Grades, grades, do we have to give grades? Are homeschool grades necessary? What are we supposed to grade? How do we grade anyway? These are frequent questions I hear discussed among homeschooling families and the answer is really up to you!
Do you have to give grades in homeschooling?
In the elementary and middle school years, giving grades to your student is up to your discretion as the teacher. In other words, you don’t have to give grades unless you find it helpful. It might be useful to stop and consider the point of grades and how they are harmful or beneficial to the student and teacher.
What’s the point of grades?
Generally, grades are a way for teachers to monitor a student’s mastery of a topic and provide feedback to the student as well as the child’s parent at home. In a homeschool environment where the parent works so closely with the child and you are the child’s teacher, it is highly likely that you will already know without grades exactly where your child is excelling and struggling. The point of giving grades in homeschooling, then, is purely to provide feedback to the student.
Why it’s a good idea to give grades
Grades can be helpful in some subject areas! Many parents grade math work, spelling tests, and other comprehension type tests because it provides concrete feedback to the student. Some curricula come with pre-made assessments and quizzes as part of the package.
Young children are generally oblivious to grades and thrive more on verbal feedback, praise, and reteaching when necessary. Small children generally work to please their parents and because they enjoy learning. Grades are superfluous! As kids grow, a gentle, “No, that’s not right. Here, let’s try again,” may be all that is necessary to provide feedback.
However, as a child advances, providing some grades can provide feedback for a child to see where they are successful and where they can work harder. By high school, you will want to keep track of official grades for your child’s high school transcript. So, it’s best if you can begin to give students practice with grades in the middle school years before those grades begin to count.
Plus, there are some other great reasons why you may want to give grades in your homeschool:
- You may need grades to satisfy state requirements if you homeschool under an umbrella school
- Grades can earn perks like freebies from some restaurants if your child show’s their report card (Yes! You can issue them a report card!)
- High school students may get a break on insurance for high grades
Not to mention, some kids are highly motivated by getting grades. Especially if your child is transitioning from a school environment where they are accustomed to getting grades, he or she may desire a letter grade for motivation!
Give grades to provide feedback
Keep in mind that the primary purpose of giving grades in a homeschool setting is to provide feedback to the student.
That being said, in our home I do not give any grades for primary children. At that age, a smile, a hug, a happy face on a paper, or a simple word of praise is enough to communicate a job well done.
Beginning around 2nd or 3rd grade, here’s what I begin to grade:
- spelling tests
- math tests
- other occasional tests
However, I don’t keep a semester average or give a quarterly nor yearly report card. The grades are simply for immediate feedback that day to help the child understand how they are progressing. I have never known a homeschool family that issues report cards, but I am sure that there are some who do. You certainly could! It is all up to you and the laws in your state!
The value of immediate feedback in math especially cannot be underestimated! I learned that lesson in a painful way when I got behind on grading my student’s daily math work. Soon, their grades took a downward spiral – and it was my fault! We switched to using Nicole the Math Lady paired with Saxon math, an online lesson delivery and program that provides immediate feedback problem by problem so students know exactly what they are getting right and where they are struggling. With the immediate feedback, their grades began to go back up!
>>>READ: An Honest Review of Nicole the Math Lady
What I don’t grade in our homeschool
Some homeschool subjects are more subjective and don’t necessarily need grades. In our homeschool, I don’t generally give grades in the following subjects:
- Handwriting – I check for daily completion and spot check quality to see if reteaching is necessary
- Reading – much of our learning occurs through dialogue and rich discussion. No grades necessary.
- Language Arts – I check for completion and we may check grammar, but do not assign grades. Even when my kids write papers, we simply edit and improve the paper together, but I do not assign a grade.
- History – similar to reading, we engage in rich dialogue, discuss comprehension, and may complete projects, but I do not assign grades.
- Science – we like science to be exploration-based, discovering new concepts instead of the kids worrying about a grade.
While not a grade, I do also use an assessment called a Running Record to determine a child’s reading level in elementary school. This assessment, however, is for my benefit to assess reading progress. It doesn’t really provide any feedback to the child, but gives mom some awesome feedback about whether a child is reading on grade level!
>>>READ: STOP! Do You know your kid’s reading level?
What to grade
If you do decide to give grades, there are many things you could possibly include in your grading process:
- Quizzes
- Tests
- Daily work
- Projects
- Reports
- Writing Assignments
- Completion Grade
- Effort Grade
- Attitude Grade
What kinds of grades should I give?
There are also multiple ways you can give grades to your child!
- Percentage grades
- Letter grades A, B, C, D, F
- Pass/fail (This one may not work so well for homeschool as we just re-do any assignments that earned a “fail”
- Needs improvement/ Satisfactory/ Excellent
- Rubrics
- Mastery or Completion (receive a completion score of A once all assignments are submitted)
- Sliding scale (grading on a curve)
>>>READ: 100 Must-Read Classic Books for Kids – The Ultimate List of Children’s Literature
How do you give grades in homeschooling?
There are many different ways a teacher can calculate a student’s grades. As the homeschool teacher, you can design your grades any way you would like.
The simplest way to give grades is to add together all a student’s assignments, quizzes, grades, etc. then divide to find the average.
You can also give grades on a weighted scale. Remember in college when your final exam accounted for 50% of your class grade? That’s a weighted scale. For example, you might weigh test grades more heavily and daily work more lightly.
When my daughter was taking Algebra in high school, we used Nicole the Math Lady for her instruction and for calculating her scores, both daily work and test scores. We then recorded those scores and calculated her final grade like this:
Tests 50%
- 100 points per test
- Missed problems may be reworked for ½ credit
Homework 50% (Completion)
25 points per completed lesson (100 points for week)
- Attempt ALL problems.
- Grade problems
- Reattempt missed problems
Why grades matter
Do grades really matter after all? They can! A grade is an indicator of how a student is meeting a standard and how far above or below from the standard they are working.
Grades make sense in a classroom and school environment because there are many students to compare. While a classroom teacher is generally very well aware of the progress and abilities of her students, the child’s parents understandably need some sort of system to understand their child’s progress.
However, in a homeschool environment when a parent is working intimately with a child and already fully understands where a child is excelling or struggling, grades may be more of a nuisance and therefore less practical in nature, especially when a child is young.
Ultimately, grades are a way for you as the homeschool teacher to provide feedback to your student so they can improve mastery of the subject. So, if giving a grade helps your kid to do better and master the subject then by all means give a grade!
Whether you choose to give grades or not in your homeschool is up to you!