American School Macedonia uses a grading system based on points in order to calculate final grades in any class. This system is used because a point based system is more precise and accurate. This system is to be used uniformly by all teachers in elementary and in high school. In order for this system to work, it is a school policy for each student to be graded at least 1 time per week, depending on the allocated number of lessons students have per subject. For example, if students have English or Mathematics 5 times a week, they must be graded at least once during that week. If the allocated number of lessons for a particular subject is two per week, students will be graded every second week.
Grades are assigned based on the following percentages achieved:
90%-100%=A, 80%-89%=B, 70%-79%=C, 60%-69%=D, less than 60%=Fail.
To assess the students, teachers are asked to use a variety of assessment tasks (formative/summative) and report on student achievement in SchoolTool and Google Classroom throughout the year. More formative assessments will be used to formulate the grade.
Formative assessment measures how a student is learning during a course of study, whereas summative assessment is designed to measure “how much” a student has learned after a unit has reached its completion.
Common types of formative assessments include homework/school work assignments, in-class projects, creative extension projects, summaries, presentations, group activities, hands-on activities, student self-assessment, short low-stake quizzes, one question quizzes, open ended questions, etc.
Common types of summative assessments include unit tests, final essays, individual research projects, final writing assignments, end-of-class projects, etc.