To Grade or Not to Grade

This year, Sarah got a progress report, her first one. I started keeping track of her stuff fairly recently, but now the whole grades thing has really taken off. I've been keeping track of certain things for a long time: her Book Adventure points last year, her Math Magician scores practically since we started. But for the other stuff, I didn't assign grade values.

In some ways, homeschooling can be anti-grades. True understanding of the work is more important than a grade, right? Well, yeah, of course. That's true in any situation. But grading has had a few effects.

1. It's made me more accountable. I'm keeping better track of what we're doing, and I'm forcing myself to come up with concrete, objective, "grade-able" assignments.
   
2. Sarah seems more invested in how she's doing. Time will tell if that continues.
3. It's giving me a new place to go crazy with Excel. Seriously, I love setting up the formulas and formats so that all I have to do is plug in the numbers, and I get instant results.
   

I don't think every family needs to use grades, be they letter or number. In fact, they're kind of a crutch for me. Like the schedule I use that some of my homeschool friends really admire. Ha--I use that because I have to. If I didn't, nothing would get done.

As for Chicago, I love Chicago. Jeff suggested it early on, and I jumped on it. Then he reminded me that it will be cold there in late December/early January; I hate the cold. That makes Chicago a lot less appealing. It's still a possibility, but a slim one.