The conference.

(...the saga continues)

I shouldn't have been so hopeful. The conference didn't go well. And I cried.

Basically, she fully believed that Aidan deserved a D, from the simple fact that he didn't do well on his oral presentation. Completely despite the fact that his visual presentation was "excellent." Unreasonable? I think so.

She insisted that the whole point of the project was the presentation, which wasn't at all clear based simply on the criteria in the rubric. Only the last criteria mentions the oral presentation, so there was no way to know how heavily it would be weighted. She said if we had questions about the rubric, we should have asked. But I didn't know to ask, since the rubric was clear in my mind! Would anyone else have known based on the rubric or the project information sheet that the whole point was the oral presentation?




Apparently, she docked extra points on his rubric on what I assumed to be the criteria for the written component for lack of facts and lack of organization just because he didn't communicate those facts orally from memory (she kept saying he had to look at his slides). And she didn't believe he spent time on rehearsing, even though she admitted the facts were there in the written work, and it was very organized.

Aside from that, I tried to reason with her that the overall score he got on his rubric of a 3 out of 4 is NOT the same as a 75%/D, so the way she applied the rubric was incorrect (thanks to some helpful advice from a teacher friend on the dangers of applying letter grades to 4-point rubrics: http://www.phschool.com/eteach/professional_development/four-point_rubric_score/essay.html, FYI). On a 4-point scale, a 3 indicates an acceptable level of achievement, whereas a 75%/D does not.

But she wouldn't even consider it. I truly wonder if she believes students who got a 3 on every single criteria, including their oral presentation, all deserve a D as well.

Adam got mad and I got all flustered and upset, and didn't get the answers I wanted or expected. She didn't tell me the class average or show me any example of A quality work...but I guess comparing written presentations wouldn't have mattered since she didn't care about them much. I'm now kicking myself that I couldn't go see him and his classmates present to compare for myself.

So I guess that's that. Nothing I can do about it now, except explain to Aidan that I'm proud of his work, and we'll help him practice even harder for his next presentation.

Tough lesson learned, I guess...but we'll move on.

 

It's ok buddy, only 9 more weeks of school until 4th
grade...um, where things will be even harder. Yikes... 


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