Grading During the Remote Learning Environment
St. Michael’s is committed to providing an intentional academic program that is mindful of the challenges faced by our families during the COVID-19 pandemic. We understand that unplanned closure of schools has altered the educational landscape requiring new avenues of instruction, support, and assessment.
Lower School
The Lower School will be assigning grades of S (student Successfully completed the course of study) or N (student Needs improvement to be prepared for next year’s work). Each grade will post on Google Classroom the requirements for earning “S” for the fourth quarter. If a student is in danger of receiving an “N,” the teacher and the parent (and in some cases the student) will conference together to develop a plan for improvement with the goal of raising the student’s performance to an “S.” Teachers will continue to assign work that supports student learning and will provide direct feedback on both work turned in and on student effort and participation.
Middle School
The Middle School students will continue to be given traditional numeric grades for the fourth quarter. Teachers are assessing students in a variety of ways to check for understanding and for mastery of certain elements. There is flexibility granted to all students who turn in late work. When a student has not turned in an assignment, it will be populated as a “zero” in combination with either a MISS for missing, ABS for absent, or INC for incomplete with a comment attached as to when the original assignment was due and when the last day is for the student to complete the assignment for partial credit. If the teachers do not enter a “zero” when there is an assignment missing, the student may not realize until it is too late that there is outstanding work because it will not be averaged into their grade for the quarter. This gives a false sense of recorded success in a class. If a student receives a zero, it is a placeholder as well as an alert to the family. If there is a pattern of zeroes earned, the teacher will reach out to the family.
When Middle School students are on campus, teachers often track down students in the hallway, at recess, and at Dragons’ Hour to remind them to turn in outstanding work. Obviously, this is no longer feasible therefore it is imperative that students check PowerSchool each day to look for any outstanding work. When a student turns in missing/late work, the teacher will update PowerSchool within a week. (PowerSchool will only be updated during regular school hours.) Therefore, a student’s final grade in a course is flexible until grades are due. At that time, any work still outstanding will count as a zero.
All students are expected to access the opportunities available to them such as recorded class meetings, PowerSchool reports, and teacher availability. However, teachers will take into account variables such as parent availability, technology challenges, and other external factors and will stay in close contact with their students and their families to provide clear guidelines for student performance.
We hope that the variety of avenues we have provided our K-8 families to access grades and assignment information has been helpful. We are also so proud of how our students have adapted to this new learning environment.
Sincerely,
Merrill Geier, Lower School Director
Jessica Stargell, Middle School Director
