My grading in the "Lehreroffice"

So what I did in the Lehreroffice is the following:

I grouped the grades that they already have into projects or Units. So the first project was reading the Rainbow Serpent Story, the next was Unit 1 incl. the tests from the teaching material and the vocabulary test I made myself. The questions will be a project too, but we've only had on test so far - same thing with the "Wonder"-listening comprehension...

I try to compare the weight of those projects and came up with the number 5 for a whole Unit.

• So for the Rainbow Serpent I thought that this was a rather big project but not as big as the whole Unit 1 was so it got a 4. I entered the grades in the "Lehreroffice" once as a speaking test with the weighting 3 and once as a reading test with the weighting 1 = 4. Most of what I graded was their fluency, accuracy and pronunciation but without really understanding the text (reading comprehension) they would not have been able to answer the questions they were asked after reading... So they did understand the text as well. That's why I gave the reading the weighing 1 even though it was mainly a speaking test.

• For Unit 1 I weighted the vocabulary test just with 1 and the two tests out of the teaching material with 2 each = 5. Why I did that? Because I don't think that the grade of a vocabulary test says much about understanding the unit nor the actual language skills. It's just a question of effort and cramming... You can do great in vocabulary test without being able to say one sentence correctly AND you can do very poor in vocabulary test and still participate in conversations. For all three test in Unit 1 I also gave reading grades, because I think that even if it is a listening comprehension, the kids can only tick the right answer if they were able to read and understand the statement they had to judge. Same thing for the much and many questions. If they had not been able to read and understand the given answer, they would not have been able to write a decent question. Well of course the kids only get the one grade but I made this difference for me to be able get some information out of this "Lehreroffice" that I can use for the report cards where I'll have to grade all four skills.

• And then there are just bits and pieces of other stuff that I tested, like the good morning conversations, the aim of speaking English and raising the flag on the pole etc. I just gave it a 1 for right now because they are not real projects.

There is one more thing about those questions that I have realised... There is one boy in this class, he speaks English pretty well but I don't think he would ever sit down and study for a test... When I handed out the last tests he made a comment such as: "Oh I love how you do these tests Mrs. Kündig"... Well yes, he did pretty well in those tests. Not brilliant but obviously better than before. And then there are others. Kids that are pretty good in cramming something even though their use of English is not good at all...

My way of teaching is more about understanding and using the language than cramming for a test and that's good for some but maybe bad (when it comes to the grades) for others... But isn't this what language learning is all about? To be able to use it?