L+Zimmer

 __**Philosophy & Summary**__

This PDP was a great experience for me. I appreciated that fact that there were so many teachers involved from various disciplines and levels. The more perspectives we can hear, the better decisions we can all make in our classrooms when it comes to grading. The book was our guide for each meeting. Too be honest, there wasn't a whole lot the author wrote that I agreed with. However, I did enjoy reading the 'fixes'. Some of the fixes were ones that I had never even considered and others were ideas that I have gone over in depth. Initially, I thought the book would provide answers to many of the questions we all had. As we soon found out, there were not any answers in the book, on the contrary, it raised more questions! Throughout the process, I went from thinking I needed to change everything that I've been doing to thinking maybe what I'm doing is working. I think we can all grade differently, we just have to be able to justify what it is we are assigning grades to and most importantly believe in what you are doing. The big question that seemed to remain unanswered is: What does an 'A' in your class //mean//? Paired with the question: //What grade do you give a proficient student, A or B//? There were conflicting views on these questions and I'm not sure where I stand. I could argue for both sides. Actually, that happened a lot throughout the meetings.


 * Lee's __group__ meeting times:**

Feb 26 ~ 2 hour initial meeting with large group

March 5 ~ 2 hour meeting with first group

March 7 ~ 2 hour meeting with first group after building day.

March 8 ~ 2 hour group meeting

March 10 ~ 2 hour meeting with first group

March 14 ~ 4 hour meeting with small group

March 16 ~ 3 hour meeting with small group


 * Lee's individual times:**

Feb 28 ~ 30 minutes spent signing up to wikispaces

March 3 ~ 30 minutes spent reading wikispaces and posting intitial question

March 4 ~ 40 minutes spent reading comments and posting comments

March 11 ~ 1 hour spent in the 8th grade class discussing grading. It was very interesting to hear their take on grades!

March 14 ~ 3 hours spent going over wikispace comments, typing meeting notes, adding comments and answering questions and reviewing readings given to us from Kathy.

March 16 ~ 2 hours preparing for afternoon meeting

March 17 ~ 2 hours ~Spent time writing summary and philosophy on individual page. Adjusted weighting with final quarter 3 grades to see the difference in summative and formative assessment weighting.

March 18 ~ 1 hour spent reading final comments made by group members (I agree with Kathy's final comments . . . do I see light at the end? and I've been teaching how long and I still don't know the answer to the grading question!)