Friday, May 9, 2014

Kudos










«  To Nea Nyholm, who won a medal for “Best in Drawing” a medal for “Best in Painting” and she won the Teacher’s Choice Award at the Siouxland Art Conference Student Showcase. 
«  To the Middle School boys and girls track teams who won the Little Lion invitational on Tuesday
«  To the Middle School math kids did a super job in the Math bee
«  To The Warriors Boys Track team who won the Siouxland Conference track meet making it the third title this year (District football, Siouxland basketball).  Conference champs:were
o    4x400 Relay team (O'Donnell, Stewart, Kortlever, Borchers),
o    Shuttle Hurdle Relay team (Van't Hof, Bakker, Hooyer, Rozeboom)
o    110m hurdles – Dylon Van't Hof
o    400m hurdles - Dylon Van't Hof
o    800m Run – Chris Borchers
o    3200m Run – Haile Duden
«  To the members of the Warrior Girls Track team who finished 2nd in the Siouxland Conference meet.  Conference Champs were
o    4x200 Relay (Kortlever, Sitzmann, Beaver, Boer)
o    4x800 (Harald, Sitzmann, Verburg, Miranda Mouw)
o    4x100 (Kortlever, Aubrey Sandbulte, Beaver, Katie TeGrotenhuis)
o    400m Hurdles Payton Boer

Friday, May 2, 2014

The use of percentages to grade students is mathematically flawed and unfair to students

The use of percentages to grade students is mathematically flawed and unfair to students. If you ask someone the temperature today, do you want him to give you the actual temperature or an average of the temperatures of the last 10 days? Which is more accurate? In a worker’s paycheck, would he want to see his actual week’s pay, or an average weekly pay which includes weeks before a pay raise?

It is unfair to students to include grades from their attempts to learn averaged in with the grade that shows their true final learning. Example: In teaching the learning target “writing informational text,” parents have the right to know how well their students can actually perform the skill without averaging in grades from their initial drafts. That’s an unfair practice.

Standards Based Grading resolves this issue.  Students are assessed on what they know and can do.