IV. Evaluating Students' Work

Determining Final Grades

Anticipate giving final grades from the moment you prepare the course (see "Preparing a Syllabus"). Be fair and reasonable in your expectations, and stick to the grading standards you design according to your course objectives. If you are a beginning teacher, you may tend to grade either too leniently or too harshly at first; to find the middle ground, keep your objectives and standards firmly in mind, and let your students know your policies and expectations.

Keep an accurate, complete record of all grades; routinely photocopy them in case of book bag theft, fire, hard drive crash, or other disasters that do happen. (Also, keep your records for several years; students return later with requests for recommendations.) To know how your students are doing as a group, find the average grade for each assessment and, better yet, plot the scores on a graph. Such a graph shows students how they are doing with respect to the group and alerts you to uneven distributions that may suggest a poor test. Comparing the distribution graphs for different types of assignments will show you students' relative success on tests, quizzes, problem sets, or papers.

In the end, remember that grades indicate what knowledge and skills students have acquired in your course.