Giving Grades

You should have a pretty good idea about how to assess children from the sections on Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening and Assessment for Learning. However, giving grades and justifying them to parents is never easy.
Think about the following:

• How are your grades related to the curricular aims (ca. A2 by the end of 6th)? Do you have any standardized measures so you have a baseline to know where a learner is in relation to this? If you know a child is at a high A2 in the fifth grade because you administered the Oxford Young Learners Placement test, does that mean they get a "6" on the report card?
• How are you communicating aims? Are they in terms of "can do" or in terms of "know"?
• What is your grading policy? Do you use a combination of projects, observations, little quizzes? If you use end of unit tests, how do you measure progress? How do you record and weigh data from these?
• Are points necessary? If you use them, do you know exactly what they stand for?
• What evidence are you gathering that you can show parents and discuss with your learners?
• Do you allow re-takes?
• Do you know different algorithms for grades (Power Law, weighted average, most recent, etc.....) beyond the mean and your "gut feeling"? 

Below you will find some support to help you with this but general models of standards-based grading can be of further use. Following writings by Tom Schimmer (e.g. Standards-Based Learning in Action: Moving from Theory to Practice. Solution Tree) can be useful.

VSG §31 Beurteilung während des Unterrichts wird gemäss kantonalem Lehrplan stets aufbauend und motivierend vorgenommen. Schülerinnen und Schüler sollen durch die Beurteilung beim Lernen unterstützt und gefördert werden. Der Gesetzgeber macht bewusst keine Aussagen darüber, in welcher Form die Beurteilung im Unterricht geschehen soll, mündlich, schriftlich, in Form von Noten usw.
[could not resolve link target: il_0_dfile_1667758]

Assessment during lessons is always carried out in a constructive and motivating manner in accordance with the cantonal curriculum. Pupils should be supported and encouraged in their learning through assessment. The legislator deliberately makes no statements about the form in which assessment should take place in lessons, orally, in writing, in the form of grades, etc. 

Experiment: Standards based grading?

When you assign grades, you have to collect data on learners or gather evidence (google the term evidence-based instruction if you're interested). There are many tools that can help you set up systems to record data on learners, such as Jumprope or Kiddom.

In the screenshot below, you see the standards or aims the teacher had selected to work on for a specific amount of time for one child (a good performer). The bars you see are the average of about 15 different learning activities per standard/aim but the algorithm can also be changed to see the learning curve (did learners perform better towards the end of the time period for that standard/aim?). Some learning activities that were recorded in this class were:

In the example below, you see that the child did relatively controlled activities (speaking, reciting something I understand (in this case jokes and poems)) well and open ones, e.g. Writing about my every day life (Content, Accuracy and Range were assessed) not so well. What would you then do? If this were all the data you collected for a report card (4 being a "6" then what would you give this child in each skill? This is the average of scores, so what would it look like if a "4" below were actually a "5" for minimal standards and OTHER THINGS (such as class work or specific presentations) moved the recorded score below up or down?

In the example below, you see the same system for another term and another learner (a poor performer). Ask yourself the same questions as above.

To come to the end of term grade, you need to flatten the levels to the four skills, but with these systems and models, you have a better way of analyzing the needs of your class and your learners in order to plan future instruction. There are many other online gradebooks (you can find a list here) that have the same functionality.