[email protected]



I'm not into assigning worksheets and stuff like that, but I read about
someone who marked mistakes on kids' work with a circled LO for learning
opportunity.  It's a step, anyway.


It reminds me of school reform, though, or what passes for it sometimes.

Schools got really excited about the idea of going from "grades" to indicators (and called them different things).  But when an A,B,C,D,F system is changed to VG, G, NI, U, it doesn't take kids half a second to figure out what's what.  

I always saw red marks on writing as learning opportunities.  That's because I wanted to learn.  I had friends who hated red marks.  If I got a paper with an A and no marks, and one of my two best friends in 9th grade (thinking of my favorite English teacher) got the same, they were happy, content, relieved!  I was grumpy.  I wanted my feedback!!  I could have written and gotten nothing back in the privacy of my own home.  But when the teacher found that out, he started critiquing semi-colons and dashes and word choice, and I was happier.  

In a homeschooling situation, I suppose it would depend totally on the child's temperament, the mom's attitude, and what disadvantage red marks brought.  Was the child going to have to do the work again?  Endure a "lesson" in something he just slipped up on but understands?  If it's just a mark he can pursue or let lie, it wouldn't be too bad, I suppose.

All that's just another good reason to walk away from school methods.  Much effort and emotion stirred up over something that doesn't need to involve emotion or repetition or potential for shaming.

Sandra

Cindy

Sandra wrote :
> It reminds me of school reform, though, or what passes for it sometimes.
>
> Schools got really excited about the idea of going from "grades" to indicators (and called them different things). But when an A,B,C,D,F system is
> changed to VG, G, NI, U, it doesn't take kids half a second to figure out what's what.
>
I went to a university which didn't have a grade option at first.
The profs were supposed to write a narrative evaluation of
each student for the quarter. What it ended up as was something like this :
"Cindy scored above average on the midterm, excellent on the final. She
turned in an excellent report on ..."

The grad students all are given narratives while the undergrads have an
option of grades or narratives (some grad schools don't know how to process
narratives). As a student I really didn't see any difference.

I think the idea was good but when the UC regents decided that Santa Cruz
needed to grow, it became flawed. What would work well for a small
number of students doesn't work well for large numbers of students. And
now UC Santa Cruz is basically just another UC campus with a funky history!

So how do you prepare your children for "red marks" when they decide they
want to enter institutional schools?

--

Cindy Ferguson
crma@...

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/28/01 3:23:03 PM, crma@... writes:

<< I went to a university which didn't have a grade option at first.
The profs were supposed to write a narrative evaluation of
each student for the quarter. What it ended up as was something like this :
"Cindy scored above average on the midterm, excellent on the final. She
turned in an excellent report on ..." >>

*grins*

I graduated from UCSC in 1977. Yes, some evals were like this, especially
the big freshman classes (Biology 101) -- but most of mine were pretty
thoughtful. Classmates went on to medical and law school; I'm sorry UCSC
went back to grades.

As far as preparing kids for college "learning opportunity marks" -- by then
I hope they'll have enough confidence in themselves. and desire to learn a
particular subject, to examine feedback without falling apart or working
solely for the mark.

*shrugs*

Sharon

Kelly Green

This doesn't really answer your question but I gotta plug my alma
mater here. New College of Florida
<http://www.ncf.edu/Documents/FactSheet.html> uses only narrative
evaluations (there is no grade option) and I really think they work
(in combination with very available, very engaged faculty). While
admissions are competitive, the learning environment really is not
(or was not when I was there). Of course there are red marks, but as
students we _wanted_ them, in the way Sandra described in her earlier
post. There are no general ed requirements -- each student is
responsible for coming up with a plan of study (through courses as
well as non-classroom-stuff), which they write up as a "contract"
that they then have with a faculty advisor. It's still school for
sure, but I think it's a really great option for unschoolers
interested in entering institutional schools.

When I went there (in late 80's/early 90's) it was way less expensive
for me than UC Santa Cruz (and I was a Santa Cruz resident)!

To quote from the opening screen on the New College Alumni Web site
<http://www.newcollege.org/>:

"The natural state of the human species is ecstatic wonder ...
... we should not settle for less."

Kelly



>I went to a university which didn't have a grade option at first.
>The profs were supposed to write a narrative evaluation of
>each student for the quarter. What it ended up as was something like this :
>"Cindy scored above average on the midterm, excellent on the final. She
>turned in an excellent report on ..."
>
>The grad students all are given narratives while the undergrads have an
>option of grades or narratives (some grad schools don't know how to process
>narratives). As a student I really didn't see any difference.
>
>I think the idea was good but when the UC regents decided that Santa Cruz
>needed to grow, it became flawed. What would work well for a small
>number of students doesn't work well for large numbers of students. And
>now UC Santa Cruz is basically just another UC campus with a funky history!
>
>So how do you prepare your children for "red marks" when they decide they
>want to enter institutional schools?

[email protected]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2001 14:00:20 -0800 Kelly Green <kelly@...>
writes:
> This doesn't really answer your question but I gotta plug my alma
> mater here. New College of Florida
> <http://www.ncf.edu/Documents/FactSheet.html> uses only narrative
> evaluations (there is no grade option) and I really think they work
> (in combination with very available, very engaged faculty).

Is this affilaited with New College in San Francisco? Just wondering..

I went to a funky private school for 2nd through 4th grade in the
seventies where we had no grades, the teachers wrote a class description
and a brief narrative report for each student, and then the students did
the same for each teacher. None of the stuff we did was graded, except
for math, which was a self-paced program that you worked through by doing
a pretest, then completing whatever stuff the pretest showed you needed
to learn, then post-testing, then either going on or doing more stuff...
but it was all mastery-based, if you got some problems wrong it just
meant you had to do that chapter... it was cool, not perfect, but
definitely my best school experience. I had a class in tea-making one
year, we were organized in multi-age "pods" of about 60 kids, and you
went to various classes within your pod.

Dar
________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

Kelly Green

No, the two schools called "New College" aren't in any way related.

>Is this affilaited with New College in San Francisco? Just wondering..

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/28/2001 6:43:14 AM Pacific Standard Time,
SandraDodd@... writes:


> I always saw red marks on writing as learning opportunities. That's because
> I wanted to learn.

My daughter took her written driving test the other day and she passed but
she missed some of the questions - they got marked in BIG RED CHECKMARKS. I
was a little ways away - waiting outside of the exam area (but I could see
the BIG RED CHECKMARKS very clearly <G>) and when the testor handed back her
paper she stood there and asked him about each one - what the right answer
was. He said, "You passed the test, you don't need to worry about it."

Pam Sorooshian
National Home Education Network <A HREF="http://nhen.org/default.html"><http://www.nhen.org></A>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

My oldest daughter went to school for 5 years - K through 4th grades - and
second daughter went for 2 years and they never had a test or a report card.
They did portfolios --- it was actually very cool. The teacher had these
boxes - one for each kid - and stuff they did was stored in there for a
couple of months. The teacher also took a lot of photos - because there was
lots of active hands-on stuff and presentation-style stuff or game-play going
on in that classroom - that she couldn't "store." Every couple of months the
kids would all get their boxes out and sort through the stuff - the CHILD
would decide (sometimes with some urging from the teacher) to keep a few
things for their portfolio and they'd bring the rest home. I was there to
help on some of their "sorting days" and it was really fun. It was like going
through the past few months and remembering all the stuff they'd done - the
kids would be pulling stuff out and showing it to each other and just having
a great time.

In place of report cards there was a sheet of paper with learning objectives
on it and the teacher would circle those that were going to be focused on for
that child for the upcoming time period. It wasn't an indication of grades
earned - there were NO exams of any kind in that school - only what they
called "Authentic Assessment" which meant the kids did presentations or
created websites or wrote songs or made up games of various kinds or whatever
-- lots of different ways of providing opportunities for the teacher to
observe the student's abilities and skills and plan activities to support
them learning what she/he thought they needed to learn.

(Sounded pretty wonderful until that last line, didn't it? <BEG>)

Pam Sorooshian
National Home Education Network <A HREF="http://nhen.org/default.html"><http://www.nhen.org></A>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2001 11:21:51 -0800 Cindy <crma@...> writes:
> So how do you prepare your children for "red marks" when they decide
> they
> want to enter institutional schools?
>
When I was in 4th grade we moved from Kansas, where I went to the funky
private school with mutual evaluations and no grades to a standard public
school. The second day, I got a paper back that I had done on the first
day, and it had a big "E - " in red at the top. I was just horrified...
my only experience with grades was through books, and I figured that it
went A,B,C,D,E,F and I had almost failed. It took me a day to ask anyone,
and then they explained their (E)xcellent, (S)atisfactory, (N)eeds
Improvement system... but the whole idea of being grades wigged me out
for quite a while, and then I did get pretty obsessive about it.

OTOH, I didn't want to be there at all, I spent years pining for my old
school...

Dar
________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

[email protected]

Roya (my 17 yo) got her very first taste of taking tests, turning in
assignments, and being GRADED on them, in her first community college class
-- Psychology 101. So - what does the IDIOT teacher do? He writes, in huge
red letters all over her essay - which she'd written in her typical very
creative way -- not a plain, college-style essay with short sentences and
just the basics -- no - he scrawls across the front of her paper, right over
the whole front page:

B.S.
Yeah --- great teacher, huh? No other comments. Gives her the full 10 points
that it was worth in spite of apparently thinking that what she wrote was
B.S.

--pam


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/30/01 11:37:37 AM Mountain Standard Time,
PSoroosh@... writes:


> B.S.
>

Ah.
B is almost as good as an "A" and
S is satisfactory!

Maybe the 10 points was for it being the quantity and length required, and
for being technically proficient, and the B.S. was commentary on the amount
of analysis he thought went into it.

Tacky teacher.

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/30/2001 12:34:37 PM Pacific Standard Time,
SandraDodd@... writes:


> Maybe the 10 points was for it being the quantity and length required, and
> for being technically proficient, and the B.S. was commentary on the amount
>

The points were exactly that -- but the BS was commentary on the CREATIVITY
in her writing. He didn't WANT that - he just wanted them to read the
textbook and repeat back, in their own handwriting, some slightly garbled
version of what it already said there. She had the nerve to go beyond that --
comment on it, extend it, think critically about it, and so on.

--pam


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Cindy

PSoroosh@... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 11/30/2001 12:34:37 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> SandraDodd@... writes:
>
> > Maybe the 10 points was for it being the quantity and length required, and
> > for being technically proficient, and the B.S. was commentary on the amount
> >
>
> The points were exactly that -- but the BS was commentary on the CREATIVITY
> in her writing. He didn't WANT that - he just wanted them to read the
> textbook and repeat back, in their own handwriting, some slightly garbled
> version of what it already said there. She had the nerve to go beyond that --
> comment on it, extend it, think critically about it, and so on.
>

How did Roya handle this experience? Did she change how she wrote reports
or did she just ignore him?

--

Cindy Ferguson
crma@...

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/30/2001 5:58:08 PM Pacific Standard Time,
crma@... writes:


> How did Roya handle this experience? Did she change how she wrote reports
> or did she just ignore him?

Ah-- she was PISSED big-time. She ranted and raved and yelled!

At home, of course, not in class <G>.

She is very good at people-understanding --- she realized that she should
have known that this anal-retentive guy was NOT going to appreciate reading
her ideas, creatively written. This guy LOCKS the classroom door on the
stroke of the starting time and, even in a 3-hour class, nobody is allowed in
if they are even one minute late.

So - she basically realized that she has to think about the teacher - not
just do the assignment, but do the assignment the way she thinks the teacher
wants it done.

Since then, she and I have both spent time trying to get information about
the teachers BEFORE she signs up for the classes --- she's had great luck
with most teachers who have really enjoyed and appreciated her creativity.

--pam


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

Or maybe he just disagreed with her premise but recognized that she
wrote a well thought out and cohesive essay. I agree pretty tacky
not to give any further feedback--and pretty poor "teaching" as
well. Why don't you encourage your daughter to ask him what he meant
if she is curious (I know I am --lol).

-- In AlwaysLearning@y..., SandraDodd@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 11/30/01 11:37:37 AM Mountain Standard Time,
> PSoroosh@a... writes:
>
>
> > B.S.
> >
>
> Ah.
> B is almost as good as an "A" and
> S is satisfactory!
>
> Maybe the 10 points was for it being the quantity and length
required, and
> for being technically proficient, and the B.S. was commentary on
the amount
> of analysis he thought went into it.
>
> Tacky teacher.
>
> Sandra
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

Sorry didn't read the whole thread before I posted--what a jerk!

--- In AlwaysLearning@y..., danmary@i... wrote:
>
> Or maybe he just disagreed with her premise but recognized that she
> wrote a well thought out and cohesive essay. I agree pretty tacky
> not to give any further feedback--and pretty poor "teaching" as
> well. Why don't you encourage your daughter to ask him what he
meant
> if she is curious (I know I am --lol).
>
> -- In AlwaysLearning@y..., SandraDodd@a... wrote:
> > In a message dated 11/30/01 11:37:37 AM Mountain Standard Time,
> > PSoroosh@a... writes:
> >
> >
> > > B.S.
> > >
> >
> > Ah.
> > B is almost as good as an "A" and
> > S is satisfactory!
> >
> > Maybe the 10 points was for it being the quantity and length
> required, and
> > for being technically proficient, and the B.S. was commentary on
> the amount
> > of analysis he thought went into it.
> >
> > Tacky teacher.
> >
> > Sandra
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 12/3/2001 6:35:55 AM Pacific Standard Time,
danmary@... writes:


> Or maybe he just disagreed with her premise but recognized that she
> wrote a well thought out and cohesive essay. I agree pretty tacky
> not to give any further feedback--and pretty poor "teaching" as
> well. Why don't you encourage your daughter to ask him what he meant
>

This was three years ago - her first semester of college courses. She was
very young (just turning 14) and he was a pretty "scary" teacher in that he
was sharp-tongued and frequently shamed students in class. She didn't want to
bring attention to herself so she didn't ask him anything. Its too bad she
got one of those types of teachers that first semester - but she's had
wonderful luck since then, mostly okay teachers, a couple of truly GREAT
ones, and, unfortunately the only other really bad one was a math teacher who
clearly didn't see math as a spiritual/artistic/remotely enjoyable pursuit.

--pam


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]