Thoughts & Details About Grades

 Dear CHAT Writing 2 Students & Parents,

I've just finished calculating the grades for the Spring semester, and you will be finding them in your inbox in just a few minutes.  As tutors, we give you suggested grades for you as homeschooling families to consider.

Allow me to share my thoughts on grades.  For some students, grades have the tendency to become the only motivation for doing well.  For some, it becomes a measure of their worth as people or as  academic learners.  I personally don't like these "side effects" of the grading system.  On the other hand, grades can be a valid reflection and reward for working hard, being diligent, and understanding the materials.

When teaching students to be good writers, I give a lot of consideration for growth and improvement. Each student has a starting place; over time I look for him or her to learn the mechanics of grammar, good writing techniques, and analytical thinking skills.

For this class, I gave points for Quick Writes, short assignments, literature assignments, grammar exercises, and longer essays.  The final drafts of the essay assignments were graded using a rubric that divided the papers into the following categories:  focus, content, organization, and mechanics.  

The scores for class work are divided into the following categories:  Quick Writes and Miscellanea, Writing, Literature, and Grammar.  A student may have been strong in one area and not in another, and this will be reflected in these categories.  These scores are also weighted; in other words, not all of the categories have the same importance.  The Quick Write points are 15% of the total grade, the Writing assignments are 30%, the Literature homework is 28%, and the Grammar work is 27%.   (You will see that each of these categories has subcategories.  This is  for the purpose of keeping the internal category weighting correct.)

The grade breakdowns for Writing 2 are as follows:

98% - 100% (A+), 93% - 97% (A), 90% - 92% (A-),

87% - 89% (B+), 83% - 86% (B), 80 % - 82% (B-),

77% - 77% (C+), 73% - 76% (C), 70% - 72% (C-),

67% - 69% (D+), 63% - 66% (D), 60% - 62% (D-),

55% - 59% (Pass), 50% - 54% (Fail); 0% - 49% (Incomplete)

Each student (and parents) will receive an e-mail with percentages and a suggested overall grade for this semester. (Note:  You will need to scroll down to the bottom of the document.)   I’ve seen each student improve with each paper and have truly enjoyed my interactions with this class.  Good Work!

Blessings to all,

Mrs. G

Writing 2 Class Notes–Week 15 (May 4)

 Greetings everyone!

We had a marvelous final day of Writing 2 at CHAT for the 2021-22 school year.  This was my very first year teaching Writing 2 and I can’t think of a better group of students with which to take this journey. We have covered so much over the course of the year, that our heads are full; but the weeks go by so quickly that it seems hard to think that we're at the end.  

As the culminating event, students have been working towards staging our class Poetry Event.  They all had a role to play on on a committee and they worked collaboratively to make this event a success.  I am proud of the way they communicated, split up the work and let their talents shine as they organized and then performed their poetic pieces.   Though I  know that some students do not enjoy poetry, I appreciated their good attitudes and risk-taking as they shared poetry with their classmates.  I was especially touched by the surprising number of original poems!

After the Ambiance Committee got the chairs in place and the lighting on point, the Emcee/Judging/Awards Committee took charge and explained their judging system.  Our co-Emcees Charlotte and Ike explained that there would be two rounds and the scores from each round will be added together by the class-mate judges to find the winners.

Congratulations to all the winners!  Actually, they were ALL winners in my book–and the judging committee provided each student with a small trophy (thanks, Nick!)

Now that it is all over, I want to let you know that I am working on getting all the grading finished.  I had given students until Saturday May 6 @ 8am to hand any work in. On a personal note, I am traveling for two weeks with my oldest daughter to celebrate her graduation.  Because of that, Final Grades will be out the last week of May. In the meantime, you can look at Google Classroom to get a pretty good idea of your grade.

This has been a great year with these students.  They're bright and engaging, and they've worked hard this year. I wish them God’s best in their future academic endeavors.

Blessings,

Mrs. G

Writing 2 Class Notes--Week 14 (April 27)

 Greetings!

Today is our penultimate class–the one before the last one!   We started the class period with a Quick Write, and today's prompt was connected with the fact that it is National Poem in Your Pocket Day.  I gave the students a sheet of paper with an extra large pocket outline. They were to write a poem within the lines of that pocket.  After reading William Carlos William’s famous short poem, “This is Just to Say,” students composed their own “This is Just to Say '' poem.  Perhaps we will get to hear one or two of these for our Poetry Event?

After the Test, they had the opportunity to begin their very last Essay assignment which was a  Reflection Paper. For this paper, they are to write about what they learned this year, what they learned about themselves this year, and what did and didn't work well this year.  If they didn’t finish in class, they can finish it at home and turn it in next week.  (At the bottom of this email is a link to an article about the value of reflection as a part of learning.) As a reminder, the Essay Re-Write was due this.

As they finished their essays, students were invited to compose a “Blackout Poem.”  In this last poetry writing opportunity, students choose a page of text, in this case a page taken from a classic novel, and they skimmed it to find interesting words, phrases, ideas/ themes.  After lightly circling those words with pencil, they attempted to arrange them on a separate piece of paper into a poem.  They could find any filler words like “a”, “the",  "it” from the text page as well as needed.  After that, it was time to get blacking out.  Using their Sharpie, they could draw a few images that represented the poem and then they blacked out everything except their boxed words and images.  Since most of the hard work from our semester is finished, we relaxed a bit during this stage and played some music while they blacked out their poems.  The ones who finished displayed their poems for the class to see. They are due next class period.

The rest of the class time was used to prepare for the Poetry Event to be held next week.  We will be meeting in the Student Lounge downstairs and each student will be performing two pieces of poetry.  The committees are working well together to pull this event off!  

Next week is the final week, and I will accept homework until Saturday, May 6 at 7:00 AM.  Once the CHAT classes are done, students really lose momentum for completing late homework.  My plan is to get final grades out within the week.  

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Any old homework

-- Essay Re-Write

-- The Reflection Paper

–Black Out Poem

-- Poetry Event Preparation!

Links for this Week:

“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams

Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 14 (April 27)

The Value of Reflection Paper

See you next week!

Blessings,

Mrs. G