Ways To Determine Weekly Grades By Marcia Somerville

Many moms new to integrated learning (unit study) and Tapestry find themselves feeling a little insecure without published tests that they can use to assess their child's progress.  We understand!  We are in the process of developing such weekly quizzes and unit tests, but many, many families have done integrated study and Tapestry without such tests, and successfully gotten their children into colleges.  So, until we publish tests for you, how do you arrive at a weekly grade for your student?

First, I want to reassure you.  For many seasoned homeschoolers, this is not a very important question.  Such families are secure in the knowledge that, since they are tutoring their children, they need not test in order to find out what their children know.  It is a simple matter, in most cases, to quiz younger students orally and determine if they have comprehended their lessons.  Especially in Grades 1-6, most people don't have to keep grades for any reason other than personal desire.  However, some oversight groups do require them.  So, here are some guidelines if you feel you must keep grades for Grammar-level students. 

• Quiz orally.  Especially for grades 1-3, do not require children to write out long quizzes that you spend hours making up.  Rather, sit them down at week's end and just have a conversation.  Ask what they remember about the main topics you covered during the week.  Draw them out on things they are vague about, or information about which their answers are too general.  

• Create your own True/False or "fill in the blank" quizzes.  Some parents might want to give their grammar-level students practice in test-taking.  It's easy to make a quiz that will cover the week's lesson yourself.  Since each family uses different resources, and since, for non-readers anyway, you have read these books yourself, go ahead and make up a little 1-question quiz during some weeks.  How?  Looking at the "Threads" section of the Tapestry Teachers' Notes, discern the main points of the week's lesson.  Now, flip through your child's history resources (books) and find the main headings on the page.  Devise True/False quiz questions from these, or devise true sentences that leave out a key word or phrase.  If you want to, you can even mix these two types of questions.  Ten questions for a week's lesson is enough!  And, don't stress on whether you got The Ten Most Important Ones.  There's no such thing.  When curriculum providers make quizzes, all they do is look at lessons and choose random main ideas on which to test.  You can do the same with perfect serenity.

• Use the work they've already done each week to assign grades!  Give your students criteria for their projects before they start them, and then use those criteria to give them a grade.  We have designed a Project Rubric as part of our upcoming Evaluations disk that I can gladly share with you at this time.  You can also grade their writing assignments, map work (for neatness and thoroughness), vocabulary work (how many words have they learned this week?), etc.

Now, what about for older students?  Well, the same thinking applies.  You don't have to grade, but if you choose to, you're not doing a bad thing either.  As students get older there is an added benefit to weekly quizzes, unit tests, and final exams.  These give the student a chance to thoroughly review lessons, to pull back and think about how individual themes fit a larger picture, and to learn to take tests.  So, if you make up quizzes or tests for your student, you do well.  But if you don't, you can also follow some of the guidelines above while waiting for Lampstand Press to publish Tapestry-linked written evaluations (such as are now available for Year 1 users).  Here are some ideas for you:

• Remember not to load your student down with too many quizzes or tests.  Again, you are tutoring him, and unless he has character issues, he's doing the reading/writing you assign, and therefore he is learning.

• Written quizzes/tests for Dialectic and Rhetoric students are easily derived from either Accountability Questions or Thinking Questions.  You can style them as short answer, true false, multiple choice, or essay questions.  Again, don't get bogged down in the feeling that you need to find the perfectly right ten questions.  Just choose ten main ones and rest assured that the Lord will guide you and your student.  

For Dialectic students, focus your attention on short quizzes or tests that allow him to display his understanding of connections and facts.

For Rhetoric students, unit and final exams are more important, if only for the experience in reviewing for and taking larger tests.  Writing these is not very difficult if you think in terms of breaking the test down into smaller components.  Choose from among these for various testing situations, and create unit tests that last about one-and-a-half to two hours, and final exams that last two hours:

• Write 10 T/F questions on important facts or dates. (5 minutes)

• Ask the student to write a paragraph on 5 important terms, such as Communism, or "revolution."  Use terms that you've clearly defined and that were central to the unit or year. (1/2 hour)

• Time line questions are good for helping students review and affix important dates in their minds.  Provide a blank time line (for just the segment of history you're testing).  Give him 10 important dates, and ask him to write them in where they belong.

• Include a map section, if you've been doing geography.  Give the student a list of 10-15 places or geographic formations and ask him to label/shade them on a blank map you provide. (20-30 minutes or so)

• Charts are sometimes useful testing tools.  Have you been reading about parallel cultures in the Ancient World?  Give him a blank chart with defined categories and selected cultures and ask him to fill it in from memory. (30-40 minutes, depending on the size/complexity of the chart)

• Have the Rhetoric student write his choice of two essay questions.  Draw these from either Thinking Questions you've thoroughly discussed, or writing assignment essays that he chose not to write during the unit/year. (30 minutes for a unit test; 45 minutes for a final exam) On final exams, you can also do choice of two short essays (20 minutes) and then also choice of longer essays (40 minutes).

Remember, before you give the student the unit test or final exam, prepare him thoroughly.  The student should know the basic components (types of questions) on the test, and should be led through a lengthy review of all subject matter before attempting the test.

Again, it's not necessary to write/give quizzes at all.  (We didn't ever do so except for those offered in the Writing Assignments for Rhetoric students!  Our kids got into college, so please believe us when we say it's not necessary.*)  Instead, you can:

• Require D/R students to write out the answers, weekly, to Accountability or Thinking Questions (or both) and then grade the neatness and thoroughness of their work.

• Similarly with Literature and Church History and Philosophy assignments and discussions.  If there are written questions that we offer, you can use the student's homework to generate a grade.

• You can grade their "class participation" during discussion time (pass/fail).

• You can grade Geography work for neatness and thoroughness.

• You can grade writing assignments.

• Oral exams work for older students, too.

• So do project/oral presentation/visual presentation grades.  (Click on these links to see oral presentation rubrics and oral presentation spectrum sheets we've developed  for the new Evaluations disks to evaluate some of these.)

Again, and finally, relax!  Breathe in, and also out!  In our homeschool world of tutorial studies, grades are usually superfluous!  They can serve specific purposes (like motivating the student to do his best work, or providing needed information to oversight groups) but at the end of the day, your focus should remain on developing in your child a love of learning.  Teach him that, whatever form of evaluation you may choose, the most important thing is to do his best and learn from any mistakes or deficiencies a test or grade might reveal.  As in all things, we want to work to please the Lord, and we are full of flaws and shortcomings.  Make sure you encourage your student about all he's doing well, and partner with him to help him overcome the fewer areas in which he's weak!

*We assigned "pass/fail" grades to all subjects that for which we had no published tests from curricula -- which was all Tapestry subjects, since Tapestry wasn't published back then.  College admissions officers don't esteem the grades homeschool parents give anyways.  They look far harder at SAT scores, reading lists, and writing samples, as well as the kinds of extra-curricular activities students engage in and the recommendations other write.  So, please be released about needing to generate letter grades!