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Okay, y'all.  I really need some help here.  I struggle and struggle with how to grade my DS's work.  Subjects that have tests are fine, like math and grammar.  But for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to grade him on things like history and geography.  I've been just assigning papers and grading those, but that is really not working for me.  For example, today he turned in a paper on earthquakes for geography.  He did a good job with his topic sentence, his supporting details/paragraphs, his organization, and his conclusion.  However, his grammar and spelling are always a problem.  I use a grading rubic, and on this paper, he got 4 points (the highest) for everything except he got 1s on grammar and spelling.  Well, that made his grade an 81.  That just doesn't seem fair.  The only points he lost didn't have anything to do with geography at all, and yet they cost him on his geography grade.  I really need a better way to do this.  Every writing rubric I find focuses largely on the language arts aspect of writing, and that just doesn't seem like a fair way to grade other subjects.  What can the Hive suggest?

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If he has 1 instead of 4 for grammar and spelling, that means he lost 6 points total. If the total score is 100, that would make it 94. Or is his score 81/87 since he score full points for everything else?

 

Getting 3 points each taken off for spelling and grammar out of 100 points isn't unfair. The only subjects I didn't get deducted marks for grammar or spelling was for the sciences and math. Even then spelling errors will annoy my sciences and math teachers. All my teachers would red ink the errors.

 

I don't know how bad is your child's grammar but a coherent essay for history, geography and literature makes marking more pleasant for the examiner/marker.

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If he has 1 instead of 4 for grammar and spelling, that means he lost 6 points total. If the total score is 100, that would make it 94. Or is his score 81/87 since he score full points for everything else?

 

Getting 3 points each taken off for spelling and grammar out of 100 points isn't unfair. The only subjects I didn't get deducted marks for grammar or spelling was for the sciences and math. Even then spelling errors will annoy my sciences and math teachers. All my teachers would red ink the errors.

 

I don't know how bad is your child's grammar but a coherent essay for history, geography and literature makes marking more pleasant for the examiner/marker.

 

The rubric gives 1 to 4 points on each of 8 areas: topic sentence, organization, body, closing sentence, sentence structure and word choice, grammar and mechanics, spelling, and handwriting (this last is to encourage him to make the effort to write more neatly or even to work on writing in cursive).  So, the grade is based on 32 possible points. Today, he got 26 points out of the 32.  He got 4s on everything but the grammar and spelling just killed him.  My concern is that he doesn't have a good grade in geography, not because he doesn't know geography, but because he has trouble with grammar and spelling, and that just doesn't seem right.

 

 

Why do you have to assign a grade at all?

I would simply have him correct the mistakes. Any grading rubric is subjective, and the goal is improvement, not creating a number.

 

I give grades because it is motivation for him and because he likes getting a report card.

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I essentially have two rubrics that I use to grade the essay two ways. I make up my own rubrics that evolve over time so that I can target particular issues in my son's writing as they come up.

 

So he gets two grades for each essay?  How does this solve the problem of losing so many points for grammar and spelling in other subjects?  I mean, say DS does great on the content grade and gets 100, but then does terribly on the grammar and spelling and gets a 50.  He still only ends up with a 75 for the end result, right?

 

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Thinking out loud here, but here's an idea.  What if I change up the rubric so it doesn't include the grammar and spelling sections?  Then the paper will be graded on the content and how it is presented.  But, I can then take off some amount for every spelling and grammar error.  Half a point or something for each mistake maybe?  It will still affect his grade if he isn't more careful about it, but it won't have so much weight (I think).  Does that sound reasonable?

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That's not a bad idea. Would you make him recopy the whole paper or just erase and fix the mistakes?

I have my kids use a word processor from a young age, which helps immensely with issues like these, but I'd probably have him erase and correct the mistakes.

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I have my kids use a word processor from a young age, which helps immensely with issues like these, but I'd probably have him erase and correct the mistakes.

 

That's a good idea, though part of what I grade on is his handwriting, which also needs a lot of work.  He gets a 4 just for trying to write neatly in cursive. :D  I have, however, found him typing words into a text on his phone because his phone will offer up spelling suggestions.  Can't blame the kid for thinking outside the box.  LOL...

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