A teacher's never ending search for how to grade............
In the sixteen years that I've been teaching, I've tried to figure out the "perfect" way to grade my classes. I have used different grading systems over the years, and I feel somewhat comfortable with what I'm using now. However, I always feel that there must be something better.......
When I first started teaching I used practice sheets with some of my students. I quickly learned that the sheets were a waste of my time and paper. The students who were going to practice would have done so with or without recording their minutes and it didn't motivate the rest of the ensemble. There were so many different scenarios......students would forget to bring back the sheets, the sheets wouldn't be signed by the parents, a student would sign the parent's name, they lied about how much they practiced......I could go on and on. Some of them found it hard to believe that I would be able to tell if they hadn't practiced. Sure they turned in their signed practice sheet signed by their parents stating they had practiced 2 hours that week, but yet in class they couldn't get through the first measure of a song. Hmmmmm, seem fishy? So attaching grades to practice sheets wasn't going to be the best plan.
Onto another method......I thought I'd focus more on effort and playing tests. I would give them a daily grade for effort/behavior and periodically give them a playing test that was assigned a letter grade. I thought this may inspire a bit of practicing if they new they had to play a portion of a piece in front of everybody and get graded on it. It didn't seem to encourage practicing any more than practice sheets so needless to say, I wasn't sold on that grading system either.
Finally, I came up with system I use now for my junior high and high school band classes. Every day they enter my room with 10 points which is a perfect daily grade. What grade they leave with after class is up to them. They can lose points for not having their music or instrument, lack of effort, bad behavior etc. However, these daily points are weighted as only 20% of their entire grade. The other 80% of their grade is based on private lessons. They are responsible to take three fifteen minute lessons each quarter. So, if you think about it.....I'm asking them to spend 45 minutes on "homework" with me every nine weeks. It breaks down as follows:
3 lessons = A
2 lessons = B
1 lesson = C
no lessons = D
I know that I can't make every student practice......frankly, I can't follow all of them home on a weekly basis and sit beside them to make it happen. I needed to find a way to help my students individually. It's impossible to help all of my students when they are in full rehearsal. The private lessons allow me to help them grow as a musician at their individual level. It doesn't matter if they play their instrument really well, but it does matter if they make the effort to get their lessons done.
One of the things I like about this grading system is that I don't grade my students based on their ability. They will receive a high grade if they get their lessons done and work hard during rehearsals. Plus, the private lessons not only allow me to hear what a student is struggling with but encourage them to work toward specific goals that only pertain to them.
In our book discussions we've talked about whether we should use effort as part of our grading system. I think in my classes it's a big part of the picture. If I had a student that came to rehearsal every day and sat in his/her chair and didn't raise their instrument up to play a note.......how could their grade not show that when the class requires a group effort.
One of the changes that I've made this year because of our discussions is with my playing tests. I only give playing tests to my fifth and sixth grade band students. Before this year, I would assign letter grades to their playing tests and hope it might give them a little push to practice harder. I decided to try something new, and the playing tests I've given this semester have not been graded. I used the same rubric as I did before but I didn't assign a letter grade. I also had my students evaluate themselves using the same rubric that I had used. After they had evaluated themselves, I talked to them individually and we compared our results.
This semester I took the time to give them more personal, verbal feedback than I had in the past. I think it had a positive impact on them, and they took my comments more to heart. Last year it seemed that most of them looked at the letter grade and didn't pay much attention to my written comments. Of course, not grading their playing tests didn't change any practice habits, but I'm still waiting for the "practicing at home fairy dust" to be invented.
Trying to figure out how to grade music classes is a difficult task. There are many opinions on whether it's more important to grade on a student's ability or effort. Some people strongly believe that it is a music teacher's main goal to make everybody feel good about being part of the ensemble regardless of their ability on their instrument. Others believe that student's grade should show their ability to meet certain playing standards. I have no doubt that I will be searching for that "perfect" grading system my entire teaching career.
