Scores and Grades Communication Arts andReading

Communication Arts or Reading? Your writing scores will be entered as Communication Arts grades. Your reading scores will be entered as Reading grades.

Reading and Writing We will read and write in every unit, but you will be scored for your reading and thinking about what you have read in Reading Units. You will be scored for your writing skills in Writing Units. So, even though all of your assignments have been written this unit, they will count as Reading scores. On your progress report you will only have a grade in Reading. The next unit begins in Oct. and will be a writng unit.

Categories for Grades Academic Behaviors (entered but not counted toward final grade) Formative Assessments (entered but not counted towards final grade) Summative Assessments (entered and counted toward final grade)

Formative or Summative? A formative assessment is basically your practice work. In Communication Arts and Reading we don’t average your practice grades into your final grade. We want you to have lots of practice and chances to earn a proficient or advanced score before we give you a grade.

Summative work is like a snap shot of where you are after lots of practice. Summative work is work you will do alone and shows what you can do independently after lots of practice. Summative scores will be averaged to determine your grade on Infinite Campus.

3 = 90% As the chart I gave you and the charts on the board show we like to use a 4 point scale so you can see if your work in each area is beginning, progressing, proficient, or advanced. We enter those scores as percentages in Infinite Campus.

Where do you want to be? We want every student to be proficient in all of their skills. To be proficient means to be capable of high quality work on your own. We’ll practice and polish our work and check with formative assessments often before asking you to prove you are proficient when you try it on your own.

Beginning work is just what it says. You are learning the basics. Progressing work is work that shows you are moving in the right direction. Proficient means you can use the skill independently and well. Advanced means you are working above grade level in that skill area.

How will it look in IC? Each skill we work on will have it’s own strand or branch of scores. For example, the first set of scores will be about supporting your answers with textual evidence. You will see several formative scores for that and eventually a few summatives to show your growth during the unit.

Questions? Whenever you have questions you can get them answered in several ways. –Ask me. –Look at the charts in your binder. –Look at the charts on the wall. –Go to my website for longer explanations. –Look at this slide show with your parents. (I’ll put it on my website.) –Ask me again.