Our Approach

 
There is significant agreement among educational researchers that report cards with simple letter grades do not foster, nor even accurately reflect, student learning. Therefore, teachers at FSW use a detailed assessment process to give parents/guardians a more accurate understanding of their early elementary student’s progress. These evaluations track the student’s developmental progress on a wide variety of capabilities and also include a narrative report characterizing the student’s social adjustment and overall development as a learner. At any time during the semester, if a teacher or a parent/guardian has a concern about a student’s progress at school, either party may initiate a conference to address the issue.

 
As middle school students cognitively mature, they are better able to understand the cause-and-effect relationship between hard work and good grades. They also begin to compare their performance to that of peers to set goals and standards for themselves. For these reasons, we find that adding letter grades to detailed narratives gives parent/guardians and students the best of both worlds: a basis for comparison with peers and teacher expectations and a detailed analysis of areas of excellence and continued growth. During the first nine-week period, middle school teachers guide students to understand the rationale for grades and to identify the requirements and numeric values that will comprise their grading rubrics. Students receive “practice” grades at the end of the first nine weeks to reflect upon and discuss their work and brainstorm strategies for improving performance. A combination of letter grades, portfolios, and narrative evaluations is used to evaluate student progress for the remainder of the year.