To Grade or Not to Grade: Point of View, Part 2
Last week we looked at numerous things to consider in the grade keeping dilemma. If you haven’t read it, take a few minutes to read it here. Fortunate to be in a state that does not require submission of grades, keeping grades is still an individual decision for homeschool families. Join veteran homeschoolers, Amber and Deanne, as they share their reasons for choosing to (and not to) keep grades!
Amber’s View: Keeping Grades in the Elementary and Middle School grades
Someone asked me recently whether I kept grades for my home-schooled elementary students. For our family, we chose to keep grades for our kids for some of the following reasons:
First, I assumed we had to! The curriculum we used had progress report sheets to log quiz and test grades, so I did! Daily paper grading was not recorded but checked for accuracy and completeness. The better eye I kept on the daily work the better were the grades on the weekly quiz or test. As a result, tracking their progress forward or backward was easier to see through the year. They knew what grade they were in and could answer those common questions asked by curious outsiders. Receiving a grade was a motivation for some of my children, but not all of them. It was always a big deal to take the report card to Chuck-E-Cheese® for free tokens!
This may sound crazy, but I had a slight fear (this was over 20 years ago!) that Child Welfare Services would come check on my type of schooling and deem me an unfit parent if I didn’t have plans and records. Therefore, I kept quarterly grades for the year. I would attach the tests and quizzes to the quarterly progress report and then file them for each child by the grade of school they were in. By the end of the year there would be four quarters of grades in each file. If anyone questioned my schooling, I could honestly say that I had a system. This gave me peace of mind. It also held me accountable to making sure education happened. In our case, we later put our kids in a private school for several years. The transition was smooth since there were records of classes with grades to give the office of the school. It was our desire that our children could transition from homeschool to school without too much drama. ~ Amber
Deanne’s View: Why I chose NOT to keep grades in Elementary and Middle school years
Homeschooling my children from K-12 meant a shift in my educational philosophy. Our first year was traditional. We followed the curriculum lesson plans perfectly, graded every worksheet and test, and tracked grades and attendance in a teacher planner. Quickly, I realized this did not meet my children’s learning needs or match my teaching philosophy. Thankfully, I live in a state that allows homeschoolers freedom to teach their children without mandatory reports or tests. Becoming more comfortable in my “teacher” role, I sought alternative ways to assess my children’s learning. Using unit studies, nature studies, and the Charlotte Mason approach in the elementary to middle school years, my focus became learning goals and journaling my children’s response. Setting aside a day to create monthly learning goals, I would list resources and create weekly plans. Daily, I journaled the month’s goal, what my children accomplished toward the goal and the effort put forth. At times, the effort was high, but the accomplishment was low or vice versa: low effort but excelled toward meeting the goal. As the teacher, I frequently reevaluated the goal or modified it to meet individual learning needs. Did this create more work for me? Maybe. But for my family, this approach released testing anxiety and the stress I felt to follow someone else’s lesson plans. Worth mentioning, this did not apply to our math lessons. For math, I would check daily lessons and have my children redo missed problems. Tests were treated similarly, scores below 75% meant we redid the chapter and repeated the test, averaging the tests to determine their “math grade.” We followed this approach until 8th grade, when we transitioned to formal grading to help ease them into formal learning model for college level classes. I feel this approach empowered my children to become self-directed learners who creatively find resources to “teach themselves.” If you can creatively teach and monitor your children’s learning experience, try different things until you find the best fit, for your children and yourself! ~ Deanne
It is our hope that our individual experience encourages you to find the best path for your family. Our FAMILY Way video is an excellent introduction to help you determine the best educational philosophy for your family. The Rainbow Curriculum Consultants are available to answer your questions and guide you through the options to find the best fit for your unique family. Call, Live Chat or Email us today!
~ Deanne and Amber
