Heber Springs Elementary
Grading and Assessment During AMI:
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is allowing districts across the state to make decisions about assigning grades over the next several weeks of Alternate Methods of Instruction. One of the allowable options for districts is using methods for students to “demonstrate content mastery,” which means regularly and informally checking for students’ understanding of the most essential learning topics. During our weeks of AMI, our teachers will be using such formative assessment strategies and providing students with individual feedback on their work, but students will not be given a formal letter grade unless a student or parent requests to have AMI work formally graded in order to bring up the overall semester grade.
Typically, all students in 1st grade - 5th grade receive some sort of numerical/letter grade on their report cards. During the upcoming weeks of AMI, grades will not be assigned unless a student or parent requests to have AMI work formally graded in order to bring up the overall semester grade, which would be the average of 3rd and 4th nine weeks. Otherwise, the 3rd nine weeks grade will carry over to the semester grade for each student. Districts are still required to provide a total of four report cards per year. Therefore, for report cards that typically provide a percentage/letter grade (A-F), the 3rd nine weeks grade will also be the 4th nine weeks grade. Please note, just because “grades” are not assigned, teachers will still be assessing student work and providing feedback for our students to continue the learning process.