Participation Grade

[Haiku]

When awarding a participation grade, what percentage of the final grade do you assign to participation?

[regentrude]

100%.

I give a grade of P for electives. They have no tests, the student simply has to complete the work.

 

In all other subjects. I evaluate purely based on subject mastery. Participation is mandatory.

[EKS]

I give no more that 30% to things like participation (independent work completion, like math problem sets, falls into this category for me).  Of course I also require that my students master the material, which ends up meaning that their graded work is generally in the A range.  This makes the effect of a 100% in the participation-type category negligible.

[EndOfOrdinary]

Most schools cap it between 5 and 10 percent if you are wanting the public school approach. I do not know many homeschoolers who use participation grades as most subjects are mandantory, one on one-ish, and you are not having to penalize in the way public school need with groups of 30.

[Haiku]

Ok. I was going to give 10% participation for effort and engagement. By engagement I mean that the student seeks relevant knowledge outside class and/or makes connections between what is learned in class and out-of-class information. It sounds like that would be reasonable.

[Lucy the Valiant]

I teach a high school literature class (not to my own children), and participation is 20% of their final grade. "Participation" means actively engaging in group discussion, demonstrating initiative (if you miss a class, get the notes from a friend, and make sure you stay on top of what you missed), and tracking me down / asking questions if there is something they don't understand. That 20% is factored into each "unit" for the year (in other words, it's evaluated on an on-going basis and functions as a way for me to keep current with each kid in the class).

[Penguin]

I give no more that 30% to things like participation (independent work completion, like math problem sets, falls into this category for me). Of course I also require that my students master the material, which ends up meaning that their graded work is generally in the A range. This makes the effect of a 100% in the participation-type category negligible.

Can you expand on this, please? Does that mean you would not administer a test/ assign the paper until you were sure that the student had mastered the material and is capable of A-range work? Does it mean that if some output (test, paper, etc.) did not reach A range then the student revisits the material for increased mastery?

 

Grading still baffles me :(

[regentrude]

Can you expand on this, please? Does that mean you would not administer a test/ assign the paper until you were sure that the student had mastered the material and is capable of A-range work? Does it mean that if some output (test, paper, etc.) did not reach A range then the student revisits the material for increased mastery?

 

I am not EKS, but I also teach to mastery.

 

I have never understood the reasoning behind moving on to the next concept if the previous concept has not been thoroughly mastered. It is necessary in a school that has to run on a schedule, but in a homeschool I see no benefit.

 

I allow my kids to take their comprehensive math final exam only after they have reviewed and taken a pretest that verifies they have mastered the concepts. If they have not, they will have to do more review before they are allowed to test.

A writing assignment that does not meet my standards has to be revised until it does (and that does not have to mean perfect; with a certain assignment we might just focus on a certain aspect of writing, and I evaluate this aspect of it).

 

In my homeschool, I do the tests really only to satisfy the demands of outside authorities. I work with my kids daily and know exactly to what extent they have mastered a subject.

 

 

 

Grading still baffles me

 

In the end, all grades are utterly meaningless to an outsider until they are accompanied by the assignment that has been given.

I can write a math or physics test where 90% students get an A, or a test where the top student struggles to make a 65%.

The grade is only relevant within the framework of the expectation.

An yes, I am aware that as such, a transcript is also meaningless, because there is no standardized coursework.

[Penguin]

Thank you regentrude, that was very helpful.  I like the idea of a pre-test.  I think I will start a new thread about pace vs. mastery so as not to further derail this one.

 

OP, I hope you have some good ideas to work with now.  At the moment, what I consider participation is weighing heavily.  Because by that I mean that he gets all of his work done, and doesn't blow off half of the directions. We have been having some struggles in that area with the adjustment to high school work load.  But I plan to back down the importance of participation once he has a better handle on just keeping up.

[EKS]

Most schools cap it between 5 and 10 percent if you are wanting the public school approach. I do not know many homeschoolers who use participation grades as most subjects are mandantory, one on one-ish, and you are not having to penalize in the way public school need with groups of 30.

 

Yes, but they have other categories that are essentially the same concept--meaning that the student can get 100% in those categories without demonstrating understanding of the material.  For example, notebook maintenance, homework completion, and attendance all fall into this realm.  If you add these things up, you generally find that they are worth up to 30% of the grade--in fact, I recently found that one teacher in the local high school has it at 40%.  

 

In math, I've been weighing homework completion in math at 25-30% for years.  This gives my students some incentive for doing homework other than me telling them they have to do it.  Of course, the funny thing is that since they tend to average 95% on the tests, that 100% for homework completion only boosts their grade to slightly over 96%.  Occasionally, I've had the homework piece boost the grade from a high A- to an A, which I have no problem justifying.  I should point out that I expect my students to work on math problem sets until all of the problems are correct.

 

For classes other than math, I use that 30% for things like reading/discussion and ungraded writing assignments.

 

Can you expand on this, please? Does that mean you would not administer a test/ assign the paper until you were sure that the student had mastered the material and is capable of A-range work? Does it mean that if some output (test, paper, etc.) did not reach A range then the student revisits the material for increased mastery?

 

Grading still baffles me :(

 

For classes where tests are the main graded work (math, science, foreign language), I don't give the test until I'm fairly sure the student has mastered the material.  If he bombs the test (which rarely happens--maybe once a year or less for a particular subject), I will reteach the material and have him take a different form of the test afterwards.

 

For classes where papers or other creative output is the main graded work, I have my students work on whatever it is until it is in the A range.  If this takes too much input on my part, I know I need to come up with some lessons that allow the student to be more independently successful with subsequent assignments.

 

Grading baffles me too.  What has helped is having my kids attend a b&m school for a few years.  I discovered that the teachers there were *way* more random and lenient in their grading practices than I was.

[EKS]

I should also mention that I explained the teaching to mastery thing on my son's college applications this way:

 

All home-based courses were taught to mastery, meaning that assessment was done only after the student had mastered the material through discussion and practice.  Because meeting expectations was not optional--and expectations were to produce excellent quality work--the student's grades in his home-based courses are uniformly high.

 

Of course, it is extremely important that when you teach and grade in this way that the student have outside coursework and test scores that corroborate the high mommy grades.  Fortunately, when you teach to mastery, the student should end up developing the skills necessary to tackle outside coursework and testing with confidence.

[Penguin]

(snip)

Grading baffles me too.  What has helped is having my kids attend a b&m school for a few years.  I discovered that the teachers there were *way* more random and lenient in their grading practices than I was.

 

Oh, yes X1000 in agreement with the bolded.  My olders went to B&M school.  

[katilac]

Most schools cap it between 5 and 10 percent if you are wanting the public school approach.  

 

I am forever googling syllabi for examples, and I have found that 10% to 20% is quite common, even in honors and advanced classes. 

 

 

I have never understood the reasoning behind moving on to the next concept if the previous concept has not been thoroughly mastered. It is necessary in a school that has to run on a schedule, but in a homeschool I see no benefit.

 

 

One practical reason is that students sometimes hit a wall with a certain concept, but are able to grasp it the second time around with no problem if you take a break and come back to it. 

[regentrude]

One practical reason is that students sometimes hit a wall with a certain concept, but are able to grasp it the second time around with no problem if you take a break and come back to it. 

 

But in many cases, the subsequent concept builds upon the previous one - unless you choose a curriculum that jumps around touching on topics briefly in random order and then comes back. With any mastery based curriculum, you can't advance to division of fractions if the student has not learned to multiply fractions, and you cannot advance to algebra if the student has not mastered prealgebra, you cannot advance to trigonometry if the student has not mastered triangle geometry. In physics, students who have not understood kinematics won't master forces, and  I can't teach energy methods to students who have not understood forces because they will need to use the skills they should have acquired then

I see the results of this disastrous mode of teaching every day at work. Students who somehow were advanced through precalculus, but have no understanding of fractions manipulation - which means that all subsequent math stands on a very shaky foundation and crumbles as soon as there is the slightest push.

 

If you want to come back to the topic that was not understood the first time, you need to take great care to omit all topics whose mastery is reliant on the mastery of that very concept. That means often changing course, interspersing extra material, deviating from the standard curriculum. When DS hit a snag in algebra, we detoured for a semester through topics of discrete math before coming back - that worked because this material did not require mastery of the concept that had stumped him. But we could not have advanced in the same textbook, because the hole would have prevented subsequent understanding.

[EKS]

I think it is important to differentiate between what is a failure of mastery due to a lack of understanding and a failure due to an inability to remember.  While understanding the underlying concepts can facilitate memory retrieval, it does not guarantee it.  

 

The best way to master material for the long haul--meaning never forgetting again--is not to hammer away at it and only it until it is learned but instead to learn it once and then come back to it just before it has been forgotten and to do that several times until the memory is stable.  If that sounds remarkably like Saxon, it is because Saxon uses distributed practice (and overlearning) to ensure that even students who don't understand the concepts can do the procedures.

[MerryAtHope]

I lump "discussion" in with "daily work" (where daily work might include something like reading and taking notes, math homework, short response pieces that are not revised/polished, mapwork for history, daily questions in science, etc...) The daily work category is usually 1/3 of the grade for us. For some subjects, "discussion" would be something that happens but I don't actually grade, while for other subjects it would be about half of what I consider for that "daily work" grade--putting us in the "between 10-20%" category.

 

I do expect A work generally for this category. If my student can't discuss the subject or answer oral questions, they need to go back and read until they can. And if they haven't read all the material and done any associated daily work, they likely can't carry on a good discussion--so the two really go hand in hand.

 

 

[katilac]

But in many cases, the subsequent concept builds upon the previous one - 

 

 

 

Of course, but it's equally true that many times it does not.

 

And there's going to be a range of thoughts on just how 'mastered' a skill needs to be to move on. Sometimes I judge that a rather shaky understanding is enough to move on, bc some people need to see the next step and how it fits together before truly grasping the first step, or truly having confidence in their understanding. 

 

If this doesn't turn out to be the case, we can always back up and cover the first step again, a luxury of homeschooling.