In this episode, Joe Zeccola joins Sharona and Bosley to discuss the interplay between discrete skills and more "holistic" skills, primarily in the discipline of writing. Utilizing some questions asked by Dr. Emily Pitts Donahoe in a recent blog post about Rhetorical Analysis, Joe, Sharona and Bosley explore the balance between assessing discrete individual skills and assessing more holistic processes and how that might play into the design of an alternatively graded course.

Links

Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support!

• Teaching Reading and Analysis with…Standards-Based Collaborative Grading? by Dr. Emily Pitts Donahoe
• Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle & High School by Randy Bomer
• Reading/Writing Connection, The: Strategies for Teaching and Learning in the Secondary Classroom by Carol Booth Olson
• The Reading Apprenticeship framework
• Point-Less: An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading
• Developing Assessment-Capable Visible Learners, Grades K-12: Maximizing Skill, Will, and Thrill (Corwin Literacy) by Nancy Frey, John Hattie and Doug Fisher

Resources

The Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.

The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.

Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:

• The Grading for Growth Blog
• The Grading Conference
• The Intentional Academia Blog

Recommended Books on Alternative Grading:

• Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
• Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
• Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel

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All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Music

Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.