Soooo... How Am I Supposed To Grade A Yearbook Class?

HIS SYSTEM Mallett wants to see progress from his students each week. They print out their work on Fridays, then the class reviews everything together on Mondays. “They’ll print their pages out, and I will edit or proof them, depending on what my week looks like. Then I’ll give a weekly grade there. We’ll show it up on the screen on Monday, just to talk about common problems and to hold the kids accountable, them seeing their pages up in front of everybody.” The process allows everyone to see their peers’ work, so the look of the book stays consistent. Sometimes, students will like a classmate’s work but realize that it looks too much like previously published work. On the other hand, they’ll sometimes see one student’s modification, and like it so much they decide to work it into other areas of the book. He strives to grade the process of putting the book together. There are some worksheets at the beginning of the year, but Mallett typically has students grade them in class and they receive full points for completion. KEEPING TRACK OF PROGRESS Mallett recommends the Friday update. It provides a way to compare progress made against the previous week’s work. He has all his students keep their papers in their quote book, which is where they’ll keep class notes and handouts in addition to graded papers and quotes. “If they need a big grade – I have to give a project grade every six weeks – their quote book is their project grade. It will have their quotes, and when I give them their printouts back on Friday, they put those in there. Then you can actually see the progress of that page when you check their quote book. You can tell that they’ve changed it each week and done a lot.” Keeping clear track of progress makes it easy to demonstrate the reason for a grade to counselors, administrators or parents. It also removes personal bias from the grading equation. “I’ve had parent conferences where the parent asks why their child has a 70. I can pull their quote book out and show that they haven’t turned stuff in, or their page has been the same for three weeks when they should have added photos and captions. Or I can show when the deadline was if they missed it.” Mallett sends an email to parents at the beginning of the school year to explain his grading system. He also likes to have a beginning-of-the-year parent meeting if possible.

Photo by Sara Espinoza

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