpacking any publishing decisions would make visible differing value systems of the various publishing companies. The publisher of Stephen King, for instance, would not publish Stephen J. Gould (students have the what the heck did she just say? look on their face) Smart: I want students to be able to write in a variety of situations. At some point, their writing will be graded or evaluated by someone. And judgments will be made. Grading a paper in class is one of the ways I prepare students for that judgment. Perry: Thats like kinda the point I was tryna make too.in a sense. Lucas: It is pretty much the bane of my teaching existence. Well, that is probably over dramatic, but I usually feel any combination of the following: frustrated, angry, anxious, concerned. (puts chin in hand while elbow is on table) (a few teachers nod after Lucas response) Twitchell: My feelings on this have changed over the years. I like to give grades for completion and then also a quality grade at the end so student's know what kind of grades they'd get for their final projects in other courses. Russell: It's always a very subjective matter. I always feel a little nervous when approaching a stack of papers. Responding to a student's writing as a fellow writer and reader is much easier. But assigning a numerical grade is harder.

Cox: Yea Im with you (looks at Russell) letter grades are stupid.

Narrator: Wonderful responses!! Not debatable as I thought it would be but intriguing to say the least. I hope everyone got something out of this and I hope you all will participate in my next study that I am having on grading in a month! (passes out brochures referring to the study) Thank you everyone, have a good evening!

(all the participants clap)

THE END

The feedback I received from my surveys was quite interesting as you can see, especially from the teachers. I wish I could have fit all of their responses into my narrative but my paper probably would have been about 12 pages long! I do wish I would have had more students respond but I did appreciate the responses that I did get from the students. I asked the teachers their ages on the survey. I am not saying that the older teachers were more old fashioned with their responses but you could just tell that they had more teaching experience under their belt but at the same time were not looking for change. I also asked their gender. The responses I thought I would receive from women were way off. The men were actually more in depth to my surprise. I look at male teachers as the short, sweet and to the point types. I think teachers, especially writing teachers, could use my student survey to get responses from their students at the beginning of each semester they teach and see how they feel about getting their writings graded. I think this would help the teachers get a better understanding of their students and make it easier for everyone in the classroom. All of the students that replied were females. I kind of had a feeling that no guys were going to respond or there was going to be just one. I guess I felt this way because most boys arent into writing, let alone expressing their thoughts and feelings (not trying to be stereotypical). I think students should be more open to try new things when it comes to writing. Writing this narrative with an academic twist was new to me but I enjoyed it.

Works Cited

Brookhart, Susan M. Grading. New York: Merrill, 2009. Print. Guskey, Thomas R. Practical Solutions for Serious Problems in Standards-Based Grading. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2009. Pages 9-22. Print. Speck, Bruce W. Grading Students' Classroom Writing: Issues and Strategies. Washington, DC: Graduate School of Education and Human Development, The George Washington University, 2000. Print. Marzano, Robert J. Classroom Assessment & Grading That Work. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2006. Print. Tchudi, Stephen. Alternatives to Grading Student Writing. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997. Print.