Challenges to the Action Research
I foresee a couple of challenges that may present themselves with my action research. I am only taking one grade a week next year.
1. Parents will question whether their child is going to fail because there are not enough grades.
I will address this issue by explaining the grading procedure to them in detail. I will assure them that their child will be able to redo any assignments that are low grades for points back on the assignment. I will also explain to them that I am able to give more feedback to the students.
2. The students will think that their assignments don't mean anything.
I plan to address this early on in the year. At the very start to be exact. All of their assignments will be worth their time. I plan on taking a quiz/test every week. They will be able to use notes or any assignments that they feel will help them with their quiz/test. They will notice that if they do the work in the class they will know the questions on the quiz.
3. The teachers that are also doing this will start deviating from the proposed plan.
I will try and talk to the teachers and explain the importance of this action research. The teachers that have agreed to only take one grade were also on my grading policy committee. They have read all of the same research that I have and so I hope they feel it is worthy of taking a look at.
I am interested in your action research plan topic, and I believe it is definitely a worthy topic to research. In my district at the high school level, we are only required to take one daily grade per week. Depending on what unit we are studying usually determines how many grades I actually take, but when I only take one grade per week the students do tend to make sure they put their best effort forth on the assignment. Hopefully you will find this to be true as well!
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the possible challenges that you have identified. I can tell you have thought ahead and done your research to be able to identify worthy concerns. Since you anticipate the possible problems, I am sure you can combat them before they become insurmountable.
Thank you for sharing, and I can't wait to see how it goes!
I am very interested also in the success of this grading policy. I would like to know in particular how the students react to this. We did something like this in the beginning of the year, where we made the quiz on Friday a random selection of the homework and weekly assignment questions. I did not see any difference on the students completing homework or the weekly assignment. What I did notice throughout the year is the same students that completed their homework at the beginning of the year are the same ones that are completeing it now. Good thinking on the challenges and Good luck!!
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