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No matter how long we've been homeschooling, we are curious about how other homeschoolers do things. And homeschoolers who are newer to the game obviously have lots of questions! This series will try to answers some of the questions homeschoolers ask each other. Questions about how we handle some of the little details and about our opinions on different aspects of homeschooling. Questions that we all might answer differently because what works great in one family might not work at all in another.
Do you give your kids report cards? Do you use letter grades?
The short answer is Yes, I have always given my kids report cards. And I've always used letter grades too, although their high school report cards are more accurately expressed in percentage grades.
The longer answer comes when I talk about why and how I do grades. My umbrella group requires grades to be submitted for all students. We have our choice of whether to give letter grades or Outstanding/Satisfactory/Not Satisfactory grades through Grade 8. And it's totally our choice whether we give or show those grades to our students. My thinking was that since I was giving a grade anyway, I might as well give the report cards to the kids. That way they could tell anyone who asked that they had straight A's, and they could show their report cards at restaurants for free pizzas and perks like that.
The question I sometimes asked myself was how much value was in those straight A's, because that's pretty much what their report cards looked like from Kindergarten through at least Grade 6 or 7. Most homeschoolers don't give up on a topic and move on to something else until the student has mastered it, and that means our students do earn A's in everything. Occasionally it takes longer to earn that A though. But it's still earned, regardless of whether it took one quarter or an entire semester.
But what about high school? Well, that's where it got a little tougher. My kids were doing more on their own, and they needed to take more responsibility for their own studying. So if they didn't do well on an assignment or test, I gave them the grade they earned on it. Deadlines became more fixed. If an assignment was due on Friday, I had no choice but to take off marks if it was late. To be honest, in my homeschool, I haven't always been quite as hard-nosed about deadlines as I should have been, but being in a co-op has certainly cured me of that! I have, however, stated very clearly that I was prepared to fail my own child if they refused to do the assignment or study for the test, or whatever it was. Thankfully, I've never had to give a failing grade to my own kids. I've given plenty of B's, a few C's, and even a couple of D's on individual tests or assignments. But to my relief, I've never had to award anything less than a B grade on a report card. (I don't think anyway. Pretty sure I'd remember if I had!)
And how do I do report cards? Well, for many years I've used Homeschool Tracker Online for all my homeschool record-keeping, including lesson plans, tracking assignments, and of course, calculating grades. It's a very easy-to-use record-keeping system that provides plenty of options. Since Homeschool Tracker keeps records of time spent and all grades that I enter, calculating quarterly or semester grades is a snap! All I need to do is hit "print" for the report card, and the quarterly grades are averaged for the semester! From there I just enter the information on the report card form our umbrella group uses. By the way, I could produce my own professional looking transcript using the Tracker if I needed to.
The short answer is Yes, I have always given my kids report cards. And I've always used letter grades too, although their high school report cards are more accurately expressed in percentage grades.
The longer answer comes when I talk about why and how I do grades. My umbrella group requires grades to be submitted for all students. We have our choice of whether to give letter grades or Outstanding/Satisfactory/Not Satisfactory grades through Grade 8. And it's totally our choice whether we give or show those grades to our students. My thinking was that since I was giving a grade anyway, I might as well give the report cards to the kids. That way they could tell anyone who asked that they had straight A's, and they could show their report cards at restaurants for free pizzas and perks like that.
The question I sometimes asked myself was how much value was in those straight A's, because that's pretty much what their report cards looked like from Kindergarten through at least Grade 6 or 7. Most homeschoolers don't give up on a topic and move on to something else until the student has mastered it, and that means our students do earn A's in everything. Occasionally it takes longer to earn that A though. But it's still earned, regardless of whether it took one quarter or an entire semester.
But what about high school? Well, that's where it got a little tougher. My kids were doing more on their own, and they needed to take more responsibility for their own studying. So if they didn't do well on an assignment or test, I gave them the grade they earned on it. Deadlines became more fixed. If an assignment was due on Friday, I had no choice but to take off marks if it was late. To be honest, in my homeschool, I haven't always been quite as hard-nosed about deadlines as I should have been, but being in a co-op has certainly cured me of that! I have, however, stated very clearly that I was prepared to fail my own child if they refused to do the assignment or study for the test, or whatever it was. Thankfully, I've never had to give a failing grade to my own kids. I've given plenty of B's, a few C's, and even a couple of D's on individual tests or assignments. But to my relief, I've never had to award anything less than a B grade on a report card. (I don't think anyway. Pretty sure I'd remember if I had!)
And how do I do report cards? Well, for many years I've used Homeschool Tracker Online for all my homeschool record-keeping, including lesson plans, tracking assignments, and of course, calculating grades. It's a very easy-to-use record-keeping system that provides plenty of options. Since Homeschool Tracker keeps records of time spent and all grades that I enter, calculating quarterly or semester grades is a snap! All I need to do is hit "print" for the report card, and the quarterly grades are averaged for the semester! From there I just enter the information on the report card form our umbrella group uses. By the way, I could produce my own professional looking transcript using the Tracker if I needed to.
How do you do report cards or assess grades and progress? Leave a comment and let me know what works for you - or leave a homeschool question you're curious about.
This post is linked at the Homeschool Linky Party on the Homeschool Review Crew blog.
Visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog for the Keeping Records and Giving Grades Round-up to see how other Crew members are getting this part of homeschooling done. (October 18, 2018)
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4 comments:
I have only ever done report cards for our oldest and he is in high school. The younger kids like seeing grades on their papers, but I don't do formal report cards for them.
Mine only get grades in high school for transcripts. I am always behind in record keeping. Homeschool Tracker looks like a very useful tool!
at this point I haven't worried about tests and grades, it's been unnecessary...but I can see it becoming more important as time goes on.
I haven't thought about this yet but now that I have read this I am thinking a progress report would be a good idea. I was really detailed in my first portfolio review for my daughter but after being told that it wasn't necessary to be that detailed...I completely slacked off last year. This is great motivation to get back into the routine again!
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