I’ve never been comfortable with participation grades. Can I truly assess the variety of ways students might participate? It hasn’t felt do-able nor accurate and fair for me. Are they doing the work? Are they demonstrating learning on assignments and assessments? Then they are participating. 1/3 - ThreadSky

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lambradley.bsky.social • 3 days ago

I’ve never been comfortable with participation grades. Can I truly assess the variety of ways students might participate? It hasn’t felt do-able nor accurate and fair for me. Are they doing the work? Are they demonstrating learning on assignments and assessments? Then they are participating. 1/3

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lambradley.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also - If we say they have to participate in classes like P.E., band, etc., then I don't think we're talking about participation. Doing P.E. work or playing an instrument is the literal assignment, so of course that should be graded, just like writing in English is the assignment to be graded. 2/3

lambradley.bsky.social•3 days ago

If the assignment is to contribute to a class discussion, then the assignment is to speak (not “participate”). We need to be really clear to students what is assigned and how they will be graded. To just say “you need to participate” doesn’t make clear what is expected. 3/3

w1llo.bsky.social•3 days ago

I think I understand what you are saying. In the PE example, participation in an activity is the actual assignment. For an overly simple example, a student earns a grade for participating in a volleyball game, not for how skilled they are.

lambradley.bsky.social•3 days ago

OK, to split a few more hairs... If participation is the assignment, is it actually assessed? Like, how well someone participated? That sounds like a grade for effort, which gets dicey - do we really know how much effort they put forth? Or is participation in P.E. kind of a yes/no grade?

w1llo.bsky.social•3 days ago

It is very much a subjective assessment of if the student is actively engaged and participating.

Nebulous for sure!

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