Jan 20, 2012 Compromises and Behavioral ideas

Compromise

We high school folk have begun the momentous task of compromising into a consistent form of this grading system to be used by all of us.  So far, we have decided to use a 4-0 scale, utilizing the following descriptions to define each level

·         4: Exceeding Standards; Fully consistent demonstration of knowledge, fully independent, No conceptual errors, solid understanding of content and application of content, synthesis of outside knowledge, use knowledge in problem solving unique situations and justify your answer

·         3: Good Enough: Meeting standards; Can apply knowledge, NO AID, Fully Independent, minimal/occasional conceptual mistakes, justify answers

·         2: Some application, rudimentary application of knowledge; Basic comprehension; Inconsistent/minimal aid used, missing/neglecting some important details

·         1: Minimal Knowledge; Something there; Can do something, substantial aid required; cannot do it independently

·         NTY: Not enough information to assess; No relevance to content, Fully inaccurate, inaccurate approach.

A             3.81-4.00

A-           3.61-3.80

B+           3.41-3.60

B             3.21-3.40

B-            3.00-3.20

C+           2.68-2.99

C             2.34-2.67

C-            2.00-2.33

D+          1.68-1.99

D             1.34-1.67

D-           1.00-1.33

F              .99-NTY

I had set up a 4 point scale for my astronomy class this year but I had set a 2 as proficient, good enough.  After much discussion, we decided to move proficient back up to the 3, B level work, as the requirement for “proficient level work”.  As I move through astronomy, I am agreeing with that decision more and more.  Originally I had been the proponent of two levels above proficient as that means to really excel but practically, it is really bloody difficult to differentiate between great and awesome.  The history teacher involved in all this has been a big proponent of having two levels below proficient to allow students a means of progression towards proficient, where in the scale with 2 as proficient they end up stuck at a 1 forever. 

Behavior

Our biggest difficult is what to do about behavioral issues.  Ideally, there would be two separate grades for each student--an academic grade and a behavioral grade—thus allowing the two independent ideas to remain independent.  However, we cannot have a standards based report card for some time, which means it would have to be averaged back together, leading us back to one of the issues of current grading practice where behavior impacts non-behavior scores.  So, I am going to attempt behavioral consequences/rewards for behavioral issues.  This might not be so easy for a course where behavior is integral, like a music class, but I think it will be effective in my science classes.   I intend to try out the rewards program this semester.  I do not feel it is fair to introduce consequences (I dislike the word “punishment”)  at this late date.  My idea is to offer a “push pass” to students who turn in all assignments for a chapter.  This includes lab reports, specifically assigned homework or practice, or any other assignment that the teacher requests to be turned in.  This “push pass” would allow the student to “push” a test back a day.  It is an individual reward, not a class based one.  This would be done during class time but again, I deal with upper level students who would be able to make up work easily and there is after school tutoring available too.  I have never had a problem with test security and usually have multiple versions of a test.  Plus, most of my tests are more . . . creative. . . uses of the information that are difficult to explain to another student.  A second idea was a “class pass.”  The upper level students I have are all taking very difficult classes in addition to mine.  Some days I have to take their Bio II or calculus notes away from them so they will focus on my class and not the test they have later.  This pass would require them to have demonstrated mastery of the concepts of this standard.  Students would then be allowed to either go to the library or sit in the back of the class to study the other subject they have.  All these passes have consequences of sorts but it allows the student to decide what is the priority right now.  If it doesn’t work, I will attempt to think of some other rewards. 

Dec 16 Record keeping, standards and New Ideas!!

December 16, 2011

RecordKeeping

I have been displeased with my folder method of tracking grades for some time but was having difficulty creating an alternative.  I had originally decided to create a divided version of the open grid they have now.  Formative homeworks and practices are recorded in one column, artifacts (aka pop quizzes or assessment-like scenarios) in another and summatives (aka big tests) would be in a third.  After DeSoto visited, I created a second version, modeled on theirs.  This one has the standard written at the top instead of the abbreviation present on the divided version.  It also features a graph where students plot their scores on the grid for a more visual representation of a student’s trend of learning.  Only artifacts and summatives would be recorded on this grid.  I like this later version because of the more visual version of the trend of learning, the ease of seeing the standard above the grades and the use of only artifacts and summatives.  I feel like having the students record all of their formative assignments is data overload.  Now, I love data as much as the next analytical chemist but this is just too much for the kiddos, to record EVERYTHING they do.  The artifacts are a good representation of how a student would do on a test, where a formative assignment shows what they know with their notes and friends in a comfortable situation.  But what I want doesn’t always coincide with what the students think or will do. So I pitched it to my students, both my honors chemmies and the students who stayed after school with me yesterday.  Most of them liked the graphing one.  They liked the idea of it being more visual and they also liked the idea of only recording artifacts and summatives.  I also told them about the power law that Pinnacle uses that I was trying to recreate, which I will discuss in the next section, and they really liked that as well.  I have not decided yet if I will try to implement all these improvements in chemistry.  Overall they are a really awesome group that is really flexible and tolerant to all my changes and crazy ideas but I hate to just throw everything we’ve done this semester out the window. . . even though it is not serving our purposes. . . and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing only to expect different results. . . . So I guess I should introduce some of these changes J

Grades

So. . . since I made this new tracking sheet with the graph, I got to thinking about the power law again.  DeSoto talked about it and I felt like a total n00b because I had no idea what it was.  The way they described it was looking at the trend of assessment scores instead of averaging things together.  This concept works so much better and provides an even truer reflection of student achievement than the traditional averaging.  It has long been a complaint of grading that student scores are always lower at the beginning because the student has not had time to mastery the material.  The brain has not had time to integrate the new information.  Thus the student has a poor score, let’s say a 2, on an early assessment.  Later on the student masters the material and really steps it up to achieve a 4 on a much later assessment.  By traditional grading, those two scores are averaged, resulting in a 3.  Even though the student mastered the material, she is still haunted by that first attempt.  I had attempted to rectify that through reassessment opportunities but the power law allows for an even greater efficacy in correcting that error.  Prior to now, I had no idea how to do the “power law” in excel but I think I’ve figured it out.  There is a “trend” function on excel that, according to my reading, does a rough approximation of this power law.  I didn’t think it would be this hard to find a mathematical explanation of the bloody thing.  This means that I can in fact count artifacts as part of the term grade, without averaging them together and reestablishing the old paradigm of punishing first attempts.  Supposedly, this power law weights later assessments heavier than earlier ones, meaning that the earlier pop quizzes will have less impact than the bigger summative tests. 

My difficulties arise from the fact that the way I have my standards set up currently, there is a 2.a, a 2.b, a 2.c, and so on.  I only have 11 “standards” but each one has 2-8 pieces.  I will have to find a different way to word and organize my standards so I don’t have 15 trends to follow for each student.    And, since we are still using a points, I will still have to find a way to combine all standards into one grade. . All this means that I have to do better about having multiple artifacts and multiple assessments for every standard.  This is most certainly a process.   

Standards

At lunch, we were talking about different ways to organize standards and track them.  Right now, I have my standards set up to where I have the larger titles (atoms, compounds) as the “power standards” and then the nit-picky pieces (history, configs, wave equations) as the little a, b, c below that larger one.  I’ve been tracking each little piece separately so far because they are such different concepts with different difficulty levels.  If I’m going to do this “power law” trending to come up with the grade for a standard, I would have to look for the trends of these little pieces and then somehow put them all together to get the grade for that standard.  I could average them. . . but the evils of averaging are something I am trying to avoid. . . so I would almost have to look for a trend among the pieces.  That wouldn’t be any better than the averaging because the pieces are all so different.  I think I’m going to have to start looking at assessments as a whole, without separating them into these smaller pieces.  The smaller sections could be present in the verbal standard but as for grading and recording, it would all be recorded as simply “standard 2”. 

December, SIS

December 8, 2011

December is always a difficult month.  In addition to the regular world stress of holiday shopping, family visits and holiday decorations, no one wants to be at school.  Students are squirrely.  Everyone’s forgotten everything they need to know for the final and somehow it all has to come together before December 19^th.  All in all, it makes for a very stressful month.  *Steps off soapbox*

                So I finally caved.  SIS has caused too many problems and too much confusion between administration, SSD teacher and others who need regular access to student grades but have not talked with me at length about my grading system.  Prior to now, I had been putting the 5-1 grades in SIS and telling students to ignore the SIS percentage and average their grade together themselves.  The aforementioned other people were unaware of this truth or forgot or didn’t understand or whatever the case may be and multiple students were being reprimanded for a grade that wasn’t correct.  So I translated the mastery levels into the percentages by the same chart I use at term to assign term grades.  It’s really a lose-lose with this bloody thing because the mastery level gave invalid percentage but the percentages, while closer to their actual grade, are still not correct and put the emphasis back on points.  However, the saving grace with the percentages is that now I can confidently say their grade on SIS is a reflection of 100% knowledge.  There is nothing to inflate or deflate a student’s grade other than their performance on a summative assessment event. 

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.