My class is in the Newspaper, Again

They did another article and my class was featured again. 2 great pics, plus some quotes...Enjoy!

http://northgeorgia.timesfreepress.com/news/2008/
nov/28/georgia-new-curriculum-leads-new-grading-
methods/?South-Pittsburg#social

The days of students silently working out 15 math problems or dissecting sentences on paper are coming to an end.

“We almost never give kids a worksheet anymore,” said Dr. Terry Stevenson, principal at Fairyland Elementary School. “(Now) the work is multidimensional.”

The state’s new performance standards curriculum is changing the way teachers evaluate and assess students, area educators said. The new standards were rolled out in 2005 and continue to be implemented gradually.

The changes mean the standard letter grades — A, B, C, D and F — are on their way out, Dr. Stevenson said.

“You don’t know what that means,” Dr. Stevenson said of letter grades. “You don’t know what (students) are good at. You don’t know what they are struggling with.”

Staff Photo by Dan Henry
Rossville Elementary 1st-grader Jahari Douglas uses a smart board to count money in Tabitha Norris's class Tuesday morning.

Some teachers are moving toward rubric grading, which lists specific skills students should know in each grade. For example, in addition to giving an overall grade for language arts, a teacher might evaluate how a student does on storytelling or reading comprehension.

In order for students to learn, they need to be engaged with hands-on activities, such as doing problems at the front of the class on a Smart Board, an interactive white screen attached to a computer. Students also need to see how their lessons apply in the real world, and parents and children need to know goals for each grade level and subject, educators said.

Rossville Elementary School principal Robin Samples said older teaching methods sometimes mean that students who don’t understand a topic are overlooked.

“You’d just sit there and be quiet,” she said.

The new teaching methods call for more group projects and more interactive learning, she said.

For example, Tabitha Norris said that when she teaches her first-grade students at Rossville Elementary to count money, every student is engaged. One student may come to the Smart Board to create a money math problem, she explained, while another student is called on to solve the problem. The rest of the students do the problem on their own.

When everyone is finished, they hold up their answers and Mrs. Norris checks each student’s work.

“I couldn’t imagine teaching any other way,” Mrs. Norris said.

If she notices a student consistently getting answers wrong, she can help him before test time. Helping after the test is usually too late, educators said.

Report cards with letter grades — or for higher levels, number grades such as a “95” — still are sent home to parents. But some schools, such as Battlefield Primary in Catoosa County, also send home information that shows exactly where students are achieving or falling behind.

“It might list 20 language arts things students need to know by the time students leave the first grade,” Battlefield Primary principal Dr. Sandy Boyles said.

Many educators said they are happy with the new standards, but Dr. Stevenson said struggle usually comes with change.

For example, if letter and number grades are replaced with rubrics, there is a question about how students will be evaluated when applying to college, Dr. Stevenson said.

“It is a challenge,” she said. “Because our system requires us to give a number or a letter grade, we are struggling with how to take that rubric and turn it into a letter grade.”