My dd wants grades and report cards in the fall.

[dorothy]

Anyone do this? How? thanks.

[Pamela H in Texas]

Hmmmmm, we always work til 100% so grades and report cards would have been useless, all 100's? My son does get them now with the virtual academy, but I can't very well answer for all our years homeschooling. Of course, if you don't work til 100%, you could just figure the grade for each thing worked or just average test grades if you test (I'd more likely to do the latter).

 

oh, another idea....make daughter figure out her grades....good math practice :)

[Jenny in Florida]

Sometimes, my son is motivated by seeing a "real grade" in black and white on paper. More often, we've done them with an eye toward claiming the rewards and goodies that certain stores and restaurants offer for good grades.

 

Chuck E. Cheese, for example, used to give out a certain number of game tokens for each A. When my kids were younger, they used to look forward to an outing there at the end of each grading cycle to use their tokens.

 

Generally, we, too, work until they hit 100% on their daily assignments. However, I usually look for some portion of each curriculum that can be used as a "test." Sometimes, it's the chapter review in the math workbook, for example, or the online quiz on the science textbook publisher's website. Obviously, we do go over any problems they got wrong, but I usually record their initial grade on those assignments.

 

In terms of daily work, I often grade as much on attitude as on results. So, if my son focuses and works cheerfully on his assignment, he gets full points, even if it takes him three tries to get all the answers correct.

 

At the end of each grading cycle, I total up the points for the daily assignments and the points for the "tests" and figure out a grade.

 

Both of my kids have always liked to "know where they are." They like to have goals to work toward, and defining grading standards seems to work well for them. So, this year, I sat down at the beginning and worked out how I was going to grade each of my son's subjects, then wrote notes for myself in my log book and went over it all with him.

 

So, for example, we're using English Prep Book 1. We do pretty much all of the reading comprehension and grammar and punctuation exercises orally. I decided that he would earn 5 points for every exercise he did well. And, again, this may mean he has to try more than once or get prompted to come up with the right answers. If he gets answers wrong, though, and just isn't really putting any effort into working on it, I'll knock him down a point or two.

 

He can also earn up to 20 points for each writing assignment he completes. Assuming he gives it his best effort and makes revisions as instructed and so on and turns it in on time, he gets all 20 points. If he gets resistant or sloppy, I take off points. And he loses 1 additional point for every day he turns it in late. (This happened with the last assignment.)

 

Next year, I think we will also add points for finishing his assigned reading for the week as an incentive to keep him from falling behind.

[Julie Herbster]

There are just a few steps you go through to determine grade averages for, say, a quarter (which is generally around 9 weeks if you do a traditional, 2-semester school year).

 

First, you have to come up with a score (percentage correct) for each paper (whatever papers you want to grade...I've just done tests, quizzes, and projects, but you could do worksheets or whatever). If there are twenty items on a test, each item is worth five points...etc. It's really pretty simple. I have an "E-Z grader," which can be bought at any teacher supply store) to help me figure out what a grade should be if there are, say, 45 questions on a test and dc misses 3.

 

Once you have graded a paper, you will need to record the score. There are many ways to do this (products abound!), but I simply used a grid I made up on Excel with the subjects running down the left side and dates across the top. If you have different "kinds" of scores (tests, quizzes, projects), you will want to differentiate between them, since they should receive different "weights" when you average the grades at quarter's end.

 

When the grading period ends, you'll need to average the scores for each subject. If there are different kinds of scores (tests, quizzes, etc.) to consider, you'll want to decide how much each score will figure into the final grade. Tests should be worth more than quizzes, as they give more comprehensive pictures of the child's overall progress. As a classroom teacher, I generally averaged up all of a student's quiz scores and made that score count as one test grade in that subject. (Example: Susie got a 98, 96, 85, and 90...Add 'em up to get 369, then divide by 4 to get an average of 91. I would then record "91" as a "test" grade, to be averaged with the other test scores.) Multi-step projects such as book reports can either be graded section by section, with each step counting as a quiz grade...or you could just grade the final product and make it count for two test grades or something like that.

 

If you want to assign letter grades to reflect the scores, you can use a ten-point scale (A=90-100, B=80-89, etc.), or a stricter 7 or 8 point scale (my preference).

 

Like someone else who posted, we too "work until 100%," but the kids still receive the grade they got before corrections were done.

 

If this is as clear as mud to you, I'm sure you can find some great software out there that can figure all this out for you. I'm pretty old-school when it comes to this kind of thing. A calculator and a sheet of scores is enough for me. I think it would be more confusing for me to use an "easy" cpu program!

[Just a Jen in Mississippi]

I downloaded a blank report card form from Donna Young and typed in our information for the subjects and grading scale we use. Then I print my daughters' report cards onto card stock and keep it in front of our homeschool portfolio (a record book of a sampling of my children's work for my own use....not required). Then every six weeks, I give number/letter grades for math, Latin, and grammar tests and Satisfactory, Excellent, etc. for their other subjects that don't get official grades. This is only for our own use and motivation. My girls enjoy having report cards. I also use this time to update my lesson plan book and get ready for the new 6 weeks.

HTH