Grading is an unpleasant necessity of the educational system, and a challenge for broadcast advisers to get right. In my previous article, I talked about my personal philosophy on grading. But there are as many ways to grade as there are teachers, and it’s important to find a system that works best for you and your students. Below are reflections on grading from some advisers that I highly respect.
Don Goble. Adviser, Ladue View, Ladue Horton Watkins High School. Saint Louis, MO. @dgoble2001
“Essentially, we break the skills of broadcasting into 6 categories and the students are graded weekly on each of those categories. We first ask the students to give themselves a grade and then we go through and adjust accordingly. More often than not, the kids are pretty accurate because they have the rubric in front of themselves as they grade their projects. The goal for students is that by the end of the semester, they’re getting 3s and 4s on every skill of each project.
Obviously, because they haven’t mastered the skills at the beginning of a semester, they’re likely getting 1s and 2s. Their overall grade is determined by the trend they have at the end of the semester. We look at their last 3-4 stories and if they have a consistent trend of 3s or 4s, they earn one of those grades. If they haven’t created a trend and are all over the map, we look further back on the semester. If there’s still no trend, we sort of average it out.
We’ve found it helps to keep some of the seniors from slacking off at the end of the semester because they know if they turn in three bad stories, their new trend is going to be 1s and 2s regardless of how they did in the middle of the semester.
We’ve used this grading system since 2010 and have had pretty good success with it. The most difficult part has been explaining to parents that 50% in the class, which is a 2 out of 4, isn’t actually failing. Once they understand more about the system, most have been receptive to it and enjoy how it rewards student’s skills.”
You can see Corey’s grading rubrics here.
Written By: Michael Hernandez