I was pretty irritated while unloading things from Noah’s take home folder after school the other day.
One of his reading worksheets is one that he has done before. This particular worksheet is one that has six definitions on it from the story they are focusing on that week. They must write their own sentence using the vocabulary word, write down the number of the page they found it on, and then draw a picture to illustrate their sentence. Okay, so I’m fine with this so far.
The one that just came home had a score of 67% — a D. He lost six points on this paper. The only notation for why he missed those six points? “Did Not Color,” it says.
Yes, his grade on this reading worksheet is a D. He had great sentences for each definition with proper puncuation and capitalization. He had correct page numbers written for where he found the words in the story. Heck — he even had nice illustrations. But, those illustrations were only pencil drawings, not colored in. (This is something I am sure he has done before without any penalty.)
Apparently ability to color in pictures is very vital to reading, and is, in fact, so imperative that it deserves losing one-third of the entire points for an assignment.
I decided to write a note, but then thought, “Hey — it’s just a worksheet, and anything I write won’t make a difference.” So, I just set it on the counter and decided not to worry about it.
Well…until I ended up writing a note asking for the exact breakdown of how points are distributed on this assignment, as well as an explanation as to why points have never been deducted before for not coloring. It probably won’t make a difference, but it made me feel better. We’ll see what comes out of it.
(Oh — I do feel the need to point out that: (1) I would have been okay if he had lost some points if they had specifically been given directions to color but then didn’t, and, well…(2) He actually has a one-on-one aide who probably should have pointed out to him that he needed to color if that had been told to him, since part of why he has an aide is to keep him on task.)
Sure…I just posted this, and then got a call from his teacher because of the note I wrote on the paper when I sent it back in. So, I would be remiss to not edit this and add a follow up. The paper was graded by his student teacher, and they have adjusted the score now. Apparently the student teacher meant to check with his teacher about it, but then didn’t get a chance to. Although they do take off points for not coloring for other children, they do not for Noah. So…they are fixing him up from a D to an A+ on that worksheet, and the teacher was very pleased that I contacted her about it.
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