Number of grades per course

[DragonFaerie]

DD is starting high school this year, and I'm noticing that in many (most?) of her classes, there are very few graded assignments/tests.  Saxon Algebra obviously has tons of tests, but in Kolbe Biology, for example, the only grades I see are the six unit tests.  Art of Argument has nine quiz/test grades.  Excellence in Literature has seven or eight essays and that's it.  One low grade blows the whole school year!  Is that pretty normal to have so few grades?

[regentrude]

I don't know about normal - my kids get one grade for math, for a comprehensive final exam.

They get approximately monthly exams in sciences, and have a handful of essay assignments in English and history.

 

[EKS]

That is normal for college courses.  For high school courses in b&m schools, it is very common to have *lots* of graded work.

[Mom22ns]

DD is starting high school this year, and I'm noticing that in many (most?) of her classes, there are very few graded assignments/tests.  Saxon Algebra obviously has tons of tests, but in Kolbe Biology, for example, the only grades I see are the six unit tests.  Art of Argument has nine quiz/test grades.  Excellence in Literature has seven or eight essays and that's it.  One low grade blows the whole school year!  Is that pretty normal to have so few grades?

 

I usually give very few grades, but Excellence in Lit has 2-4 writing assignments per Unit and 9 units per year. You might only choose to grade the big papers, but you could grade the author profiles, the approach papers, and other shorter papers if you would like more grades.

 

In science, I prefer to give Unit tests, I find many curriculums provide 4-6 of these. In Math we do chapter tests, maybe a dozen. History has varied, 

 

In public school, every time the kids sneeze, they get a grade. Grades are used to motivate. There is something graded nearly daily, it seems to be the only way they can get kids to show up and do anything. I prefer to separate learning and grading. Learning is a daily opportunity. We do practice problems in math to learn, the same for science, we do labs to learn, we read and write to learn. We take occasional tests to prove that we have learned. Yes, if you blow one, it has a significant effect on your grade, but if you blow a test, then there is a significant portion of the material that wasn't learned.

 

I do think that most college classes follow the model of fewer grades with more significance to each grade. Those classes ds took at the local state U had 3-4 tests, a couple quizzes, a presentation or group project or two, maybe a writing assignment of significance. There weren't a lot of grades. In one class he got As on every graded assignment/test except one. He got a B+ (89.9%) in the class. It was a hard but important lesson.

[kbernt]

Just a suggestion, you could have more grades per course in the 9th and 10th and work towards less in 11th and 12th and that way she would be prepared for college. Use regular/questions/"homework" assignments as more grades in addition to the unit tests in Kolbe.