Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Day 34 -training for benchmark training

Today I learned I may be difficult to work with when group grading students writing.   We are about to grade an ELA benchmark as a whole school and today after school, as Dept. Chair, I had to go receive training on how we are going to score so I can share that with other teachers on the big day of grading. Well, I get very attached to details and what is not in the rubric or why isn't it organized like this or semantics - what does a 3 mean? How can this be a zero? Etc., etc., etc.!!!!  I have been lucky enough to sit with many teachers who really get into calibrating grading and enjoy arguing many points. Today, not so much.  Those times when my questions were welcomed were at voluntary and paid professional developments.  This was a dept. chair obligation with no extra pay, which I think has led to less interest in picking through all of these things.
For students this is merely a practice and the scoring is really only for teachers to be more familiar with what is expected of students.  Which makes this a little frustrating. The district is going to enter all the data in our data base but the data will only be a 0,1,2, or 3.  It will not tell me if a student did well on claim, or evidence or analysis.  Its just one score to reflect how well they did on all three combined.  Which for me to immediately help kids in the class, that number gives me nothing specific to work with.  I will just have to give my own benchmark in my individual class.  AAARGH.  I will assume best intentions on the districts part and hope the teachers learn a lot from this.

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