Grades and Self Evaluation

It is nearing the end of our first quarter and that struggle between formative, meaningful assessment and learning and having to put letters on paper is my daily reality. I spend most of the first quarter trying to avoid talking with students about grades. And now, in quick fashion, we have to agree on what their grades should be.

I've been playing with having students grade themselves. I posted the expectations at the beginning of the year, and have been giving them feedback about where they are (I hope enough) and they have been working along at their own paces with the material. Today part of my class with my Spanish 1 classes is going to be an "auto-evaluación". I will project the class expectations and grade explanations and then give them a form to fill out.

The at the end I ask them three open ended questions:

• What are you proud of that you have done in Spanish 1 this semester?
• What would you like to work on more in the second half of the semester (in terms of your learning)?
• What suggestions to you have for improving the class?

The tonight I will read their responses, and tomorrow in class I will conference with each of them for a minute to see if we agree on their grade and if not, why. As much as I dislike grading, I like this process.