I soon tired of finagling with grades and trying to account for everything! Pencils, participation, pejorative looks.
Can you keep up with all of that? If so, great. It seemed too time consuming to me. My system has evolved over 26+ years of teaching and is VERY simple.
The “old” way of doing things is totally focused on math. It takes very little account of effort, a bad day, or huge improvement in a student’s abilities.
I really like to look at grading in band as pass/fail. I know that’s not how our system works, but it works exceptionally well for coaches. And a percentage system is not really true to life.
Suppose you have your all at work Monday-Thursday, the students had your full attention, you worked through lunch, you dehydrated yourself so you didn’t even have to take a break to pee. But then on Friday you say to yourself, “I’ve worked hard all week. Today I’m going to kick back, read the paper, scroll through my social media, and take a long lunch. My boss will understand.” You’d be looking for a job after the first time of doing that. Why would you be fired? After all, four days of 100% followed by a fifth day of a big fat zero averages to 80%. Isn’t that a B-?
I tell students I’m looking for progress and improvement.
And I’m looking for them to take charge of their learning versus earning a specific score on an assignment. I tell them that – although band is not an easy A, it’s easy to get an A.
On performance assessments, I only give two grades – an A+ or a retake. I learned this from the soccer coach. Let’s compare a soccer coach to a math teacher.
The math teacher often teaches a new concept, assigns homework on that concept, then does this again over several day. After a few weeks, that math teacher gives a grade. The student who doesn’t understand the material receives their paper back marked with a D and thinks they stink at math. But watch what the soccer coach does.
The soccer coach teaches the students a new skill, how to drill the ball into the goal (forgive me if I’m not using proper soccer terminology). Then he lines the students up. They practice drilling into the goal. Thep practice some more. Then they practice more. The coach doesn’t wait two weeks, give the students a grade, then move on to the next concept. If there are some students not meeting the standard, they keep practicing drilling to the goal. They receive immediate feedback. They practice some more. They practice until they get it right.
I do give a grade for each performance, and I require a make-up for every missed performance. Do I ever excuse a performance? Yes, if a student tells me way in advance they are going to miss and they are normally a hard-working student, I excuse them. If a student who I know would never miss a concert has appendicitis and misses, I almost never give a make-up assignment.
Here’s the make-up assignment I give.
I’ve been assigning this for nearly two decades and never has a student even attempted it. I don’t know about you, but usually the 1-2 students who skip a concert are already struggling in band, and those same students are struggling in all their classes. It’s not because of a lack of ability or anything. It’s because they don’t utlizie help from me or their other teachers, they don’t put forth any effort, and they often (not always) don’t have parents that issue consequences to them. Perform live and in-person – or record and submit to me – all the songs from the concert. I will grade it using the solo and ensemble rubric. Not once has anyone completed this assignment. It seems fair to parents. It seems fair to admin. It seems fair to the students.
What does your gradebook look like right now you might ask? I teach part time – 2 classes – and have 55 students total. There is one F, three Cs, and 51 As. The one F is a student who doesn’t care about anything, the three Cs care but are always playing catch up (and have several Fs in their other classes).
Keep grading simple. I no longer grade on whether a student has their pencil. I give one overall grade for participation, then each performance assessment and each concert is a grade.
James is retired from full time teaching. He has served private, suburban, and Title 1 schools and now teaches half time at a charter school. Find out more about James at www.jamesdivine.net Subscribe to his podcast Almost Everything I’ve Learned About Teaching Band.
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