Formative Assessents a teacher uses for guiding her teaching. These can be pretests, spot checks, quizzes, rubrics, and so on. A summative assessent is used to make an end evaluation. Usualy, these happen at the end of units.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely ask the teacher if you have particular concerns. DS loves science and knows a ton but didn't get the highest score in that subject because the teacher is looking especially for how kids do working together in groups. DS is getting better working in groups but is obviously not quite there, so the grade makes sense. But it might have been frustrating if I thought the teacher was grading more on knowledge of science content.

This doesn't make sense. Academic grades are based on mastery of content knowledge or specific MCPS indicators. What you are describing sounds more like a grade based on how well your child works with others.

You're right, PP. There is a trick to grading group work. Ultimately, if all students are graded on one project, the goal is to divide up the project into sections and to assign these specific parts to each member of the group. Furthermore, each student should be familiar with his/her role, know the criteria for grading (rubric), and understand that how well s/he does on his/her part will affect the overall grade assigned to the project. So there should be several grades involved, which include benchmarks - or graded steps leading up to the end product.

What the teacher is doing sounds unrealistic and goes against what the county is preaching.

In terms of formative assessments (as one PP asked), you can build them into group projects. For example, if a student is given a section of a report to work on, during the time the group is collaborating, this student should be assessed on how well s/he understood the content, how s/he has applied the content to the project, and perhaps what s/he must do to present the finished project (present to the class using technology? role playing? speech? whatever). Formative assessments are actually interventions. So as you instruct, along the way, you measure how well students "get it" (in terms of the student objectives that are actually friendly ways of breaking down the indicators). Hopefully, by the time the summative assessment comes into play (the unit test, for example), most students have learned the material b/c the teacher has re-taught and differentiated the material for struggling students.

Does this make sense?

Anonymous wrote:Definitely ask the teacher if you have particular concerns. DS loves science and knows a ton but didn't get the highest score in that subject because the teacher is looking especially for how kids do working together in groups. DS is getting better working in groups but is obviously not quite there, so the grade makes sense. But it might have been frustrating if I thought the teacher was grading more on knowledge of science content.

This doesn't make sense. Academic grades are based on mastery of content knowledge or specific MCPS indicators. What you are describing sounds more like a grade based on how well your child works with others.

Definitely ask the teacher if you have particular concerns. DS loves science and knows a ton but didn't get the highest score in that subject because the teacher is looking especially for how kids do working together in groups. DS is getting better working in groups but is obviously not quite there, so the grade makes sense. But it might have been frustrating if I thought the teacher was grading more on knowledge of science content.

Anonymous wrote:Ask the teacher about the results of the formative assessments. That will give you an answer.

formative assessments? This is the 1st time I heard about the term. Can someone explain what it means? Thanks!

Anonymous wrote:It doesn't sound ridiculous to me. I'd want to understand the teacher's expectations better. I'd also be interested to understand where my child falls within the class. I'm not sure I understand the grading system though and we haven't received a 1st quarter report card yet. From what I read on the MCPS website, there are two different sets of grades-one for academic skills, one for learning. Not sure of the distinction. For academic marks, they use O (Outstanding), S (Satisfactory) and N (Needs Improvement). For learning, it's a different scale: I (Independently), L (Limited Prompting), FP (Frequent Prompting), R (Rarely), NI (Not Enough Information). To me, L sounds like a very good mark even though it's not the highest. I don't think you can equate them to the A to E scale. If my child were getting a lot of I's I might be concerned that there wasn't much challenge there for her.

PP brings up some good points.

At this point, I would place more emphasis on on the learning scale. HOW your child learns is very important and will ultimately affect success at the upper levels. Independent learners are self-sufficient, resourceful, and quick at mastering content. They most definitely need enrichment. For those who need frequent prompting, however, their learning style may not be a priority. So "switching things up" - by using various learning strategies in the classroom - is very important in order to hit all learning modalities. Not all children are auditory learners, for example. So direct instruction may not help them master the content.

Ask the teacher about the results of the formative assessments. That will give you an answer.

PP again. You say "nearly all" S and L-so I guess there were a few Os and Is sprinkled in there? Sounds like a pretty excellent report to me.

It doesn't sound ridiculous to me. I'd want to understand the teacher's expectations better. I'd also be interested to understand where my child falls within the class. I'm not sure I understand the grading system though and we haven't received a 1st quarter report card yet. From what I read on the MCPS website, there are two different sets of grades-one for academic skills, one for learning. Not sure of the distinction. For academic marks, they use O (Outstanding), S (Satisfactory) and N (Needs Improvement). For learning, it's a different scale: I (Independently), L (Limited Prompting), FP (Frequent Prompting), R (Rarely), NI (Not Enough Information). To me, L sounds like a very good mark even though it's not the highest. I don't think you can equate them to the A to E scale. If my child were getting a lot of I's I might be concerned that there wasn't much challenge there for her.

At the parent teacher conference, you could ask her about the difference between "satisfactory" and "outstanding". I think PP is probably right, that it's different for every teacher. So you should ask what your new teacher wants.

1. First grade is harder than K
2. As you said, it is a different teacher...of course she has a different read on your child.
3. If I am not mistaken S= satisfactory.....seems that is fine...not everyone can be a "perfect" student.

I'm wondering how frequently 1st graders receive "S"s and "L"s on their report cards. My daughter got "perfect" report cards last year (MCPS Kindergarten) and her teacher always glowed about her work/attitude/etc. We just received her first 1st grade report card and it is nearly all "S"s and "L"s...I guess I'm a bit surprised that two different teachers have two so very different reads on my child. Curious whether other parents have found that grading in 1st grade is stricter than K grading. I know--this sounds ridiculous. The benefit of anonymous posting!