I took the responsibility of grading students' "Postwar America" assignment regarding President Truman, and if I was not familiar with Truman and his presidency before I certainly am now after grading 54 worksheets. I graded two separate junior classes' work. Both classes are the "History of Americas Part I," and it is part of a two year course within the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. Students within the IB program have applied, interviewed, and were selected to be in this course. Additionally, this is quite literally a college course. Therefore, both classes contain high level learners, and consequently were administered a challenging formative assessment. In total there were 26 questions, all of which were short response. This was a lengthy assignment, and an important one as well, as it was a major grade and assignment due right before interim. This worksheet was four pages long, in which students were provided both a secondary perspective/source and a primary perspective/source to read and complete the worksheet. Students had four days to complete the worksheet and hand it in. I was instructed to grade the assignment using the answer key, however I had to design my own grading/point system. I have attached the answer key, my own personal grading system, and a student's sample.

One aspect I did note after grading both classes is that some students struggled with the primary source questions (pages three and four). With primary sources my mentor teacher and I discussed that we wanted specific responses, since it was specific to the primary source. However, some students struggled. Several students wrote responses that were vague and not the exact response that would be applicable to the primary source. For example, for question #13 I was specifically looking for students to include the phrase "they would have nothing to eat and less to wear." Yet, some students gave ambiguous answers, such as "they were poor," which although not necessarily wrong it was not the correct answer to the question or the primary source. Therefore, as a class we will have to continue refining our interpretive and analytical skills pertaining to primary sources specifically.

I learned an important lesson with this field base experience. I originally thought it wise to in addition to marking if a student's response was wrong to write down the correct answer. My thought process was that students should know why their response was wrong, I was unsure if there would be time to review the correct answers in class, and I believed with the written correct answer this would assist them for studying for their upcoming summative assessment. However, with two classes and over 50 assignments to grade it took me quite literally the whole school day to grade while writing the correct responses on each individual student's worksheet. Therefore, moving forward when grading, especially short response/essay questions, I will mark right or wrong, but then explain to the class the correct answers so that they may write the correct responses themselves and save myself time from writing it. Nevertheless, I continue to learn and improve my teaching skills.

Attached is my grading rubric key that I designed myself. Questions were either worth one or two points and had specific criteria, which I identified, to meet all possible points. Within the attached file there are rows that are a light yellow, this signifies more lenient grading with students responses. After reviewing and paging through multiple students' worksheets before grading I noticed either an ambiguity to response or a correct response that was more all encompassing. For example, for question ten the two specific correct answers were "Foreign policy and the Cold War." However I also accepted responses along the lines of "Soviet Union, fear of the spread of communism, issues abroad" etc. I made exceptions to the questions that are highlighted light yellow because students had such varying responses or altogether missed the specific phrasing I was looking for. Therefore, instead of marking incorrect for practically all students I gave leniency to the questions that are highlighted yellow. 

Answer Key

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Student Sample