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I appreciate the replies. jkcoop - I don't even know what a rubric is. lol
My husband also mentioned just slapping 100% at the top and calling it a day when these things come home, but I don't think that's fair to my kid when he really does work very hard on his assignments. Especially his writing assignments since that's his weakest area. Science and Math are more his "easy" subjects. He's always had to work hard to make good grades in English and Social Studies. He deserves to have his work properly checked so that he can not only keep improving his skills but also so that his hard work does not go unnoticed. In the past when work has obviously come home unchecked - those times where it seems the teachers slapped a grade in the gradebook without even checking the actual paper - I have often gone over the work with my kid to let him know how I think he did.
It just seems unfair to expect the kids to do all this work, and then to not even grade or properly review it to let them know - genuinely - how they did or where they could possibly improve upon it.
haggard - the rubric is the guide on how the assignment should be done. Generally a list of sorts and they get graded according to how they met the specific points they needed to hit.
I honestly don't see how you can grade a paper without knowing what you should be looking for. It's really irresponsible of the teacher and it's not doing your child any favors. I would really push for an answer as to why this was being done. If you don't get it from the teacher, I'd continue up the ladder. It's not normal and I would really, really hope it doesn't continue into his Junior and Senior years. I know the things my son was doing I would be in no way qualified to grade - even in the English, etc. department because they were gearing them towards getting used to college.
Wow! What if the parents are worse than the kids? I am sorry, but I don't send a note to school with my son expecting the teacher to do my job, so they better not expect me to do theirs. I am all for being involved with my sons school work, but for their to be an expectation that I grade my own kids work all the time?? I better be added to the school payroll then
I work a full-time job as you do. Therefore, I don't have the time to grade these papers, as I would have to work the problems out BEFORE assigning a grade. Since YOU must have an answer key, why don't you just send that home with my kid. If you don't have an answer key to provide, then let's have a little pow-wow with the principal so we can come to a solution agreeable to all parties."
Now that I think about it, my teachers would sometimes have US grade our own papers. Passed out the answer key, and we marked up our own while the teacher did whatever else she had to do.
steelstress - I'm familiar with that, too. They have done the peer grading thing since elementary school. The kids swap papers and grade each others using an answer key that is posted up on the overhead or the teachers call out the answers. I am OK with that. It helps the kids review and so long as there are definite right and wrong answers (such as multiple choice, or math problems) it seems fine. But English writing assignments, research papers? That's a whole different bird.
Last year my youngest son had a situation where the whole class voted on the grade of a speech that each student had to write and present. My son didn't seem phased by the experience, he's generally a very laid-back kid that isn't bothered by much; but some of the other parents I spoke with said their kids were really freaked-out by it. My son said one girl was actually crying because the class decided to give her a B and she felt she deserved an A. The parents raised a stink about it, but even the principal was like, "We're trying to teach the students critical thinking and how to work together in groups."
It seems like some teachers are experimenting with all sorts of ways to get out of actually grading their own students work.
bad enough when project time came, I had to help with ideas, you know how hard that is when you have 3 boys the same age in the same grade, ugh, kill yourself...
One of my biggest concerns would be that if you as the parent is doing the grading on an English paper or research paper, is the teacher then also looking it over to see where your child needs work,etc? Or are they taking the grade and putting it in the book with no review at all?
Not sure how I feel about kids voting on grades for their peers. I absolutely think group stuff is important - maybe even giving their helpful input after someone has given a speech could be valuable. But to "vote" on the grades?
Learning to work as a group is important. But working as a group to grade a classmate's work? In middle school... sounds like an invitation for drama to me. Middle school is a strange time to begin with.
But English writing assignments, research papers? That's a whole different bird.
Excellent point!
OP... what type of work did the teacher want you to grade?
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