Emily Giang

Edu 1010/Orientation

My Philosophy of Grading

My philosophy of grading will be founded upon the ideas that: learning and improvement

are the main goals in my class, and the things learned there will be directly applied and

appreciated in everyday life. The class I’d like to teach is Spanish, so I would be attempting to

have students show significant growth in their linguistic abilities and be able to actually use it

everyday. I also want students to be able to find a safe space in the classroom where they feel

completely comfortable to practice and make mistakes (especially when speaking), and that may

require giving lots of assessments. It’s critically important to be able to utilize assessments in

order to construct the learning of my students, and it’ll be beneficial to my teaching methods and

students’ learning outcomes.

The first and foremost thing to understand is exactly what assessments are. They’re

essentially “measurements” that analyze the progress of a student’s learning, identifying where

they need to improve and how (Jensen). It can include formative assessments and summative

assessments, which interpret the process and product of learning, respectively, for students. And

the most important part of assessment is to give corrective feedback, which is where students are

told of their current status, their expected goal, and their intentions to get there - with a little bit

of mentor and peer feedback and support. This is indescribably important because it

demonstrates to students that their work and their progress matters, and that they have a class

community that is willing to support them and help them improve.

My method of assessment would most likely be small formatives that take the form of

speaking, listening, writing, and reading. This would make up approximately 75% of the overall
grade, because I believe that actively learning and practicing a language is the most essential part

in learning to love it. Participation will be key, and will make up around 10% of the overall

grade; students will be graded upon the effort they make to incorporate new material learned,

how engaged they are during partner/classroom discussions, and how well they do on smaller

written/reading tasks. Summative assessments will make up the other 15%, and will test students

on all categories.

Along the way of assessment, corrective feedback will be essential, and it’ll help to

develop my teacher teaching skills and the students’ student-ing skills. Specifically for teachers,

it’ll help me to establish a way to show students that I care about the quality of their work and I

want to show them how to make it better. This in turn gives students more motivation to do

better because they’ll know someone believes in them - and it’ll also build a little bit of

resilience, learning to accept making mistakes in the classroom, and learning how to build better

things due to a proper support and community surrounding you.

Ultimately, my grading philosophy is straightforward and simple, emphasizing in-class

assessments that build up to the final exam. Formative assessments and participation will make

up most of the points, while summative assessments make up less. Students should have a

chance to be in a space and mindset where they are free to make mistakes with the reinforcement

of corrective feedback from others, so that they are able to build resilience. I hope to give my

students challenging material that’ll push them to think smarter and stronger, not simply because

the material was hard, but because they had to go through the struggle of being able to ask their

peers and teachers for help, and that they can build the interpersonal skills to develop a language

that will last a lifetime. Growth and gratitude towards the material learned is the goal of my

classroom, and I intend to incorporate both of those throughout my teaching journey.