grades
We are currently studying transcendentalism and I had a long reading over the weekend where I asked students to react to it in the margins so that they could create their own menaing. Today, we had a great class discussion over the reading and everyone gave their two cents.I had a student come up to me and say are we receiving any points on this? I said no. He said, "I was really counting on this." My response was, "so you need a point value to this in order to learn?" He said, "Yeah, it would have helped." I then patted myself on the back because it was more important to me that each student make their own connections and get their own individual sense of the reading than me rewarding them with a grade for doing something that I thought was important for LEARNING, not to give them more points so that their grades would rise! It's that time of year-where they are concerned about where they'll end up-funny how this wasn't an issue 15 weeks ago.
posted by Jessie C. at 11:04 AM
2 Comments:
Yes, it's going to take time to get students to refocus on the learning and away from grades. But I think if we keep at it - and especially if more and more of us try to focus on the learning - they will respond.
I know how you feel...if my students with D's and F's were as concerned about points and assignment completion at the beginning of the semester as they are during the last week, they wouldn't be worried about their D or F!
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