Chapter 8 UbD/DI + Chapters 8, 11, and 12 M

    Grading can be assigning symbolic letters or numbers at the end of a specified time to evaluate a student’s performance, or reporting evaluations to students and parents. The important part about grading is to give high quality feedback to the importance audiences like students, parents, or guardians. A grade should represent proficiency related to important goals. This is why goals and standards should be made very clearly to students so that they can receive a proper evaluation of their understandings. Grades should not be influenced by outside factors like putting names on their paper or the quality of their penmanship because neither of those shows mastery or understanding. The worst student in the world can put their name on their paper and write excellently, but that won’t help them in the real world that much. A grade should represent that students full capabilities. Don’t limit them based off solely one or two pieces of criteria. There are students who can be misplaced in a class full of high performers when they are a low performer or vice versa. Normal letter grading tends to promote an unhealthy competition and discourage those with low grades. People in my high school actually made cliques out of who got what type of grades. The sort of “winners” and “losers” of the school based off grades is not acceptable. It’s not fair because there are students who have lower grades just because they are bored, aren’t being challenged enough, or not being taught the right way. Working out of a J Curve where all students have the same opportunity to earn high grades based on achievement of clearly stated goals. Grades should be established based on summative assessment that is properly designed to allow students gathered proficiency related to identify goals. One of the worst things in school is when teachers have different opinions about grading. You have to memorize each teacher’s preferences on what constitutes a good grade. For all teachers to make it easier on students understanding of how to succeed, they should uniformly apply the aspect of grading. Grade students for achievement of goals, progress toward goals, and work habits.
Managing a class when using MI can be approached a variety of ways. To gain attention you can write silence please on the whiteboard, clap a short rhythmic phrase, put your fingers against your lips, provide a picture of what an attentive class looks like, use a stopwatch to keep track of time wasted, whisper to a students that its time to start and pass it along, simply start teaching and let the students settle in, or even play recordings of a bird whistle. These methods all reach each aspect of MI. Similar performances can be applied when it is time to transition to a different part of the day or want to communicate class rules. It is not necessary to address all MI’s when developing classroom management, but it helps to. For students with disabilities it can be helpful to name a few popular success stories of others with a disability. Also, creating eight different lesson plans for all intelligences so cratering to a student with disabilities needs. We as teachers should push students to challenge limited beliefs.