This post is my way of flushing out changes to my SBG approach as I prepare my syllabus for the start of fall classes. Your comments will play a vital part in shaping my plan. Thank-you in advance.
Three years ago my math colleagues and I set out on a book study of Marzano's Classroom Assessment & Grading That Work and agreed that we would do the following:
-Stop counting homework for a grade
-Stop entering effort & participation grades
-Allow retakes for quizzes & tests
-Weight our grades as 80% content skills and 20% process standards
-Use a 0-4 scale to indicate mastery.
You'd think that with those agreements we would be more alike than different. Whatever.
My most pressing question involves reporting grades. Let me be clear....I get the idea of skills lists. I understand individualized assessments, quality feedback, tracking progress, and self-reflection. I feel like everyone is saying the same thing. One big happy-go-lucky SBG PLN. But then we all go back to our fun-loving classrooms and hammer out our own grade reporting system! Of course some of us don't have to report grades. I hope to join that crowd soon. Until then, let me finish with my rant.
Here is where I am with my SBG plan for next year. My skills list is a work-in-progress. I have my tracking and self-reflection sheets all planned out in my mind. I have my assessment plan neatly brainstormed on my Blackberry. I am dead-in-the-water when it comes to grades! I cannot...no, I will not continue with a dysfunctional practice of averaging scores one quarter at a time! I do not like having to strategically decide when to cut-off grading for a particular set of skills just because the calendar says we need to start over. I don't like the climate it has created. I'm done with students looking only at the score I give them and nothing else. I have not written a letter or percentage grade on a quiz or test in over three years. Apparently that doesn't mean much because they still make assumptions about their ability when they see a score from 0 to 4.
Here is what I am wondering:
- Do I keep my gradebook open all year long (80 skills give-or-take)?
- Should feedback to students include below-approaching-meeting-exceeding standard on skills (no numeric, letter, or percentage grade)?
- Should the number of skills taught to-date increase each quarter (20 first quarter, 40 second, etc.) or should I only worry about a finite number of skills each quarter?
- Should final grades be based on the number of skills students have mastered (ie. 18-20 for an A, 15-17 for a B, etc.) or some other method?
- Is it in my best interests to go back to assigning scores for each skill?
Fortunately my Summer Clubhouse session just ended and I can turn my focus to putting the finishing touches on my plan for when classes start on September 8th. I could use your help...
Not ranty. Love the thoughts. The quarter thing bugs me too. Like everyone else, I'm sure we fit our ideal system into our actual restraints as best we can. I'll come back to this tomorrow but wanted to leave some quick thoughts, really, more questions than answers here.
ReplyDeleteQuestions 1 and 3 are tied together right? If you do one, you do the other. I keep it open all year. So for me, 4 topics first trimester, 9 the next, and 12 by the end. Philosophically:If it's important enough to teach/assess, it's important enough to know the whole year. Practically: Their high stakes test is at the end of the year.
This will drastically cut coverage though bc you'll need to keep spiraling back. You may find 80 skills is just too many to do the whole year.
2. I'm not sure I quite get this question. Are you asking if feedback should reference how they are doing compared to the standard you've set or if you should replace a numeric score with a descriptive score?
4. Number of skills: I used this example before with Elissa, but this is sort of like using Mode to as your central tendency measure. If you're strategic about it, you really don't need to learn certain things. So I guess for your class, you need to decide if it's ok for students to not even attempt certain things. Yes, this happens in all scoring systems, but it's more explicit perhaps. I used an Art example. You are given 20 skills to learn. You have to learn 14. Perhaps the other 6 you don't choose are irrelevant for your style.
Personally, I would have trouble with this in math, mainly because students would choose "what's hard" to skip instead of "what's not needed." A compromise would be taking a block of skills that are the Power Skills and making those mandatory. Then having them select out certain skills to master on their own, like built in time Friday or something.
So these 50 skills you've got to learn, that's a C in the class. Choose 20 of the remaining 30 for an A, 10 for a B.
Last thing for now: I admit to only a cursory skimming of Joe Bower's blog but I'm pretty sure he still gives grades in the end. Jason Bedell does pass/no pass I think. In the end, it's all based around some standard, at least I hope. Personally, I think grades (in some form and greatly minimized) can be a useful indicator for progress along a continuum and don't fall into the all-grades-are-evil club. Blogger kicks me out if the comment is too long. I'll stop now. Good questions though.
"Do I keep my gradebook open all year long (80 skills give-or-take)?"
ReplyDeleteWill your school/admin allow you to do this? If so, go for it!
"Should feedback to students include below-approaching-meeting-exceeding standard on skills (no numeric, letter, or percentage grade)?"
From my experience, the more written/oral feedback you can give before assigning a number, the better. It helps the presumed culture shift taking place in your classrooms - we're more interested in learning than we are points.
"Should the number of skills taught to-date increase each quarter (20 first quarter, 40 second, etc.) or should I only worry about a finite number of skills each quarter?"
I went with the flow of the students...particularly if you can keep your grade book open all year, does it matter how the skills are broken down each quarter/semester?
"# Should final grades be based on the number of skills students have mastered (ie. 18-20 for an A, 15-17 for a B, etc.) or some other method?"
I like basing a grade on # of skills mastered or some other piecewise function you come up with rather than averaging skills scores. Most folks I talk to (I was in the same boat) don't have this luxury because our electronic grade books are stuck averaging. Show us what SBG-utopia looks like!
"Is it in my best interests to go back to assigning scores for each skill?"
In my opinion, yes. The more detailed feedback we can give our students (and parents) the more meaningful it will be to them. For example, if I was on a football team, I wouldn't want my coach to say, "you stink - that's why you don't get any playing time." Instead, I'd hope he would say, "you really need to spend time lifting weights, particularly your upper body. Oh, and while you're at it, your 40 yard dash speed could use some help, too. If you really want to get some playing time, you should also do a lot more of XYX drills."
You've got a lot going for you in this imagined makeover. Full speed ahead!
I'm going to be starting SBG this fall, and I'm a little curious (and nervous) about your statement that "my students took the 'scores' I assigned as judgement against them and figured out how to play the system instead." and "It was just as impossible to fail as it was to average an A." What do these two statements mean?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback!
ReplyDelete@Jason I am concerned about cycling through skills over the course of the year, although I should hit a point where I won't need to assess certain skills (hopefully). I like the idea of Power Skills...will chew on that one.
As I am writing this I am getting ready to listen to Joe Bower at #rscon10 talk about "Abollishing & Replacing Grading" My vision of going gradeless is to NOT keep a running grade throughout the year. I understand that I may have to give some form of grade each quarter, but my initial thought was to set the "grading" criteria to define final grades only.
@Matt I plan to keep a paper gradebook this year in addition to our online version. It is something we've (our math dept) been asking for 3 years now. Since our building re-opens today (final stage of a remodel), I plan to chat w/admin about my plan. I'm thinking of a modified system (see Jason's comments) for # of skills.
@tothemathlimit I set my grading bar (1.0 - 1.99 = D & 3.5+ = A) typical to what was recommended by Marzano. It is easy for students to pass in this system...afterall, they rarely received anything less than a 0.5 if they tried on an assessment. Therefore if they could string together a few 2+, it would float them through the quarter. On the other end of the spectrum a 3.5 is the minimum, well other than perfect 4.0's there is no other score to bouy a couple of rough scores during a quarter. I found that averaging resulted in very few F's & A's each quarter. Very frustrating! I'm hoping this plan will add clarity.
I like that you bring up the reality that once we are comfortably in our own classrooms, we gravitate towards the comfortable rather than the collaborative.
ReplyDeleteI have two questions based on your previous years' experience:
What have been the thoughts and responses from parents?
What have been the thoughts and responses from students?
I ask these questions because it really does not matter what WE think about SBG and abolishing grades, it only matters what the parents and students think.
Thanks for the comments Steve. As far as comments by parents, they center more around make-up work and extra credit (I don't give EC) but they do love the retake policy..."Show me that you've mastered the content and I'll change your score...no penalty!" As for students, they have a hard time grasping the different between a 2.5 and 3.0 because they expect each problem to have a specific point value. I write my assessments with three levels of questions for each standard and it makes assigning point values difficult. Instead, if a student can successfully answer all level 1 questions they get a score of 2.0, level 2 results in a 3.0, and level 3 questions results in a 4.0. After that it become professional judgement with regard to errors & simple luck.
ReplyDelete