Getting Started

October 21, 2011

Starting suggestions

I thought it might be beneficial for me to throw out a few suggestions for anyone interested in attempting a journey similar to mine.  This is essentially the process I have followed. 

 

1.       Come up with standards

§  It will take a few tries, but start with CLE’s, throw in your curriculum and rephrase

·         The CLE’s have never seemed clear to me so I created my own standards and referenced the CLE’s.

·         Don’t always start with CLE’s.  You know you teach the CLE’s.  Start with your wording and reference the CLE’s

§  Get them all typed up then you can rearrange it.

·         Just type.  That’s the easiest way.  You’ll never have the perfect order, just one good enough for now.   

§  Could also start with state standards and use a, b, c to clarify under standards.

2.       Determine how you want to assess these standards

§  Backwards design!

§  Will you use a 5 level scale, 4 level scale, points . . .

§  Retakes fall in this category too

·         Will you allow retakes?

·         Will students retake same test, entire test, parts of test?

3.       Come up with grade book setup

§  Will you grade homework?

§  Will you record homework?

§  Will you use percentages or mastery levels?

§  How many assessments are necessary to know mastery?

§  Will you use bound paper grade book, binder paper or excel?

4.       Determine if there are any necessary changes to your classroom practices

§  Most of the time, little needs to change. 

§  The classroom will naturally shift itself to a focus on learning and away from points or that has been my experience. 

The best advice I can give is just to start.  You will never find the perfect approach and odds are you will never be completely happy with the system you have created.  I know I’m not.  I am immensely pleased with the progress and changes I have seen in my classroom thus far but it is far from perfect.  Every day brings a new set of challenges and every group of students is different and requires a slightly different approach.  But the rewards are well worth it.  I’m seeing students excited about learning, students who ordinarily give up are striving for better, exceptionally bright students are learning and not just looking for the points game.  It really is amazing. 

Newest thoughts

These are the note I took during our most recent Assessment for Learning committee meeting. 

October 3, 2011 AFL

Rockwood Assessment practices

·         Academic and Non-academic indicators

o   Addition of non-academic standard might be good. Would allow behavior back in grade, but needs to be very specific.

·         Time commitment before retake is required

o   A writing assignment or conference with teacher before retake

o   Might be good to avoid students rushing into retakes. 

o   Still need formatives to prove mastery.  Conference would provide opportunity for that conversation

Thoughts

·         More Student Involvement (Parkway)

o   Have students co-create levels of mastery using anchor examples, they sort into levels

o   Teacher sets goals with each student about where they are and what the next step is

§  Would go well in journals

§  Meet with individual students while class works on practice.

·         But with 26 kids in one room, how do you find the time AND keep the rest engaged and involved?

·         “Gradekeeper” online grade book

o   No parent portal

o   Does 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 scale

·         Need more self-assessment

o   Goes with goal setting in journal

o   Look at folder, how do scores look. . . weekly self-assessment?

§  If I were to give you the test today, how would you do?  Does the teacher agree with your assessment?

·         Benchmarks

o   Since HC will be in the middle of st2, allow benchmark to be flexible.  Have the summative for st2 somewhere in late October.  Let the st1 part be a replacement assessment for something from st1 and the st2 be formative until the summative in late October.

o   Or let It stand. . . retention is important too. . .

·         Summative Assessments

o   All tests should be cumulative?????

o   Or. . . only final exam is cumulative????

·         Step by step plan of attack for implementing standards based grading

o   Come up with standards (you’ve done BYOC-build your own curriculum-, you already have standards)

§  Yes it will take a few tries, but start with CLE’s, throw in your curriculum and rephrase

§  Get them all typed up then you can rearrange it.

§  Don’t always start with CLE’s.  You know you teach the CLE’s.  Start with your wording and reference the CLE’s

§  Could also start with state standards and use a, b, c to clarify under standards.

o   Come up with how you want to assess these standards

§  5 level scale, 4 level scale, points

§  Will you allow retakes?

§  Retake same test, entire test, parts of test?

o   Come up with grade book setup

§  Will you grade homework?

§  Will you record homework?

§  Will you use percentages or mastery levels?

§  How many assessments are necessary to know mastery?

§  Will you use bound paper, binder paper or excel?

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 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.