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What factors should you consider when developing a grading plan?

This is an excerpt from Introduction to Teaching Physical Education 3rd Edition With HKPropel Access by Jane M. Shimon.

Grading Considerations

Assigning students a traditional letter grade for their report cards is usually required at the secondary level; however, even some elementary school administrators are beginning to require that teachers submit a letter grade for upper-grade levels. In the primary grades (K-2), teachers usually do not use letter grades; instead, they often indicate a level of achievement, such as whether students exceed, meet, or need more time to meet various objectives. Regardless of grade level, you should be able to submit a justifiable grade or rating based on the final accomplishments of your students. You must be able to show how grades are earned for performance and achievement (Johnson 2008). Ultimately, it is up to you to determine how best to design your grading scheme.

As stated in the opening to this chapter, many physical education teachers do not assess student learning, especially at the secondary level. Instead, grades are based on dress, participation, effort, improvement, or attitude. These factors (see the sidebar Common Grading Factors) address only compliance and do not demonstrate what students have learned or achieved (Melograno 2007). When grading on effort, improvement, or attitude, there are a few issues to consider. First, if students know they will be graded on how much they improve, some may slack off on initial assessments and perform their best at the end, thus demonstrating misleading gains. Second, some students may have lower skill or fitness levels at the onset, which allows for plenty of room for growth and improvement, whereas other students may be highly skilled or fit with limited room for improvement. Thus, grading on student improvement should be used with caution. It is best to allow students to track skill and fitness improvements over time, as part of formative assessments, which can also enhance intrinsic motivation and demonstrate that they have met various objectives or standards.

Similar arguments can be made for grading on attitude. Is it fair to mark students down for a bad attitude when the lesson is boring, meaningless, too difficult, or when your own attitude is substandard as well? Because grading on attitude is very subjective and often includes teacher bias, it should also be used with caution.

What factors should you consider when developing a grading plan? A final grade in physical education should reflect a certain level of performance based on achieving educational objectives. Standards and specific objectives reflect the goals of a physical education program and, therefore, should comprise the bulk of the final letter grade (Melograno 2007). When developing a grading plan, you need to take into account the objectives and standards of the program, along with your professional judgment and philosophy of what is most important for students to know and be able to do. Thus, the overall letter grade reflects the criteria you believe are most important for students to achieve. Some teachers determine a final grade based on the overall points earned during a term and apply those points to the school’s grading scale (e.g., 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79= C, 60-69 = D, and less than 60 = F). Other teachers emphasize or weight scores (percentages) based on what they believe is most important, such as knowledge, skill, responsibility, or fitness.

Determining a weighted score for grading criteria should not be taken lightly. Too much emphasis in one area might affect the final letter grade of students who did not do well in one area, yet performed well in others. Table 9.2 illustrates how weighted scores can affect final letter grades. The three students in table 9.2—designated as 1, 2, and 3—are typical students you may have in a physical education class. As you can tell by their overall score or grade for each weighted area, student 1 is someone who always dresses appropriately, participates in class, and completes assignments and tests with high scores; however, skill and fitness abilities are rather low. Student 2 is gifted with physical and fitness skills; however, this student doesn’t like to dress appropriately for class and doesn’t put much effort into completing assignments or studying for tests. Finally, student 3 dresses appropriately and participates most of the time, and skill, fitness, and knowledge assessments are average. As you can tell, their final grades change noticeably based on the percentages allotted to each scoring area.

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