Sept 30, 2011 Parent Response, student response

September 30, 2011

Parent Response

Parent teacher conferences concluded last night and I have to say I was astounded as the positive parental response to my system.  Overall, I had lower numbers of parents this year so my experience was by no means a major sell but of the parents that came, the response was overwhelmingly positive about my grading system.  When I began to explain it, the parents always seemed to understand fairly quickly and several commented that it was very user friendly and transparent.  As I would get to pieces like students having to raise their grade by learning more, I got responses such as “I completely agree” or “that’s great” or “that’s how it should be”.  When we discussed homework not being graded because it was part of the learning process, again I got comments such as “where it should be” and “great!”.  Parents of brighter students really liked the fact that their children weren’t expected to do 15 worksheets when they got the concept immediately and parents of students who struggled loved the idea that tests weren’t a “one and done” sort of deal but that the option did exist for students to improve themselves.  As I said, the few parents I had by no means demonstrated a majority opinion but I was so incredibly pleased by the amount of positive responses.  I was worried.  I knew the research and logic behind SBG is sound, but it is something different.  People, as a whole, do not respond well to change.  This seems to be an exception to the rule though.

Student Responses

A few more students every day make the link between their homework grades and their tests scores.  Many students still struggle with the idea of homework not being worth points but still being worth doing.  Many of them rush right into the retake without pausing to think about why they received the score they did or what they could do to improve it.  It is only September so I will still hold out hope that more will understand.  They get the basic idea but learning for learning’s sake is still beyond their reach.  Sometimes it is difficult to relate chemistry to teenage life experiences. 

How this has changed my classroom

Looking back at previous year’s material, I notice that this system is slowing me down.  For the time being, I do not see this as a bad thing.  Mastery has always been about depth instead of breadth of knowledge.  I still think we will get through all of the material necessary by the end of the year.  In fact, I think the students will remember what they have learned because they actually learned it, not just memorizing for a test.  This process has also helped me as a teacher better track my own focuses and assessments of concepts.  It becomes painfully evident when you put all your time into one concept  and pass briefly over another.  It has also made me more aware of the level of mastery within my classroom.  The mastery system allows everyone time for mastery but also allows me the freedom to move on.  We will have to see how many students improve these early scores later in the year.  I will have to remember to bring it up from time to time. 

I will say that I do feel like I am grading more.  A friend in Rockwood, who has also implemented some version of standards based grading, says their teachers are also complaining about the massive amounts of grading that seem to come with this system.  I feel like I am grading more, but it is taking the same amount of time.  Since I don't have to tally points, the whole process moves much faster.  I feel, though, that I may attempt to differentiate between samplings.  Not every assignment that is given needs a grade and perhaps some assignments need to be designated as just practice, nothing more.  They do not need to be turned in or graded.  Then, other assessments will be samplings, to determine student understanding at a particular point.  This would lessen the grading load somewhat.  I will try to do this more in the coming weeks.  Overall, I am still tickled pink over the whole thing.  I feel like the students are learning, they’re tracking their progress and tracking their improvements! 

Summary and thoughts

I thought it might be helpful for me to quickly summarize what I am doing in my classroom, both for the reader’s benefit as well as for my own.

A typical day in my classroom begins with the students coming in to check their folders for graded papers to update their checklists.  Objectives and standards to be covered are listed on the board along with a bellringer assignment, activities for the day and homework.  Students immediately begin work on the bellringer, which usually serves as a review of the material studied the previous class period.  From this point, my classroom is like any other classroom.  Some days are purely practice of the concepts already learned, some are lab application activities, some are cooperative learning activities and some include new material to be mastered.  I try to vary activities as much as possible so students aren’t always sitting in their desks doing seatwork.  I also am very fond of giving “pop quizzes” that require students to complete requested tasks without the help of partners or their notes.  The only real difference in my classroom is the grading and reporting system.  Students have all their grades recorded in their folders and thus should always know where they stand in the course.  Homework proves progress but does not count towards the term grade.  Only tests and assessments count towards the semester grade.  Homework is inherently unreliable as an assessment piece because the work occurs outside of my supervision.  I do not know what distractions exist, how much help the student received or if the student simply copied the answers from another student.  This leads me to my love of pop quizzes.  The students are trained in an almost Pavlovian response to fear quizzes and tests.  I hope that by repeatedly forcing students to perform without the safety blanket of their notes, it will reduce their conditioning to fear tests.  The “pop quizzes”, while still formative in nature”, provide me with valuable information about the true ability of students.  Almost always, the quiz scores are lower than the performance seen on the homework assignments.  However, the difference is rarely drastic. 

My reporting system has taken some tweaking as the semester has progressed.  I created a list of standards, broken into smaller substandards, for the entire course.  In general, we progress from one standard to another.  There are a few standards where we will only cover a piece of a standard before moving on, returning at a later date to cover further concepts.  Originally, I was writing down assignments as I assigned them but I discovered that it made it very difficult to see any pattern in a student’s ability on a particular substandard.  Thus I reorganized my grade book by substandards.  Each overarching standard has its own two page spread with separated sections for each substandard and its assessment grade.  I am concerned that I will have more grades than I do space.  I am using a binder grade book that allows me to add and take out pages as I need and I highly recommend it to anyone who attempts any similar system.    Term grades have their own page where I copy over the summative grades to a singular page that contains only summative grades.  Copying them over to their own page facilitates the ease of calculating term grades.  Term grades to change over time as students complete retakes.  Since I have an entire page for them, I can recalculate the term grade for each term with all scores, creating a running tally of scores for the semester.  I have decided to make midterms and final exams fixed scores that cannot be corrected.  There has to be a “do or die” point somewhere in the process.  Exams will also be cumulative.

Concerns and possible changes

I think it may be beneficial to let homework by purely practice.  It would not be recorded at all.  Regular quizzes would be given to ascertain a student’s current level of progress.  I feel that I am recording too much data.  I have huge strings of numbers for each student and seem to be spending a ridiculous amount of time grading all of the practice that I assign.  It feels like a Catch 22 level scenario because the more data I have on a student, the better I know where their level of learning is currently.  However, again, the massive amounts of grading are becoming a bit overwhelming.  It does feel like more than last year but I think it is a testament to the ease of using the mastery levels that I am able to keep up with this high level of paper the comes through my hands. 

I have not decided yet if I will make all tests cumulative or not.  By making all tests cumulative, students are forced to retain knowledge for longer but I fear the tests will become longer and longer, not allowing enough space for assessments of the current standard.  It also reduces the amount of time that must be spent on reviewing en masse before exams because students have been focusing on the current standard.  Cumulative assessments would also mean more scores for me to keep track of in the paper grade book.  Again, I feel like I have an extraordinary amount of data on each student.  Cumulative assessments would mean that standard 1 is assessed 11 times, standard 2 is assessed 10 times and so on.  It might be a little much to keep track of in the paper grade book.   

Overall thoughts

I am still extraordinarily pleased with the system.  I am anxious to reach a level of comfort in physics that will allow me to adopt a similar method of assessment and reporting.  Mastery levels are faster than traditional point scores since you do have to tally points to determine a score but simply look at the overall picture to determine the grade.  It is also so much clearer than percents.  The score means something.  It is not a measure of a student’s level of responsibility in being able to turn in homework, nor is it a measure of their memory since both application and DOK 1/2 level questions are asked.  Instead, the score is a direct representation of the knowledge of each student. 

September 22, 2011 Assessments, Grades, Student responses

September 22, 2011

Overall

Well, we have reached the end of term 1 and progress grades are going out this weekend.  Overall, I am still extremely pleased with the entire system.  I feel like student progress is easily quantifiable, track-able, and readily communicable to parents and students alike. 

Tests

Everyone has taken their first round of summative assessments and the results are as one would expect.  Most of the general chemistry grades are C’s and B’s, with the occasional A or D.  I did two separate assessments, one knowledge based (DOK 1 and 2) and one application based (DOK3).  Overall, students did better on the DOK 1 and 2 (basic recall and explanations) assessment than the applied assessment but again, that was expected.  I hope to include more application based activities in the classroom through the year to build those skills.  All students are afforded the opportunity of a retake if their formative assessments support their claim that the test was a poor representation of their knowledge.  I have had a good number of students take advantage of this opportunity as so many claim test anxiety.  It really does seem to be an epidemic.  However, though there are a good number who did improve their scores, it seems most students rushed into the retake after receiving a lower-than-desirable score without reviewing or stopping to ask why they achieved the score they did.  Thus, several saw no improvement on their reassessment. The reassessment, while the same material, was different from the original test.  It would seem that despite multiple homeworks proving their knowledge, some students are still unable to perform on tests.  I think I will need to do more inclass formative assessments to ensure proper data collection.  I also think I will need to be stricter with my requirements for retakes.  Currently, I am more likely to give a student the benefit of the doubt but this first round proves that it seems to waste both their time and mine if I am overly kind. 

Grades

Interestingly enough, the grades for first term are about what I would expect them to be:  honors chemistry has mostly A’s and general chemistry has mostly C’s with a few B’s.  However, I am seeing the stark effect of eliminating the zero from my grading system.  In all the chemistry students I have, all of them have some vague idea of what is going on and thus are entitled to a score of a 2.  An F on the traditional grading scale is meant to indicate a student who has learned nothing or does not have the mental capability/behavioral discipline necessary to succeed in the course.  I have no student who fits that category.  I do have several students who are not putting forth the effort necessary and since the subject does not come easily, they have currently earned the equivalent of a D in my class.  I feel that by eliminating the zero, student grades have become an accurate representation of the learning of the student.  They are almost exactly the grade I would give the student were I to assign grades based on my observations.  I hear the students talking about the grades in terms of the 5 points scale as well.  They seem to understand where they stand in the course so much better. 

Student Response

I seem to be getting a wide variety of student responses to the system.  Last week, I handed out a short survey asking if they understood the system, if they liked it and how it could be improved.  Several students did not like the SGB system simply because it was different, citing that reason specifically.  Most students complained about the fact that homework does not count towards their grade.  This was expected since so many students use homework to pad their grade.  They complain that they are doing so much work for no reward.  Most of them are not seeing the correlation between the homework grades and test grades.  Maybe after another round of summative assessments, they will begin to see the pattern.  I did speak to several of my old students today, from last year.  Their first words in response to my explanation was “that seems fair” and to them, that was the most important part.  They mentioned how they appreciated the fact that a student who excelled was not punished by being forced to do all the homework and a student that needed more practice could get it.  They liked the idea of test retakes, even given the proof stipulation and were very fond of the idea of being allowed to not master a concept on the first go round.  Parent teacher conferences are next week and it will be interesting to see the type of feedback I get from the parents.  I send home a letter this week that explained exactly how I came to the percentage seen on the report card and how a student could improve that grade if he or she wishes.  I am still hopeful and incredibly pleased with the overall effect of the entire system. 

Sept 13 Classroom improvement strategies

Overall

I am so incredibly happy with my standards based system.  I feel like I know what students are weak where.  I feel the students are able to ascertain where they need to focus in order to raise their grade.  I feel my reporting system (the paper version, the online one is beyond my control it seems) is clear and easy for me to use.  This means I can stop focusing on the reporting piece and start looking at how all this makes me a better, more effective teacher. 

Bigger, Better, Faster

Well, maybe that’s not a good title since only one of those is important. . . The goal of every teacher is to be the best teacher he or she can be.  If you feel you’ve reached that, it’s time to retire.  I believe there is always improvement that can be made and always something to be tweaked.  That said, I feel that simply embarking on this journey has done wonderful things for me as an educator.  It brings into sharp focus the amount of practice and feedback I give on the various concepts of a chapter.  It forces me to be honest, both with myself and my students, about how much practice I have really given over a topic.  It is not fair to expect children to master a concept after the first or second try but that means you have to provide a first and second and even third try!  I can’t hide from it or dodge it or soften it.  The numbers are right there in my grade book.  I think we as teachers mean well and do the best we can, but I often think we overestimate the amount of good stuff we do.  We just don’t get there.  You mean to reassess and reteach and redo but sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day.  And that’s alright.  But it does not do to kid ourselves that we are utilizing all this wonderful research when really we are not.  I’m an overachiever when it comes to such things, but as is pointed out regularly, I have no children or husband to take up my time.  So I hope you, dear reader, do benefit from some of my trials and tribulations in the unknown. 

I was just reading about a concept called “spaced repetition”. 

Here’s the except:

  ‘“Spaced repetition” is one example of the kind of evidence-based techniques that researchers have found have a positive impact on learning. Here’s how it works: instead of concentrating the study of information in single blocks, as many homework assignments currently do — reading about, say, the Civil War one evening and Reconstruction the next — learners encounter the same material in briefer sessions spread over a longer period of time. With this approach, students are re-exposed to information about the Civil War and Reconstruction throughout the semester.

It sounds unassuming, but spaced repetition produces impressive results. Eighth-grade history students who relied on a spaced approach to learning had nearly double the retention rate of students who studied the same material in a consolidated unit, reported researchers from the University of California-San Diego in 2007. The reason the method works so well goes back to the brain: when we first acquire memories, they are volatile, subject to change or likely to disappear. Exposing ourselves to information repeatedly over time fixes it more permanently in our minds, by strengthening the representation of the information that is embedded in our neural networks.’

With a big standard like Standard 2 (the atom), I need to make sure I implement this concept.  The article is applying it to homework but it would be applicable to the classroom as well.  With the concepts divided into sub-standards, though you’re coming back to the concept throughout a time frame, it will be easy to map a student’s comprehension and retention of a concept.  It’s another of those ideas we say we do all the time but do we really. . . I’m finding I don’t do a lot of the things I said I do. . . maybe that’s just the newish teacher thing. . . .

Another concept this article mentions is “retrieval practice”, though I’m still not exactly sure how this one works. 

‘ A second learning technique, known as “retrieval practice,” employs a familiar tool — the test — in a new way: not to assess what students know, but to reinforce it. We often conceive of memory as something like a storage tank and a test as a kind of dipstick that measures how much information we’ve put in there. But that’s not actually how the brain works. Every time we pull up a memory, we make it stronger and more lasting, so that testing doesn’t just measure, it changes learning. Simply reading over material to be learned, or even taking notes and making outlines, as many homework assignments require, doesn’t have this effect.

According to one experiment, language learners who employed the retrieval practice strategy to study vocabulary words remembered 80 percent of the words they studied, while learners who used conventional study methods remembered only about a third of them. Students who used retrieval practice to learn science retained about 50 percent more of the material than students who studied in traditional ways, reported researchers from Purdue University earlier this year. Students — and parents — may groan at the prospect of more tests, but the self-quizzing involved in retrieval practice need not provoke any anxiety. It’s simply an effective way to focus less on the input of knowledge (passively reading over textbooks and notes) and more on its output (calling up that same information from one’s own brain).’

This seems similar to the idea of quizzes as a formative assessment that simply marks achievement to this particular point. 

I am very excited about all these new ideas.  I think they will all come together beautifully!  At least I hope so J

Sept 12, 2011 Reassessment and record-keeping

September 12, 2011

Tests

Well, general chemistry completed the first part of the written assessment today.  Tomorrow they will finish the application second part of it.  It’s interesting how many people do well on the homework but bomb the test.  These students don’t strike me as the sort that would copy homework, particularly now when it doesn’t directly affect their grade.  I think so many students psych themselves out.  Test anxiety is no excuse for a poor test score though, sadly enough.  Driver’s license, CPA training, insurance certification, teacher certification, doctorates, etc all require a pencil and paper tests so even the poor test takers must find some way to overcome that hurdle.  I’m hoping that this system will allow them to see their weak points and notice that rarely does a student fail the entire test.  It is usually one section or another that brings the overall grade down.  If they can focus on that weak point, they can bring up the score.  I hope it will be encouraging.  All the aforementioned tests allow retakes, though it may cost time and money, but you are allowed to retake the test after you’ve had a time to study.  Hopefully, eventually, we can move beyond that and help students start identifying these weak spots before the test rolls around.  The scores on my test ranged widely and there are a few students who have grounds to argue a reassessment. 

Another intriguing occurrence worthy of note is student resistance to application type assessments.  Since the second part of the standard 1 assessment requires students to apply their knowledge or to think about the concepts in a more abstract manner, they are not able to simply memorize a chart or vocabulary word to achieve the score they desire.  They actually have to master the material.  I mentioned something about wanting to see how their brains worked and not how well they could play the “school game” and several of them smiled sheepishly.  We have conditioned students to memorize and regurgitate, not to apply and analyze. 

Reassessment

For honors chemistry, there were so few that I was creating reassessments on a request basis.  The two students requesting reassessment each will have very different tests.  I need to come up with reassessments for each section that I can give students so I don’t have to keep making up individual tests.  I am expecting a fair amount of reassessments out of the two general chemistry classes.  Well, I should rephrase that: quite a few students would have a solid argument to request reassessments.  I do not know if they will or not.  Time will tell.

Grading

I reorganized my grade book by sub-standard and the difference is so profound , almost tangible.  It took forever to rewrite all the scores from the semester so far but the effort was more than worth it.  Now I can clearly see the pattern of learning, regression or stagnation for a particular student.  As we being standard 2, I will definitely be chunking off sections of my grade book for each sub-standard to assist with tracking of information mastered.  The binder paper grade book is an enormous asset as I can add page whenever I need!  However, I am still greatly concerned about the online grade book.  Scores of low Cs  can be seen for even the students who scored 3 or higher on the test.  The online system goes by the percent, seeing 3/5 and averaging the score that way.  I have no idea how to fix this other than to override the system at term.  Parents can still determine a child’s grade by averaging standards and comparing it to the chart already given.  In general, a 5 is an A+, a 4 is an A/A-, a 3 is B, 2 is a C and 1 is an F.  The score of a 1 is indicative of a situation where the student didn’t turn something in or has very little or no understanding of the topic at hand.  But that doesn't make the current percentages any easier to deal with, other than to ignore them.  While I’m on the subject of not turning in assignment, lab assessments have become a small issue.  Since the lab reports are often lengthy, it is unreasonable to require this to be done solely during class time.  Thus, it goes home.  However, as is always the chance with assignments being sent home, many of the lab notebooks never returned.  Before today, that was the only summative assessment students had so several had a 0% in the course.  I have since converted all those zeros to 1’s, as a 1 means both “no clue” and insufficient evidence, neither of which is an acceptable reason to have that score.

Overall

I am still greatly concerned about the online grade book.  I am expecting a flurry of parent emails over the next several days.  But, that is a good thing.  Communication with parents is never a bad thing and when so much is changing, it’s even more important.   I am exceedingly pleased with the extraordinary amount of data I have on student understanding and how well the test data correlates with the practice data.  I am hoping this will clarify AFL and SBG in the minds of my students and help them to take control of their learning and success. 

Sept 12, 2011 Focus Days

Focus Days

Yesterday and today were my first attempts at focus days.  Focus days have many names from many important educational researches but in short, they are an opportunity for each student to practice specifically on his or her weakest point.  With the 5-4-3-2-1 grading system, the specific sub-standards and student folders, it was quite plain to students where their weak points lie.  They could look at the scores recorded in their folders and see the pattern, whether increasing or steady, of their understanding of a concept.  I had several students who were quite concerned because they wanted to achieve a higher score on their test than they were seeing in their folder.  I had a variety of worksheets ready for the concepts present in this standard and students worked on their own on whichever sheet met their needs.  It worked beautifully.  It was like something out of a research book.  Students who had mastered a particular sub section were helping students who were struggling.  Students who were struggling used the data in their folders to focus their time wisely and seek help from classmates who had mastered the material.  Students who had mastered the topic could even take it one step further and work a problem set by me to make extra sure they had nailed that particular subsection.  I truly see the students getting excited about improvements.  I see strong students helping struggling students.  I see struggling students feeling empowered that it’s alright for them to try and try again.  It’s exhilarating. 

Sept 8, 2011 Initial responses (student and parent)

Overall

Every day that passes I like this system more and more.  It just feels so much clearer than the percentages and numbers.  The students are starting to get the hang of it too.  It’s been rough over the last couple weeks deprograming the students to look at progress instead of points but I feel it’s getting better.

 

Student Response

Honors has taken their first assessments and they have been returned.  I have one student already requesting a retake and his/her formative grades support that decision.  I had several students also comment that they like the system now.  It all make more sense.  The grades are clearer to them.  They actually mean something.  Gen chem seems to be getting used to this idea of practice too.  They’ve stopped asking about points and due dates and instead are focusing on what they know and what they need to improve.  The incentive of being able to work on other homework once they prove mastery works will with this group.  There are always a few who refuse to work but I do not think it would be any better in the points based system.  They don’t do their homework now and wouldn’t do their homework in points either.  But, this system allows for a quick turn around.  There’s no worrying about points to make up or past zeros dragging you down.  In this mastery based system, it’s all about the learning.  It’s all about mastery!  And the students seem to be responding well to it.  Gen chem has their first test next week. . . we’ll see how it goes!

Parents

Communication with parents is still my greatest concern.  The students are with me every day and here me say and say again how this system works, how to deter mine their grade and how it will all fit into SIS.  Despite the letter I sent home, the parents I talked to on Meet the Teacher night and the personal emails, I feel like there is still a lot of confusion about this system.  It takes away the ability to just look at a percent and determine how a student is doing.  You actually have to open the class and look at the pattern of the scores.  Since our online grade book looks at everything as percentages (4/5), the percentages that are present are wrong.  I will have to override them at term.  Again, I sent home the scale that I will use and it's avaliable on my website as well.  However, that is a huge problem and I know that.  I respect and even encourage the parents who use grades as a means of reward or concern.  But the original percentages used in the past meant nothing.  It was a conglomeration of every topic and behavior since day 1 and does not reflect student learning at all.  A student could do all their homework, do the extra credit and complete test corrections to get an A in the class regardless of whether the student learned anything or not. With this system, I feel like grades are clear: here is the standard and here is where you are.  I hope it will all become clearer as the semester progresses. 

After school note:  I had a student stay after school because he looked at the pattern that was emerging from his homework in his folder and said “Ms V, it doesn’t take a genius to see that 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 don’t get a 5 on that test!”  And I was over the moon.  He looked at the pattern and saw that he wasn’t progressing and needed a little extra help/confidence.  I think it is much easier for students to see their progress with the streamlined 5-4-3-2-1 system.  Another student stayed after school for a similar reason, stating that her homework grades weren’t getting any better.  Overall, they seem to be responding really well to the idea of progress as opposed to do or die one time grades. 

Sept 2, 2011 Grading, first thoughts

Overall

I am still pleased with this sytem. The summative tests taken today in honors chemistry match up well with the data gathered so far from formative assessments.  In one case, a student didn’t do as well as the formative assessment suggested he/she should and thus has a case to argue for a retake of that section.  As a mastery-based system, I feel compelled to allow retests, particularly if the formatives support that decision.  I think I will do the retake in sections according to the substandards instead of having the student retake the entire test.  The test was divided that way to begin with.  I still need to come up with a better way to arrange my grade book.  It is difficult to track a student’s progress on a particular piece of a standard when it is all jumbled together by date.  Even in the online grade book, while it is chunked by standard, the sub-standards are all mixed together.  In my paper grade book, I think I will mark off sections for each sub-standard and if I don’t use all column, I will mark them out later.  I need to organize based on sub-standards as well as standards.  It's all about the patterns.  

Tests

Honors chemistry took the first test today.  It had multiple parts.  The first part was regular old pencil and paper.  I chunked it into the sub-standards, so all of the questions pertaining to 1.a were together and all the questions pertaining to 1.b were together and so on.  The number of questions varied.  There were 6 questions for a, 12 questions for b, 5 questions for c and 2 questions for d.  It proved very difficult to come up with equal numbers of questions.  Also, it was difficult to categorize the notes.  So many of my standards are math concepts, configurations, dot structures and the like.  It is providing difficult to categorize vocabulary.  It would seem I will have to add that standard in next year.  I originally had a standard specifically mentioning mastery of pertinent vocabulary but took it out last minute. 

The second part of the test is a considerably more applications based assessment.  It will be given its own score.  It contains tasks that require the student to apply his or her knowledge of the standard instead of simply answering a black and white question.  (Ex: 1.b required students to design an experiment, 1.c asked students to draw a line of 2.54x10¹¹nm in length with a metric ruler)

Grading the Test

Since the first part was a multiple choice test, the answers were either right or wrong.  Before I began grading the test, I decided what score would equal a 5, a 4, and so on.  This kept me from being biased towards students.  Each section was scored independently resulting in four different scores for this part of the test.  I recorded them all separately in my grade book but only the average of the 4 scores will be recorded in the online system as the summative grade for standard 1. 

I intend to create a rubric to grade the second assessment since it is less concrete than the first.  It should make assigning scores easier. 

Communication

 I am concerned about parent understanding of this system.  I explained the system in detail at Parent Night and also sent home a detailed parent letter to be signed and returned.  If it was not returned, I emailed the parents personally explaining the system.  However, it would seem that there is still quite a bit of confusion.  I think the system will be clearer to students after this first test is completed but I still worry about the interpretation from home.  I hope the folks who have difficulty understanding the grading system will email or call me.  Parents are the backbone of the whole education system and without their support, typically my success is hamstrung as well.  So I hope this system will spawn more communication between teacher and parent.  At Parent Night, those parents that were there expressed a great liking towards this new approach to grading and I am hopeful that most parents will agree.  I think, overall, this system will clarify student progress in the course.  It allows me to show quite distinctly though numberical data, which by virtue of being data is unbiased, how a child is doing in the course and what kind of progress he or she is making. 

August 31, 2011 Record keeing dilemmas and classroom management

Overall

Students are having a hard time understanding that the homework doesn’t affect their grade as directly as they’re accustomed to seeing.  However, a good number of students are repeatedly asking to redo assignments for better grades.  They genuinely want to improve and learn.  The grading has a few nebulous difficulties I will describe in detail below, but overall, I am very pleased with the whole thing. 

Behavior/Classroom management

 Since this is a particularly spunky group of students, it is difficult to determine the effect this system has on discipline.  I am hopeful that as the year progresses, the general energy will keep the class interesting as passion is always good thing.  The routine of checking for returned papers, recording them in the folder, and updating the journal does work well.  It sets a nice tone for the rest of the class period.  I hope that this will allow me to review throughout the year and eliminate the need of such large overall review days, particularly at the end of semester. 

Grade book

Using the 5-4-3-2-1 system is fantastic in the grade book.  I can open my grade book and at a glance tell you who’s struggling and on what.  Since I am still making new handouts and coming up with new ideas, my paper grade book and the online versions are chunked only by broad standards.  The students’ personal checklist is organized into smaller sub-standards as well.  Since I did not know how many assignments I would give on a topic, I did not know how much space to leave in my paper grade book for a particular sub-standard and I do not know how to tell the online versions to do something similar.  I was excited to figure out how to get the online version to do larger standards.        

Grading

One difficulty that I have encountered is determining the difference between the various levels.  Sometimes it is difficult to determine if something is a 2 or a 3.  As I cement my curriculum, I will have to come up with specific examples of what a 2 looks like, what a 3 looks like, etc, both for the students and myself.  Thus far, I have tried to be conscious of consistency but it is the same difficulty that arises with points.   In general, thus far, it is instinctive.  Chemistry is fairly black and white most of the time but I do create rubrics for all summative assessments to keep myself honest and to make sure the students are clear on why they earned a particular score. 

Final thoughts

This entire process has been wonderfully introspective.  It shows quite plainly how many times I assess a particular standard and gives me concrete evidence of progress or lack thereof.  Formative assessments also allow me to record things like teacher-student conferences in the grade book as well, as that is valuable information as to a student’s progress and desire to improve.  I’ve noticed that I don’t assess all standards equally and I don’t provide near enough feedback for students.  I have strived to improve this but I need to come up with a way to provide more than just worksheets.  Currently I am going crazy trying to grade everything but that is not terribly different than last year.  With the mastery system, the students should have work returned to them fairly quickly so they can see the developing pattern or progress or stagnation.  Perhaps, I can have a day where I can give the student a score on a problem they work with me to go in their folder.   It is all still a work in progress, but overall, I am very pleased.  The first assessment comes next week and that will be make-or-break time.   

August 23, 2011 initial observations

Observations thus far: 

·         Students are hardwired to view assignments based on points.  When first introduced to this system, students immediately jumped to the idea of being “exempt” from homework once they proved themselves proficient. 

·         The system does seem to drive students to want to do better.  On the first assignment returned, I heard many remarks that were displeased with their scores.  Several even wanted to correct their mistakes and resubmit their work. 

·         Getting students to turn in work is still an issue.  I have students in both general chemistry classes who did not turn in their work.  I do not believe it would have made a difference if I were to assign points to the assignment.  I need a better way to help students keep track of what they have and have not done. 

·         The folders have become a jumbled mess.  Students remove the folders to get their papers and record their scores but then have no idea where to put the folder back.  I need name tabs on the handing folders as well as the student folders but that seems like a lot of trouble.  Plus, I don’t have that many tabs.  (resolved with sticky tabs)

·         The mastery levels seem to spawn a lot of good conversions about why a student received a particular score and how they could improve it.

·         This system gives me the freedom to say “try” and there really be no lasting penalty for getting the answer wrong.  The students seem to like the idea of being able to improve. 

·         I am expecting lots of bumps after the first assessment on standard 1.  Students are going to take the test and bomb it but not have any proof that they should be offered a retake.  It could get messy.  . . .

Adjustments made: 

·         I need to be careful to remind them on a regular basis that their goal is to get the highest score possible and never to settle. 

·         Daily reminders to turn in assignments.  Need a list on the board or on a cabinet somewhere. . .  

·         A pencil and paper test in addition to the “out of the box” assessment for each standard will be done.  More than one assessment makes better sense anyway. 

SBG-the Adventure Begins!

Now that introductions are out of the way, I can get to the real reason I began this blog.  I teach chemistry at the high school level and spent the last two years fretting and fussing over the points game.  I discovered that while I had quite a few gems who wanted to improve and learn simply for the academic pleasure of intelligence, most of my students were playing the points game.  It did not matter how much or little they learned, only that they achieved the score they needed to escape punishments at home or get into the university program of their choice.  Even my brighter students spent most of their time begging for extra credit and extra points simply to boost their GPA.  The joy of learning, the pursuit of knowledge in all its mystery and glory has faded.  And I am not ok with this.  I realize I am a rare bird that enjoys knowledge simply for that joy of intellectual prowess but I feel that with this glow of intellect gone, school has lost its purpose.  Why learn when you could just do extra credit and achieve the same result?  So in an attempt to solve this problem, to put the focus back on learning, to take points out of their ill-gotten spot light, this year I have done away with points entirely.  At the high school where I teach, I am part of a committee that has spent a fair amount of time studying the works of Anne Davies and Ken O'Conner.  I have to say both opened my eyes and gave me hope that all was not lost in the rapidly dimming world of homework scores and extra credit. 

To briefly summarize my approach, as previously stated, there are no points or percentages on any assignment.  All papers, tests and labs are graded on a mastery scale from 1-5, with 5 being the highest score of absolute perfection, 3 being profiecient and on down the line.  Only summative assessments affect a student’s grade.  These take the form of pencil and paper tests, labs or performance assesments.  All other assignments are considered formative (or practice) and are recorded in a student folder and online to create a visible pattern of progress that can be used to justify test retakes, alternative assessments, student conferences and even disciplinary action if the student is not taking responsibility.  Think of homework and classwork as a timeline instead of a point pool.  A list of standards for the entire year's course was created and given to students in the same class folder as their score chart.  All assignments pertaining to a particular standard are grouped as such both online and in the student folder. By doing all this, I hope to simplify the reporting piece of the education process.  By clarifying the meaning of scores and allow students to experience the process of learning as opposed to experiencing the defeatist system to often encountered, I hope to put the emphasis back where it belongs: on the learning.  Through standards based grading (SBG) and assessment for learning (AFL) I hope to bring back that spark to the learning process. 

And so I document my journey into the great unknown. . .

Introductions

Hello internet world and welcome to my corner of cyberspace.  Who am I?  I am no more or less than a science teacher trying to find the best ways to motivate, educate and inspire her students.  Though this is only my third year of teaching, I've done a staggering amount of action research, mostly by accident.  I am a very "new mousetrap" sort of person that refuses to waste time with techniques, ideas and buzz words that do not serve a purpose.  Since I was trained as an analytical chemist, much of this action research has begun taking the form of reports so I can better keep track of what I have tried, what failed and what yielded fruit.  Then it dawned on me-someone else might benefit from my trials, tribulations and triumphs.  And thus, "The Learning Curve" was born. 


So I hope you find my writings interesting or possibly even helpful.  I would like to say specifically, though, that these are my opinions from my own observations.  I do not mean to belittle, degrade or attack any system used by another teacher.  There is no perfect system and every teacher must do what he or she feels to be ethical, effective and educational for his or her particular group of students and classroom style. Thus if you, my dear reader, ever have any suggestions to my mental quandries, I hope you chime in.  I am always looking for new perspective and angles from which to approach the challenges we as teachers daily face.  As all who are teachers know, this profession has a pretty steep learning curve so I hope you brought your hiking boots since we have some tough terrain ahead!