Chapter 8 UbD and Chapters 8, 11, 12 MI

Chapter 8 in UbD talks about grading and report cards. In this chapter I learned that the primary goal of grading is to give students and parents feedback to support the learning process and to encourage learner success. One way to make grading better is to have descriptions in qualities in student work for each symbol on the grading scale. I also learned that teachers need to eliminate factors that interfere with a student’s ability to show what they learned. The chapter suggests not to grade on a curve and to not score all (or even most) assessments. I learned that it is not a fair to grade formative assessments since their purpose is mainly for feedback. This means that the only assessments that should be graded are summative assessments. The book highly suggested using reporting systems instead of report cards. These systems would give more information than just an A in math C in English etc. The thing that will impact me the most is that the chapter said teachers can even do this when a district uses report cards by having an attachment put into the report card that gives more in depth information about how a student is doing in the course. This chapter can relate to chapter 8 in MI because the MI chapter talks about elements of order in the classroom. Giving reports on how the students are behaving and working in the class can be part of a report system. Reporting how students are behaving can be assessed using MI theory. Chapter 8 (MI) talks about using MI theory to get students attention, to make students aware of transitions, for communicating class rules, and for forming groups. I learned that MI theory can also be used for students with behavior problems. In the case of behavior problems, a teacher can help using the student’s strongest developed MI or the student’s underdeveloped MI. Chapter 11 and 12 talk more about other uses for MI theory. I learned that MI theory can apply to memory. Students that are considered to have poor memories really only have poor memory in one or two MIs. Chapter 11 talks all about how MI theory can be applied to special education. When MI is applied, special education can work better with regular education. Instead of teachers seeing students weaknesses (their learning disability), teachers can instead look at the student’s MIs and see their MI strengths.