personal responses

for each story that we read in first grade in the second 90 days of school, the students hafta answer 7 comprehension questions, a personal response (short answer), 4-5 vocabulary questions, 6-8 phonics questions, and every week they take 2 spelling tests, one multiple choice and one written, over 6 words.

i am grading my final set of tests, and actually i'm a bit behind in grading, so i'm grading this week's tests and last week's tests. last week we read two stories, which means double all the questions mentioned above, and this week we only read one story, so just one set of test questions per kid.

the personal response is worth 4 points, and really doesn't mean much cuz it doesn't count for their grade, but we have to grade it and chart it for the class and submit it to the administration for them to review. the question usually asks something like "what do you think about this & why?" so that the kids hafta answer two parts to get full credit.


here's how i kind of grade the answers:

if they write anything related to the question, they get a point.
if they write a good answer to one question and skip the second question, and they have good capitalization & punctuation, they get 2-3 points out of four
if they write a good answer to both questions but don't have capitalization & punctuation, they get 3/4
if the write two good answers and have good caps & punctuation, they get 4/4..


if they write something funny, they get a smiley face..... like when one of my girls answered this question:

which job would you like to help with in building a house? why would you choose this job?

i would be a elxtresiun cuse you get to mes with wiers and stuff

now, she spelled some words creatively, and she forgot to capitalize & add a period, but she got 3/4 for good answers. and she got a smiley face, cuse she made me laff.