Many homeschool parents feel uncomfortable giving their homeschool students grades or marks on their worksheets and test papers. They don’t want the child to feel pressured or disappointed. However grading is required for the homeschool student so that they can be shown to have met the state led requirements of understanding and being proficient in certain skills. It’s part of meeting the homeschool laws of the state. Also some students can take the grades as a motivating factor to do even better, and in this case the letter grade is easier on them than the actual marks obtained in a paper.
Setting the Scale for the Letter Grade
Grading your homeschool student’s work is important for the information to be accurately recorded in their student transcripts. You may give encouraging words like “well done” or “excellent” on the sheet itself, when you return it to the homeschool student. However the formal grade would have to be calculated based on the actual performance of the child and will need to be worked out based on a scale. Usually there is a corresponding percentage to the letter grade which may be similar to this scale.
A = 90-100%, B = 80-89%, C = 70-79%, D = 60-69%, E = 50-59% and F = less than 50%
For instance if the paper you have given your homeschool student had ten questions, your first letter grade of A would be given if the child got 9 or all 10 questions right. If the child only got six out of the ten questions correct, the letter grade would then be D.
Keep a Standard Scale
Instead of working out a different percentage to letter grade scale for each paper and subject, follow a standard scale for everything. This will help you save time and be more organised even when you are setting the question papers for the homeschool students. It also helps to keep things uniform when you want to calculate the grade point average or GPA for the homeschool student in each subject. These are then recorded in the student’s transcripts, enabling anyone to take a look and figure out just how well the student is performing in the year.
