Science Projects By Grade

Grades can be motivators or they can be curses. Imagine, for a moment, that you are graded on your job the way your child is graded in school. Your boss gives you a daily grade on job performance - perhaps a 68 on your last memo and a 76 on your project presentation. Most employees dread even an annual evaluation by their supervisors; how would we react to this daily roller coaster, wondering how the boss will grade each move or decision?

As adults, we do not have to react to daily criticism from these pigeon-holing measures. Instead, we can be proactive as we ask ourselves, "where do I go from here?" and attempt to self-evaluate and continue our development.

For our children, fear of being in the wrong pigeonhole many times devastate all possibility of seeing grades for what they are - instruments that pinpoint challenges and direct energy.

If we want our children to become proactive, we must help them see grades not as the end of learning but as the beginning. This turns the curse into a motivator.

Talk to your daughter and clearly define what a grade is - a measure of what a student is able to give back in a teacher-determined format over which the student has no control. To do well on a test, and student must learn the material and must be able to give back the information in the accepted format, regardless of the strategy the teacher uses (true or false, multiple choice, essay or class participation).

A lower-than-expected grade - for example, grade science projects can be the result of not knowing the material tested, not being test-savvy, or a combination of both. Also, remember that the goal is not just for your child to do well in school, but to do well in life. The process of learning might be more important than what is being learned.

For example, a student who successfully completes grade science projects has learned the process of planning for a long-term project, creating a hypothesis, testing it, and analyzing the results. This process will help a child succeed in life. Understanding the subject matter of a fourth-grade science project will only ensure success in school.

Used proactively, grades are directives for the future rather than regrets of the past. But in order to help your child chart the future, you must review together all tests, quizzes, homework and other graded papers. A test that goes unanalyzed is a worthless effort.

When your child brings home graded papers, have her assess all the points made on the test. Then for each point that was lost, have your child determine if it was a learning loss or a test-savvy loss, and then develop strategies to avoid similar mistakes in the future. As patterns emerge, set up a teacher conference before your child's long-term learning begins to suffer. In other words, rather than having a parent conference reactively, have one proactively as soon as you can identify trends that need to be turned around.

Teachers can help parents assume this proactive stance by making sure that all graded materials are returned to students and parents. There is no way to improve unless parents and students know where to aim.