The Oral Participation Evaluation Spreadsheet
Download the Oral Participation Evaluation Spreadsheet by clicking HERE.
Complicated as this spreadsheet may appear, it is actually very simple to use. After entering some simple initial data at the beginning of the school year, you only need to do two elementary tasks on a daily basis and your students’ oral participation grade will appear automatically.
When the school year begins, add the information requested by the comment in cells A6, A7 and A8, and then add your students’ names in column B, replacing “Student no. 1” with the actual name of your first student. By the way, you will find daily recordkeeping all the faster and easier to do if you place students in this list in the same order in which they are seated in your “Seating Chart Grid”, since that is where you will be recording their daily oral participation points.
Now, on a daily basis, or as often as you care to update your records, you only have to enter each day’s results and record the portions of a class discussion for which any students were absent. For example, after the first class discussion, in cell O5, record the day’s date, and then below it type in the number of oral participation points each student received. Remember to record your points as well in the black cell at the bottom of the column, if you were obliged to respond to your own questions. This is a very important factor in maintaining lively, sustained speech from your students. If they understand that the more you have to answer for them, the more negative is the impact on all of their oral participation grades (and the spreadsheet’s formulae are set up so that indeed will happen), they will make every effort to respond to all of your questions and instructions.
Secondly, having recorded your students’ daily participation points, you merely need to give students credit for their absences, so that being absent from school does not unfairly impact their score. Simply look at the fraction of a class devoted to class discussion at the bottom of each day’s column (cell O46 for the first day, for example) and then add that fraction to any previous absence totals in column G. Thus, if a student has already missed 1.3 class discussions, and is absent for conversation corresponding to .4 of a class period, you will change his or her total in column G to 1.7.
The portion of a class period devoted to class discussion is expressed in a decimal because it is rare that you will actually spend 100% of a class period in conversation. For that reason, using 70 comments as the standard for a typical 50-minute class period, cumulating your students’ comments during a class period will indicate approximately the fraction of the period devoted to discussion. Do not be concerned by the actual length of your class period, as it is of no consequence as far as the sheet’s formulae are concerned.
In sum, on a daily basis, all you need to do is to:
1. place the date at the top of the column in row 6 and record the total of student and teacher remarks
2. add the portion of a class discussion missed by absent students in column G.