I was lucky enough to take Mathematics, Grades 7 and 8 from ETFO this summer. It was not the equivalent of my specialist, but it gave me a look at how to better teach math.
As part of the course, my instructor, Mark Chubb, had us watch this video from Rick Wormeli on Gradebooks. I thought it had a lot of good ideas. But it would require me to redo my mark book in a big way.
So I spent a week or so at the end of my course creating new markbooks for the school year. I am currently scheduled to teach English and Math to both a Grade ⅞ and a Grade 8 Immersion class, so I prepared a math and language version for both grade 7 and grade 8. That’s four new grade books in total.
The idea is that each student I teach will have their own individual copy of the gradebook for both Math and English rather than the usual one markbook per class. It makes sense though, because we are supposed to be doing standards-based assessment, so why do I need to have students in the same file? I also hope using these new markbooks will help with my attempts to revitalize my assessment of tests.
Does this idea intrigue you? Please feel free to download your own copy of the markbooks below. Let me know how it went.