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Do you grade everything?


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Ok, I know this has probably been asked before, but I need to hear it. I have 4 children and am a prior teacher, then "retired" as an administrator to homeschool my own children. We were spending way more time at the school than we spent together, and it had to stop since the whole point was being together.

I am so accustomed to grading everything that I feel horrible when I fall behind. I know many homeschoolers don't assign term grades, etc. but how do you know they are getting everything they need? I am an avid Charlotte Mason teacher, and know what she says on grades, but thought I would ask TWTM forum as we also follow a classical model.

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I don't grade anything.

 

As she works, I check her work. If there's a problem or she needs help, I let her know/help her as needed.

 

How do I know she's getting what she needs? Well. I see that she's learning and I work with her so I know what she needs reinforcement with. Here in PA we have to have an evaluation every year and testing in certain grades and have to submit a portfolio to the school district each year, so I guess those things all reinforce whether we're doing a good job, too.

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My goal is to teach until mastery. I'm not an evaluator; I'm an educator.

 

I do go over all of my children's work so that we can find problems and fix mistakes. I don't assign grades at all to my younger children, but I do assign grades to my high-schoolers' final work for transcript purposes. It is fairly obvious where they need help, and I'm never surprised by our standardized test results.

 

I believe grading is one of the major problems with the public education system: assign a grade and move on without teaching the individual child until he/she has actually learned it. It's all well and good to let a student know how they have done, but it's totally useless information unless you use it to improve the learning that obviously hasn't happened if the grade is less than excellent.

Edited by Amy in NH
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I grade all of my work, sort of, but I always grade my tests to see where I fail. I know when I am struggling in something and I take my time doing it if I need to, when you see your child struggling, that's when you should start grading and making sure they are getting it. Then you can ease off of grading for awhile. I take time to evaluate myself, and make sure I am understanding the whole process of it.

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I don't assign letter grades to most assignments. We go over the work together and correct any incorrect answers.

 

I do assign letter grades to writing assignments. I always give ds grading rubric for his writing assignments, with points assigned to each category. The total points he may earn is 100, so it's easy for him to see that he earned an 'A' or a 'B' or whatever.

 

I know that I will need to keep grades for high school though so that is my summer project this year -- figuring out my system and then implementing it for practice during his 8th grade year.

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I don't grade my kids' work. They are in elementary school, and our goal is mastery. I sit with them for almost every subject so it is clear to me whether or not they are "getting" it. If they "get it", we move on. If not, we keep at it. No real grades necessary at this stage.

 

In high school, I'm sure I will very carefully keep grades and records for their transcripts.

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Ok, I know this has probably been asked before, but I need to hear it. I have 4 children and am a prior teacher, then "retired" as an administrator to homeschool my own children. We were spending way more time at the school than we spent together, and it had to stop since the whole point was being together.

I am so accustomed to grading everything that I feel horrible when I fall behind. I know many homeschoolers don't assign term grades, etc. but how do you know they are getting everything they need? I am an avid Charlotte Mason teacher, and know what she says on grades, but thought I would ask TWTM forum as we also follow a classical model.

 

Every night I check anything they do independently, or semi-independently. Here that is math for dd9 and dd7. Latin for dd9, test if it was a history test day for dd9. Latin and math they have to do corrections the next day, history test we just kind of go over together. I do not do "grades" at this point (4th grade, 2nd and Kindy). I'm not sure if I will start that before high school or later logic stage - I'm pretty sure I won't start in 5th grade.

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