Dear Abby, What do I tell my teacher if I honestly think I deserve a better grade on an assignment? I really worked hard on it. Dear Submitter, This is tough. I often see graded work of myself or my friends where the quality simply does not match the score, but what is there to do about it? Here are some tips from Abby: 1. This is mostly dependent on the teacher and class. For something very subjective, like humanities, it’s hard to argue that their opinion on your style was incorrect. However, for an IS or Science project, completed to the requirements with correct information, it will be hard for them to argue with you that you deserved points off. 2. I would start by asking a few friends, and ask them to be honest – do they think you deserved more points? This is a good starting point, so you know that your feelings aren’t getting in the way of your reasoning. 3.Don’t go the day that you get your rubric back. Go fairly soon after your grade is returned; but take a day or two to let your anger subside and create a clear, well-thought argument for why you deserve more points. 4. Go during office hours, interrupting class to argue for a grade will just make them angry. 5. If you do all these things and they still say no, then don’t fight more after that. Most teachers will listen to why you think something was scored incorrectly, but if you bother them about it more than once, you’re just getting on their bad side, which you really don’t want. I hope that you can get your assignment regarded if you do these things, but it won’t always happen. In the future, there are a few things you can do to get more points in the first place – all ICSers should know to do these on big projects/assignments: 1. Follow the format! It’s easy points, and makes your assignment look better, so they start reading and grading with a good impression. This might seem silly, but on peer edits, over half the projects I see could miss a few easy points just by not following format. 2. Neat handwriting/typing are worth a few points (and nice decoration if that applies). This goes with the format; it’s just another thing that gives teachers a good impression before they begin to grade. Maybe they aren’t supposed to grade up for design, but they always will, I guarantee it. 3. Peer edits! Before you turn something in, have one or two people look over your final. It takes less than 20 minutes, and they might catch an important error that gets you extra points. I hope you get your grade changed, and I hope things go better for you next time. Good luck! From, Abby
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 21:10:17 +0000
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