WHEN: November 12&14 (4 hours) – Mastery Algebra CP
& 10th grade
WHAT: I have observed
numerous classes this semester and have grown to love the way my teacher grades
homework assignments. Students come in
with their homework, which is assigned about three times a week. My mentor teacher walks around to check that
everyone has theirs. Then, she puts the
homework answers on the board. The students
mark the answers they have wrong. They
are then given time to correct their answers.
If they cannot get the correct answer the second time, they may ask her
to help them with it. After correcting
their homework, she collects the homework and grades it according to how it
looks after it has been corrected. If
students didn’t catch an error, they didn’t bother to correct it, or their
corrections are wrong, she marks it wrong.
SO WHAT: I decided to
blog on this because I really liked this method of homework grading. I think it is an excellent form of
assessment. We have learned that you do
not only have to use assessments to determine grades, but also to determine any
problems students may be struggling with.
In her method, she can see what students do and don’t understand. She may also notice a pattern. The majority of students may not understand
one problem in particular, which means she needs to go back and teach them the
concept further so that they may understand how to do the problem. I also like that they have a chance to redeem
themselves. They may understand the
concept completely, but they may have made one or two small calculating
errors. I do not believe that if a
student catches these errors and corrects them that the student should be
penalized. In addition, if students
correct their work, they may understand the concept better, and they should not
be penalized if they are still learning.
As long as they are learning the material, I don’t see the point in
penalizing them for it.
NOW WHAT: I am
planning to use the same method of grading homework when I teach. I may, however, change it a little bit. I really liked Rusty Curry’s method that he
does with his students. He told our
class that he divides the students into small groups of about 3. They compare their homework problems while he
walks around to check that they have it.
If nobody in the group got the answer to a certain problem and they
cannot figure it out, they walk up to the board and put the number on the
board. When the groups are done
discussing, he asked other students that found an answer to a number on the
board to go up to the board and explain the problem. Not only does this allow students to teach
one another, but it allows more time for the teacher to walk around and provide
help. In addition, it takes less time
because the teacher does not have to go over 10 different problems in front of
the class just because one student didn’t understand each of them.
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