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Evaluating Student's Work
and
Grading Policy

An important responsibility of teachers is to evaluate a student's progress in their studies; to let a student know how they are doing. My job will be to evaluate your progress in this course of social study, and to inform you about it. I'll do that informally during our class discussions, and by offering you two chances to test your new knowledge, and by reading and commenting on your paper.

My students may confer with me individually, informally before/after class, or by appointment. Additionally, I am available to help evaluate progress in studies and research, and offer guidance to my students regarding course matter via email (ferry@tenebrae.org).

Grading is a different for me than what I'm calling evaluation - grading includes others besides the teacher and student. Grading is a ranking of your performance in completing the requirements of the course. It is a report that a teacher is required to make to the school about the student.

Grading will be done according to the school's policy as it is stated in your student handbook.

Your grade will be a mark, not of how much you know, but of how much you have learned during the time of the course as best I am able to measure that.

Grade Calculations

Students will be able to accumulate a maximum of four hundred (400) points during the session:

• Each of the two tests will be worth 100 points (200 points for tests which is 50% of final grade)
• Students can gain up to 100 points for their course fieldwork and research projects.
• Students can gain 80 points for full perfect attendance at the class meetings- 2 points for each class hour. Missing classes: if a student has to miss more than 6 class hours, I will consider that a withdrawal from the class.
• Students will receive up to 20 points awarded by myself for scholarly participation in the course, participation in class, contributions to classmates' learning, and preparation for class meetings.
• There are no extra credits or points.

At the end of the course divide your raw number of points by 4 to find out what your final score (and final grade) will be. Example --- your total points are 340, divided by 4 equals = 85, and this is becomes a letter grade of "B" as per the schools policy on grades located in student handbook.

Tests

Tests will be partly objective questions, and partly essays.

• The objective questions will be drawn from the text readings and assigned articles. This part of the test is simply to check that you have done the readings and understand them.
• The other part of the test will require that you respond to a question with an essay of 100 to 300 words. The essay questions are designed to be broad enough to give you a chance to show me what you have learned - I will be looking for what you have learned, not what you have failed to learn so far. Here I will be reading and evaluating your essays with three things in mind: 1) Is there evidence here that the student has been studying and giving consideration to the ideas and concepts and themes that have been part of lectures, class discussions and the readings; 2) Does the student have a clear understanding of those ideas, and some sense of their value and limitations; 3) Is the student successful at communicating their thought and their understanding of the subject matter to me (quality of writing).

  The final exam will be comprehensive (covering total course.)

Research

Your research project will be evaluated with these considerations:

• Did student follow and complete instructions given for the assignment.
• Is there evidence of effort in the student's searching for new (new to the student) knowledge, facts, ideas, concepts, explanations, observations etc.
• Has the student sought out sources that would shed light on, deepen understanding of, the research question. And has the student given proper attribution to the sources.
• Is the report organized well, written well, and formatted according to an accepted and appropriate style (APA for social sciences)
• check the rubrics I use (at he bottom of Courseworks page) in grading research, papers and presentations..

Academic Honoring and Honesty

• During your work and studies in this class, if you are presenting an idea or words of someone else, cite and give credit to that source.
• If a student plagiarizes (presents as their own someone else's ideas or words) during course, on the tests, or in submitted research, I'll recognize that as a failure on the student's part, and that is what will be reported to the school at end of course.