1. Grading Policy a. The course for which I am creating this grading policy is 9th grade World History.

While I am not sure if I will be teaching high school or middle school, this reflects my current placement at Central High School. This course will be a students first social studies class in high school, so I hope to set the tone for a successful high school career full of active learning, classroom engagement, and a better sense of the world around them. We will cover world history from the beginning of time, all the way through the present day. This is definitely a challenging task, especially for freshman students, but I believe that if I set high expectations for my students and gain their respect, we could really have an excellent year! Therefore, there will be more emphasis placed on understanding the bigger picture and developing skills than on memorizing specific content that the students may not even be able to remember in a few years from now. I will reflect this in my assessments. There would be about eight to ten different units, each one covering themes such as social structures, politics, economy, geography, and culture.

b. When it comes to grading, what I value most is that students achieve concrete understandings of the world around them, and develop skills that will prepare them for their futures, regardless of what that holds. Students often complain that they dislike history classes because they feel as though it is all rote memorization about dead white men. I want the students to be able to form an opinion about an issue or a topic, be able to convey that in some way, and connect themselves to the world they live in today, with a behind the scenes look at the history that happened there. Therefore, in assessments, I will not likely take off points if a student mixed up some historical facts, and I would also be less likely to assign a multiple choice test that doesnt have opinion questions on it. If a student had a question with interpretation or wording on some sort of text that I was unable to answer, I want them to be able to write why they think the way they do to defend their answers, and receive that extra point. I will set very high expectations of my students, but also encourage them to participate in a way that personalizes their educational experience and makes them happy to learn.

c. The purpose of this grading policy is to encourage the full development of a happy, healthy, and well-rounded student. These days, students are already under enough stress, and spend so much of their academic career completing standardized tests. I do not want to be a force that contributes to these stresses. I dont think high stakes testing reveals true understanding of the content; rather, it supports students who are good test takers instead of taking effort into account. I dont want to create assessments that are designed to fail students, but rather give students opportunities to prove themselves and show themselves in their best light. While grades often summon negative emotions and attitudes, I dont think it has to be that way. This grading policy is supposed to measure a students performance and understanding of different topics, so I will be sure that it achieves this. If it doesnt, it is up to me to adjust my teaching or assessment so that they are aligned.

2. Assessment Methods

i.) I hope to have a wide variety of assessment in my classroom. I will have summative assessments at the end of each unit, and for that, I am hoping to always give several options that students can choose from, to promote UDL, or Universal Design for Learning. Since each student has different strengths, students will be able to select an assessment that works for them. Some examples of these could include student performances, such as a Readers Theater event or acting out historical text. Students could also prepare video projects, complete oral questioning assignments, build web sites, chart information, or reflect upon what they are learning, to list a few ideas. While each of these strategies would address the content my students are learning, they also teach the students valuable skills that will hopefully help them later in life. Instead of having a high stress final, students will create a portfolio with all of their smaller assessments throughout the semester, to reveal their efforts and accomplishments. It would be a great way to make daily or weekly classroom activities matter. It can also be used as an organizational or study tool, especially since I have worked with students with poor organizational skills. While some of the above assessments would be graded, not all of them will be. As part of their portfolios, students will complete daily activities, which might include worksheets, exit slips, and brief reflections. I will collect these assignments to read what the students are thinking and learning about, and then adjust my instruction accordingly to meet their needs. So far in my educational experiences, I have noticed that many students strongly dislike writing, or are poor writers, so I hope that I can include writing in many assessments and activities, in addition to offering personal support to build writing abilities. This isnt something I would want to be grading harshly on, but a skill that I want the students to practice regularly.

ii) I would weigh the grading of my World History class as follows: End of Unit Assessments (4-5 per semester): 40% End of the Semester Portfolio: 30% Class Participation: 30% While this system appears to be a small number of assignments and more of a high stakes grading policy, I actually hope to treat these three groups as categories that each encompass many different things. Furthermore, I hope to communicate with parents about these three subtopics, so that when I talk to them in person, on the phone, or through email, I will be able to easily state these words, and have the parents understand what each one means. First, each end of unit assessment will be about 10% of my students grades, for a total of 40% at the end of the semester. If there end up being five, I will drop the lowest score. I do think these assessments will be important, and hope that my students will feel positively about their selection of a project or test of sorts, since they will have several options. I will let students retake assessments or redo assignments to earn back more points, because I want the students to actually learn the material, not just miss it once on an exam and forget about it. I will allow them to earn back up to half of the points that they missed. I hope these methods will measure the

students understanding of the content, while hopefully ensuring that no student slips through the cracks. Next, my students will be graded on their end of the semester portfolios, making up 30% of their grade. While this is one assignment for a large point value, it will absolutely not be something they are scrambling with at the last minute. As an organizational strategy, each student will receive a binder at the beginning of the year, and they will be organized by class, color-coded, and labeled. Students will grab these at the beginning of class and put them back after class, unless they want to take it home. I would hole punch all of their assignments so that they can organize them in the binder. This grade will include all worksheets that are completed in class, notes, exit slips and formative assessments throughout the lesson, and homework assignments. I believe these assignments may not mean as much if they are graded individually, but graded holistically gives them value when put together, and I think it will help the students see the big ideas of the course. Lastly, I will count participation as 30% of the course. Since participation means different things to different people, I will be very clear on how I define it. I define participation as a student attending class and being on time, behaving, respecting the other students, themselves, and me as a teacher, asking and answering questions in class, and classroom work ethic. Some of these are subjective factors, but the main objective of the participation section is to help the students develop habits of active learning, that they can carry on in future years of schooling. Also, this could help to make my classroom easier to manage.

iii.) I will incorporate a mixture of affective factors in my grading policy, and most of these will manifest themselves in the participation section. I do see a lot of these factors, such as work ethic, attitude, attendance, and improvement, as very interrelated, meaning they will each influence each other. I do think that if a student puts effort and a positive attitude into a class, they are going to improve, so I will not do an individual grade for improvement, especially since it is tough to measure improvement, but easier to ask oneself, how was he or she behaving in class today? With these categories, I also plan to build strong relationships with my students, so I can tell when something is going on that may impact their performance or attitude in class.