Unique Approach To Grading Practices

Every year, the goal of a student is to score either the highest or better than what they had in the previous year. Do you really think that the goal of a student should be to only score better and bring great grades? Are they actually learning something from the subjects, or they are simply mugging it up and practising it enough so that they can earn a good grade?

This is where your grading practices can focus on learning concepts, which will make your students understand that they have to participate in the learning process, and not only do enough to score better. You need to have a unique approach towards grading practices, in an offline class and through online teaching.

Switching over to modern practices

The class formation has changed and we no longer follow the average institute ERP. People are using digital mediums with the help of school management software, or institute management software, to access not only classes but also assessment and assignment sheets regularly. This means that along with their learning practices, their grading practices should also change.

Here is how we can do that;

• Average scores

At the end of the year, when students receive their report card, it is an average score calculated over their assessment marks, half-yearly and final exams. It can sometimes also include the grave digger attendance and overall class performance.

But to what extent do you think that the average score does justice to the students’ intelligence? Consider a scenario, one particular student has great speaking skills in a class but they are very poor at putting down the concepts that they have understood on a sheet of paper. They might need comprehension skills also along with understanding skills, but this does not mean that their low result is proof of their low level of intelligence.

Similarly, if there is another student who is great in learning things and has scored very good marks in their final examinations, and they don’t have any speaking skills at all so they have not scored much in internals and class performance. This would not happen their semester results a lot because final examinations carry the most weightage. Does the good mark mean that they have excelled at everything and need to continue keeping the good work up?

Every student will progress differently in a classroom and an average score will cover up either one area of shortcoming or the other. This is why, besides putting an average score, teachers also ensure to put some personal comments because they observe the progress of a student better in a class and might know better than the average score. 

• Subject matter concept

just because the student can write great answers does not mean that they have understood the subject matter content properly. This is only possible in practice and application-based subjects like mathematics physics and chemistry. But when you look into other Theoretical subjects, students can simply learn them overnight and score grades, without knowing anything about the subject at all.

This is what grades fail to address. Fortunately, teachers are taking up the task of having a frequent parent-teacher meetings because of performance improvement through digital school management software.

• Transparency

Let’s admit it, sometimes students need complete transparency in how they have scored, where they lack at, which areas they need to improve in and how they need to improve in it. Although you don’t need to necessarily provide all these guidelines for every subject, if they are learning something for the first time and if you find the class progress declining rapidly for a particular subject you can provide completely transparent scores to help them learn better and modify their answers.

For example, if they have chosen economics as a 6th subject for the first time in 9th grade, they will not know particular keywords, or whether they should learn everything from the book or simply understand concepts and try writing answers on their own. For the first half, besides giving them notes, you must also give them enough time to understand and give some mock tests for trial. This will improve their performance and understanding of the subject. Hence, they score better grades which are a true reflection of their learning.