2002-10-18
Grading Grading Grading, posted at 5:35 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com My department head, who I'm still loving, had copies of this article on hand for today's all-day inservice day for teachers.It was an appropriate harbinger of things to come, as we spent all afternoon group-scoring essays that students had written for this past week's "milestone" tests.
After reading 175 essays on the three most important qualities that a friend must have, I don't think I want to ever discuss friendship again. But some were quite amusing. I especially enjoyed one student who wrote the following: "The three most important qualities of a good friend are funny, giveliness, and nice." Yup, gotta have that giveliness. And "nice" became the word of the day. Half of the essays said that "nice" was a quality of a good friend. And, yes, that is very important. Oh, and so is being "ghetto-fabulous."
Basically, the students are about where we think they should be at this point. One cool thing was that all the essays were scored on a 1-6 rubric. The only six all day, out of almost 200 essays? My students. Go, Shantira. Even none of the advanced kids had a six.