Nov 29, 2011 Standards

November 29, 2011

Standards

So I came to a “well duh” realization yesterday.  I have been implementing standards based grading.  Tests are chunked according to the standards being assessed.  Each standard is given its own grade. . . and then I go and average them together to get one grade for a test.  You moron! (I say to myself).  I just did what we complain so much about the points system.  Granted, the student can look at the separated scores and see which section was weaker but students are so engrained to look only at the final score that most aren’t putting it together.  They aren’t seeing how, for example, standard 2 was weak in the first assessment, on the benchmark midterm and on the final.  Since tests like the benchmark midterm and final are cumulative to the point of assessment, they cover several standards.  And dingbat that I am, I’ve been putting them all together, reinforcing the mindset I am trying to hard to chance.  What I need to do is just have multiple scores for one test and LEAVE IT THAT WAY.  The assessments need to be recorded with their standard and not as an average somewhere.  Funny how we, as teachers, think so hard and spend so much time plotting and planning and possible scheming when the answer we so desperately seek is plain as day in front of our faces.  Ugh, I’m so annoyed with myself.  I suppose I could make adjustments at semester.  Stop the averaging and put in multiple scores.  I don’t think it will mess with anyone’s understanding of the system.  If anything, it should make it easier to track patterns.  I still need to decide what I’m going to do about that tracking sheet for next year.  The one I use currently is too wide open and that makes it harder to keep assessments vs practice straight.  I think I might use the version I’ve mentioned before that includes a separate section for practice/formative, artifacts and summatives. 

Nov 22, 2011 Hindsight 20/20

There comes a time in the school year where it behooves one to pause a moment and look back.  I have made so many changes, done so many new things this year that I have really lost count.  I feel like my classroom is more open, more organic, more student-directed and though I still have a long way to go, I feel that I have taken a large step in the right direction.  Often times, as teachers, we forget how long it takes students to form habits, to understand and learn to think.  So many students have never been asked to think on a critical level and that takes time to learn.  Here we are in November and the students are just now learning to reason, to draw their own conclusions and to analyze what’s in front of them.  For some, it will take even longer.  I still fight the points/grade mentality everywhere.  However, just like it takes time for students to learn a new skill, it takes even longer to deprogram old skills.  We have trained students to respond only to points and external motivations, ignoring internal motivations and conclusions.  Students have learned that compliance earns grades and points are everything.  So many teachers that I speak with are afraid of standards based grading or anything similar because they feel it takes away their power.  Without the points, how will you motivate students to learning, to complete homework, to do anything at all?  My response to that is “have faith”.  I have seen student connect their homework scores to their test scores and see how practice really does make perfect.  I’ve seen students man up to the fact that they haven’t done any practice or outside work and regret that fact.  You have to create a climate where students are free to fail so long as they try again, where students are free to try and try again but doing nothing is never an option.  It takes time, effort and lots and lots of reminders.  A good work ethic and desire to succeed is more important now than ever but for some reason it has become harder to cultivate.  On some levels, being a teacher is harder than ever.  There are more distractions to battle, more expectations to meet.  Everyone seeks to pass the blame instead of offering suggestions for improvement.  But at the same time, it is more fun than ever.  I am not bound by the traditional test.  I can utilize a wide variety of assessment types.  I have more toys than ever: robots, apps, cell phones, computers, clickers, tablets, smart boards and on and on.  And the rewards of being a teacher never change.  It’s always worth it.

ALF meeting notes 11/16/2011

AFL notes 11/16/2011

Plan for next year

·         Behavioral consequences for behavioral problems

o   Not reading, not completing homework, not doing., . . something

o   Instead of taking away points, you serve a detention that afternoon/next day to complete the work. 

·         Detailed syllabus

o   Detailed options for retakes/summative assessments

o   Detailed daily expectations

o   Definitions of SBG, summative, formative, feedback, etc

o   Behavioral consequences for missing work, incomplete assignment

o   Grading scale/mastery levels explained

o   Formative assessmentsà expectations, grading, importance

o   Advisory requirements

§  Reassessments/reassessment price done during advisory time

·         Differently weighted standards???

o   Some are more important than others and should be weighted as such. Use percentages

·         Student checklist/score tracker

Personal Notes

·         Goal setting. . . so good, but how to teach it. . . back to journals!  Focus on concepts, not assessment tools (get an A, turn in homework doesn’t work)

o   Weekly reflections on progress, necessary improvements

·         Need to redo standards and student checklists (formative, artifacts, summative)

o   MAYBE NOT. . . SEE DESOTO CHART

§  Graphing instead of just listing scores

§  Stapling assessments for one standard together and keeping them in the folder.  Practice stays elsewhere

§  Maybe next year require binder and go through set up/organization repeatedly

·         How to include behavioral/nonacademic components

o   Averaging them together puts behavior back in the grade which is the problem we are trying to rectify currently. . . need a separate way to indicate it. . .

o   Doesn’t SIS have a behavior grade section?  Off to the side of the end-of-term report?

·         Interdepartmental projects

o   Do the experiment with me, write the paper with Beth, do the historical connection with Steve. . .

·         Look at MO Frameworks to develop “Behavioral Standard”. 

o   Needs a REALLY good scoring rubric

·         So can we not use SIS next year?  Please?

·         Power-Law calculations used to calculate learning trend

o   Pinnacleà Global scholar

o   Most recent grades count more than early stuff

§  Oh my goodness it’s wonderful

§  Have to put all the level 1 (teacher guided) in on the same date, all the level 2 in on the same date, etc. . . because otherwise pinnacle calculates it wrong. . .

§  Do we need DOK levels in this?

·         5-0 scale

o   5-A+

o   4-A

o   3-B

o   2-C

o   1-D

o   0-F

·         Graphing progress instead of just the chart.  Kids can SEE the trend

·         Marzano Conjunctive Scale (green assessment for learning book)

o   To get an A, you have to have no 3’s on any standards

o   To get a B, you have to have no 2’s, etc

o   There’s no averaging

·         DeSoto has behavior as a separate grade. . . not averaged into the academic grade

·         Need report card rubrics for each standard

·         Do we really need a 5?

Nov 17, 2011 DeSoto Visit, what is advanced?, DOK

November 17, 2011

DeSoto Visit

Yesterday was our quarterly meeting of our AFL group.  These meetings are always great because we have the chance to sit and think and put our heads together about the problems we are facing.  We had about 8 teachers from DeSoto come to visit and talk about the ways they had implemented SBG in their school.  Oddly enough, they were all middle school or lower.  No high school teachers were on board.  Anyway, it was wonderful.  They solved half of my problems in the first 5 minutes.  They use an online gradebook called Pinnacle that allows not only standard based score but also formative/summative/diagnostic assignments as well as being an intuitive system that looked for patterns.  They talked a lot about the “Power Law” which is something with which I was not familiar.  I had been saying that there had to be a better way than averaging grades to report a student’s progress.  Apparently this “power law” is that way.  It weights recent progress higher than earlier assessments and looks for learning trends.  After 4 assessment hits, it looks for the trend.  Anything less than that and it defaults to average.  I was just beside myself with excitement over meeting these people who were a step ahead of me and had all these great ideas on solving the many issues I had encountered.  

Are all assessments created equal?

I was a little bit confused on their use of “levels”.  They said they entered all of the level 1 grades on the same day, all the level 2’s on the same day and so on.  I think they were referring to DOK and amount of teacher support.  But if these grades are entered as assessments, they count towards the learning trend.  Most of the CLE’s, frameworks and common cores are applied type scenarios with written expectations.  If those are the expectations, meeting them should be proficient. . . so what’s advanced look like?  If you are using DOK levels, a student might be able to get a 4 on a DOK 1 or 2 assignment but not be able to achieve that DOK 3.  We went round and round on this yesterday.  We agreed that all assessments should contain DOK’s 1-3 but the DOK 3 was the part that was necessary to achieve advanced.  Ultimately, it seems like there will have to be a set of criteria that must be met for a student to achieve an A.  They must demonstrate proficiency on all DOK 1 and 2 and achieve advanced on the applied DOK3 stuff to achieve an “A” in the course. 

The second issue we encountered also dealt with this idea of the importance of application.  One of the math teachers and I were discussing how some standards don’t seem to have that additional application level that makes “advanced” possible.  Often times those kinds of questions come from combining whole standards together.  The statement was made that then the standards should have been together from the start but I don’t know that I agree with that.  Material still has to be taught in chunks and the bigger the chunk, the more difficult it becomes to separate the material in to assessable pieces.  Thus you would end up with two types of assessments:  the DOK 1 and 2 material for which proficiency is required and also the combination application assessments which allow for the “advanced” placement.  It will be difficult to come up with a consistent  means of determining grades though. 

I thought I had this all figured out and then we brought up the question of “so what does advanced look like?” and it just all went to pot.