Grades, On Task, On Time, and More!

How I hate coming up with a letter grade.  How can one letter inform a parent (or the student) of how well (or poorly) the student performed in my class?!  But it’s the system we use, so we do the best we can.

I use a TALID system:

T – On Task and on Time
A – Area
L – Language and Listening
I – Interactions with peers and staff; ID card
D – Followed Directions

Every day, every class period, the student can earn up to 20 points (4 points for each and that can be adjusted to whatever would work for you).  If you take those 20 points and multiply them by five days in a week, that comes out to a nice round 100%!  Every Friday I post a TALID grade (prorated for the weeks where we don’t have five school days).  Another quick note:  I post everything in percentages because students don’t know if 15 points out of 20 points is “good” or “failing.”

When I first introduce this concept, I use it as a self-monitoring system and a class-monitoring system.  We take the last five minutes of the class to determine who should get a 20 and who shouldn’t and why or why not.  (The thought just occurred to me to have a competition among the classes to see which one gets the highest average TALID grade each week.  That would make a good math lesson, too.  Averages, graphing, ….)  Sorry, I digress.

I also get a little more strict with each quarter.  I may take off only a point during the first quarter, but by the time the third and fourth quarters roll around, they know the drill and I take off more points for each infraction.

At first I was making the TALID grades worth as much as a test grade, but I wasn’t really happy with the way the grades averaged.  So this year, I have the TALID worth 35% of their final grade, tests/quizzes are worth 55% of their final grade, and the final exam is worth 10% of their final grade.  And I must say that I’m quite pleased with the results.  It seems as though the students are getting the letter grade that most accurately reflects their overall performance on tests and on behavior.

Another note about grades:  when a student ditches or cuts a class when a test was given, I still make them take the test, but I cut their test grade in half.  It’s SO hard to recover from even one zero.  Even a 30% or 40% is better than a zero.

Please email me at carol_eisenbise@gilbert.k12.az.us if you’d like a copy of the TALID sheets I use.

Comments

[Marti]

I really appreciated learning about the TALID system. CEC information doesn't usually have much for the Gifted and Talented area, but I am learning to adapt the messages. The applications for this article are quick and easy.

[Stephen Ware]

I like it! I am in a credential program and find it interesting that what you are doing matches up with what Joel Spring's text (American Education) talks about concerning Education and the work force. The table (in his book) shows the most common reasons for rejecting applicants. 69% were for lack of basic employability skills (attendance, timeliness, work ethic, etc.). Your TALID system teaches some of the more important aspects of what our students will need in the work force. While our students need to learn the subject material, the social/work skills are important as well.

Stephen

[Rita King]

I use a system somewhat like this in my resource classrooms. I was introduced to this grading system when I did my student teaching. My supervising teacher gave 20 points per day according to class participation and effort. I teach Language Arts in high school and I have found that this grading aspect can be estremely beneficial to students who do poorly on tests and completing assignments. If a special needs student at the high school level attends school everyday and displays effort, this grading system helps them to be successful and really boosts their confidence in themselves. As their confidence increases, so does their performance on assignments and tests. I think this system of grading would also be beneficial in a collaborative setting.

[Liz Ditz]

Very useful system that I've shared with a couple of teachers of neurotypical kids--essential, what you describe is a rubric for grading classroom behavior.

About the zero for missed work --there's been a lot of discussion of how punitive the zero is on the student's overall grade. One discussion was here:

http://threestandarddeviationstotheleft.blogspot.com/2008/01/grades.html

but that's not the article I'm thinking of.

Another was here:

http://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/13781532.html

but that's not it either.

The gist is that missing assignments or tests should receive some score less than 50% of the total points possible for the assignment or test, in order to escape the over-punitiveness of a zero score.