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!