Rubrics

Grades are not required until high school, and not recommended by Faithful Scholars in elementary school or even during the middle school years. We idealist plan on practicing in 8th grade, but the reality is that we are intensely instructing, guiding, and living leaving no time in which to squeeze in trial runs.

A rubric is a pre-planned, fair, & methodical manner of grading based on a pre-set plan or strategy of assessing a student’s work created by the instructor, you to insure consistent grading of assignments, tests, projects, etc per subject.

Why use a Rubric?   Giving your student(s) a clear understanding of what is expected in order to succeed in each subject.  Each subject/course will have it’s own rubric.

Each rubrics should be unique and tailored toward each child, and can be changed at will or according to your wisdom of what area(s) need improving. These change as your student matures, so your grading rubrics should also change.

There are as many rubrics as there are teachers, but is is simply an efficient and fair minded manner in which an instructor puts forth his/her expectations to the student and then arrives at a grade. 

Examples:

• 25% competency, 25% neatness, 25% timeliness, 25% grammar
• 10% meeting guidelines, 25% attitude, 50% accuracy, 15% grammar
• For Math there may be partial credit or simply correct and incorrect.
• For Composition there might be effort, neatness, content, grammar, spelling or any variation thereof -or more -or fewer (requirements).

Each and every teacher in traditional settings has their own unique manner/method of grading which may seem ‘grey’ and frustrating, but it’s truly good news for home school graders as it means that we can freely and confidently create our own methods/expectations that work accordingly with our/child’s unique styles of organization and individual levels of ability.

Recording subject assignments, tests, projects, and etc. can be done in a variety of manners, but we cannot stress how important it is to record them as they are completed.  This will save such a mountain of unearthing, sorting, calculating work at the end of the year that you will count this preemptive time invaluable.- I promise!

To help with tracking grades, prepping toward college applications, tracking courses/descirptions, creating your 4 year plan, sampling letters of recommendation and more, we have created a High School Records Notebook for our Faithful Scholars and Umbrella Skye members that can be found in your login portal.

Record keeping can be maintained in simple or complex form as long as you are tracking graded assignments, tests, projects (per subject) for end of semester or year GPA.  This is an example of paper/pen record keeping methodology, but as our personalities vastly vary so do our means and methods of record keeping vary.  From complex spreadsheets to simple teacher planners, the range is wide.

• 9th-11th grade:   GRADES DUE BY/BEFORE JUNE 5th each year
• SENIOR’S GRADES DUE BY MAY 25th