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When do you start giving grades to your kids?


mazakaal
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I'm curious to find out what others do, since all the homeschooler I know here are unschoolers and don't grade at all. So... at what age/grade do you start grading your kids' work?

 

I'm going to try to add a poll to this. Or you can just respond below. Thanks.

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I put other--it's theoretical since my oldest is finishing up 1st grade!

 

I would imagine middle school or high school.

 

She gave her brother a grade the other day for a "history test" she made for him. (It was all math, it was very funny!) His name starts with a D, she said he did good so he got a "D." My husband didn't hear her explanation and was wondering why they were both so happy that he got a D!

 

After I explained, he thought it was funny that she would accidentally choose a bad grade as a good one.

 

However, he only got about 25% of the problems right, so maybe he did deserve a true "D!"

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DS never cared about grades until he was maybe 7 or 8 (and his PS friends had them), and then only as a curiosity... But they were useful for communicating with DH about the basics of what we were up to -- of course we talk all the time, but I don't need to go on and on about every little thing, I can just say he has a B and we both know what we're talking about and whether there is anything of concern.

 

The other reason I did grades from early is because I know where I like to aim my assignments. I don't want them to be so easy that he gets 100% on everything, but anything where he gets less than 80% is too frustrating. So I try to assign him work that gets him about 85% in the daily work and about that or a little higher on tests (when making a really concerted effort).

 

Once he started high school work, it's a transcript matter (although he started early so not all of it might make it to the transcript), because I think it does mean something to say "We used this text, these chapters and assignments, his test average was 93% and his final exam was 92." So I do a full syllabus of each "course" we do, assign grades for the work described, and keep a file of the completed tests. At that point I don't count daily work in the grade, although I correct it.

 

It's certainly not the only way to do it, but this has worked out beautifully for us. :)

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I graded when we first started. We were using Abeka and it was easy to pull grades from their curriculum. When we starting steering away from that in 4th grade I quit giving grades. It was too much work to figure out what to grade how to score it, etc. This year I graded nothing except a few Latin quizzes. It was nice.

 

I will probably start grading again in 7th or 8th as I do plan to give grades in high school. I want at least a year to tweak how I'll give grades.

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