How I Keep Grades: Back 2 School Series

Today's Back 2 School Series topic is Grades!

Grades are a huge topic in my classroom. 

We actually have a Reteaching/Retake Policy which makes taking and keeping grades so much more complicated. 

Do any of you have a policy like that?

The policy is long and complicated and there are so many loopholes. 

The point of it is to let students relearn material. 

The unfortunate thing is that the students have taken advantage of the policy over the years. 

My students will blatantly tell me that they don't study for tests because they know they can redo it. 

What?!!

That was not the point for the policy, and it makes me extremely frustrated.

So keeping track of grades is very tedious for me. 

My students are the ones who want to retake every assignment. 

If a student missed one question, they will want to redo it. 

I have a little plan in place to help me keep track of their initial grade and the retake. 

I first start off by taking grades on a Progress Book printout. 

At the bottom I list the date and title of assignment along with how many points it is out of and if it is a formative and summative assessment. 

Formative assessments I write in black pen and summative assessments I write in purple pen. 

Both of the assignments below were formatives meaning they don't actually count against the student. 

They are weighted as 0 and are just a check of how they student is doing.

If it's a quick check I will simply put checkmarks if the student was doing it correctly. 

If the student was absent, I will put an A to signify that.

Here's a look at one of my grades. 

If you look at the fourth column you can see that that assignment was differentiated, so it was worth different points for different students. 

So, I put their grade and the number of points possible.

After I jot all of this down on paper, I then transfer it over to the computer. 

Perhaps I'm old school, but I just can't keep it all on the computer. 

I'm so afraid of making a mistake that I need both ways to keep track of the students' grades. 

How do you guys keep grades?

Do you only use the computer or are you old school like me and make a hard copy first?

Friday is the last day of the series, and we will be discussing classroom setup!