Grading Project Based Electives Such as Art, Shop, Etc.

[JumpyTheFrog]

DS1 is in 10th grade. For his art class I have him do a lesson from Mark Kistler's Draw 3D videos about four days per week. I am very happy with this system because he has gone from little interest and no confidence in his drawings to occasionally drawing buildings with perspective and shading for fun. In other words, I don't want to change anything about the work. How should I go about assigning a grade for the course? Likewise, how should I assign grades for other project based elective courses such as home ec, shop, etc?

[regentrude]

I assigned a grade of P for "Participation" for all non-core subjects.

Some people are concerned about how college could weight P grades. In that case, establish an expectation (complete x amount of work/ engage x often/ complete x project) and give the student a grade of A once he has fulfilled this expectation. If not, let student complete work until he has met your standards for an A.

[Lori D.]

Agree with @regentrude about set your standards for makes a completed course, and award the A once that is completed.

Some colleges automatically award a grade of "C" for every "Pass" grade, which is why many homeschoolers recommend against using pass/fail grades, even for things like PE. Several "P"s being changed to "C" grades can drop a student's GPA and knock them out of the running for scholarships, for example.

For non-textbook-y courses that are largely project-based, you might also take hours into consideration as part of the completion, or at least a way of judging if the student has spent enough time on a project to count as a full or partial credit. Since 120 hours is the minimum and 180 the maximum for 1.o credit, a good average to shoot for is roughly 150 hours of time spent = 1 credit.

[Farrar]

Give an A.

I mean, if he does the work or spends the time and you're happy with it, I don't think it needs to be more complex than that.

[Clemsondana]

I consider it to be the equivalent of classes like band or choir when I was in high school - as long as you did the work (participated in class, met some minimum standard of competence, and were at the required events), you got an A.  We count hours, and our umbrella requires 135, although we've used 150 for some classes.