Standards Based Grading: The Starting Line

I started wrestling with how to use Standards Based Grading a month ago, and although the time I spent researching its potential applications left me with my eyes crossed, it also gave me a lot of good ideas to consider. So when I returned to it this week and tried to foresee how I wanted to design my freshmen world history class, here is what I have discovered/created/need to consider further:

WHAT I'VE FIGURED OUT

• First, my overall grading scale.
• Unit Goals – 35%
• Essential/Transferable Skills – 35%
• Portfolio Upkeep – 10%
• Citizenship – 10%
• Final Exam – 10%

This grading scale allows for my standards to fall into four categories. My list of standards and their indicators are below.

Stephen Lazar's reflections on his own experience with SBG  have been incredibly helpful in  my own crafting of the above list and grading scale. I'd like to note that he has 'Citizenship' as a part of his SBG, and I agree with him that some students need feedback regarding certain aspects of their behavior, which is why I have included it for my freshmen. I'm not sure I would do this for my AP class.

• I have decided that I will set aside formal time for reassessments, but seeing as how this is the first year I'm doing SBG, I don't want to force myself into something weekly; I am thinking of something more bi-weekly...? I've decided this for two reasons: first, while Shawn Cornally has some good suggestions for reassessments that are not cookie-cutter retests, it would take me some time to consider how to reassess students for certain objectives in a way that forces them to apply the essentials without simply re-doing a different version of an original assignment. Since this essentially means coming up with an alternative activity for the student to do to show proficiency, until I am confident that I can do this easily enough, I want to make sure I have everything else figured out before assuming I can easily create reassessments. Second, I am considering reassessing students based more on their ability to reflect & articulate why they did not meet a standard. A colleague of mine used 'text corrections' (below) for his class last year, and he had  positive responses from it, so I may consider revamping his sheets for a reflection reassessment tailored to my class. But how can I 'objectively' raise a student's standard based on such a test correction?

• Furthermore, with regards to reassessment, I have included a 'Growth' strand in my 'Citizenship' standard to help those students who may not be as proactive about showing up for a formal reassessment. In other words, if students show improvement over the course of a term in assigned material, then they will have met a goal of working towards longer retention and mastery of skills. So the idea would be to consciously give students opportunities to reassess as the term goes on in other assignments. Example: if they do an assignment in my Roman unit that is well-written (meets standard E/T 2.1 of my list) but is factually wrong (fails in standards UG 1.1 and E/T 2.2), maybe in my Han China unit they can re-assess by making a logical connection/comparison between the empires in a given assignment. I could then increase their earlier poor scores in the other standards. Yet I would have to make continual reminders to my students that this is a possibility in order to ensure that they are conscious that answering a question can take many forms & should make connections to past material, as long as the answer is relevant, logical, and precise.

CHALLENGES STILL TO FACE

• My biggest worry with all of this, however, is what SBG will do to my gradebook. I use EasyGradePro for my grades, and while it is great in its ability to add standards, I am a bit confused as to what will be the best way to generate reports for my students. Here is a screen shot of a sample progress report I made-up - while it makes sense to me, I can imagine how ridiculous it would look to one of my students, let alone a parent who may not have the fortitude to try and figure it out. Now a progress report like this is not what my school sends home - this is what my students and their parents could access online just for my class - so it is nothing official, but I still wish it could be less complicated looking.

• I'm also concerned about how exactly I will grade assignments. In EasyGradePro I can very easily assign standards/indicators to an assignment, but how can I most effectively give my students feedback that they can easily grasp? As I wrote in an earlier post, I plan to introduce the interactive notebook (=portfolio) to my class, so here is a potential problem. If they do a simple 5-10 minute reflection on a topic we discussed, how can I grade according to the 6 or 7 indicators of my writing standard? I will have to discuss this with the teachers at my school who have used SBG to consider how they handle rubrics.

• As most teachers who use SBG realize, there is a problem if your school hands out grades as a percentage and final letter grade. How can you convert the results of your SBG to the traditional grading scale? I found this site which, I think, has a good justification for a mathematical formula used to calculate final grades. Would it make sense if I use this formula for my standards to calculate my final grade?

LAST THOUGHT

Shawn Cornally has a great analysis of the benefits of summative assessments, even in a class that uses the SBG. And in fact his justification for using summative assignments is, I think, the best way of explaining to my students why they have finals anyway. And fundamentally discussing the point of a final exam will also provide just one more opportunity to get them to think throughout the year how they learn.

As of right now I'll be honest and admit I am feeling like I may be taking on a lot of unknowns here for my freshmen class, with both the interactive notebook and this whole new way of doing my grades, but hopefully all of this pre-planning will help limit the problems as well as provide enough background for me to fix any pitfalls.

Professional Development

If you are considering summer professional development opportunities, I would highly recommend looking into the Taft Educational Center (TEC) workshops at the Taft School in Connecticut. [See http://www.taftschool.org/tec/default.aspx ] I just finished up my week-long course there, and it was a sublime experience.

Before I get into the heart of the matter -- which is the substance of the professional development I got -- let me first entice you with some logistical items. Although the Taft School is not an easy place to get to, the TEC did a nice job of providing transportation info for how to get there without having a car. The dorm room was comfortable and the food provided by TEC made me feel spoiled. Three meals a day plus two coffee/tea breaks in which even the snacks provided changed daily, plus a social hour right before dinner in which complimentary wine and non-alcoholic drinks were provided - let's just say I had all the more reason to use the splendid athletic facilities at TEC, as well as run in the multiple bucolic fields of campus!

If this description of the facilities has perked your interest, let me get into the real joy of being there: the workshop itself. I was first introduced to just how beneficial my week in Connecticut was going to be in the shuttle provided by TEC to get to campus. During that ride I had the most invigorating conversation with another teacher named Louise who had signed up for the AP Art History workshop. There is nothing quite like talking to teachers from other schools to gain some perspective on your own school -- regardless of whether they are in your discipline, or whether they are from public or private schools. 

As the week progressed I got to meet lots of other interesting teachers because the TEC purposely (but not forcefully) structures opportunities to interact with other educators both in and outside of your particular workshop. Through these interactions I got the chance not only to commiserate with other teachers about their experiences (particularly with regard to boarding school life), but also to appreciate certain aspects of my own school. My discussions with college counselors were also insightful, especially when comparing the challenges of American and international students. I also, of course, spoke to other history teachers about how they structure their curriculum and organize class material. For example, I already plan to stay in touch with one teacher about how to use music more interactively in my AP class. Furthermore, in talking to a variety of teachers, I came to realize how my teaching is different from American teachers because my audience (i.e. international students, but mostly Jordanian) is different. I can't make references to some things that American teachers can simply because my students wouldn't get it due to cultural or language barriers, and yet at the same time I was struck by just how much I can reference due to globalization! 

My particular workshop was on Latin American Civilization taught by Prof. Fernando Gonzalaz de Leon, and it was simply a productive and enjoyable experience. To keep it succinct, here's a list of what made it so positive and why my 5 days flew by:

• The professor ran the workshop more like a graduate seminar so that we had a lot of reading every night (about 100 pages) from The Penguin History of Latin America and then based our two 4-hour daily sessions (run more often than not as Socratic discussions) on the reading. This book is simply a great resource and I would highly recommend it if you are weak in Latin American history (like I was, which is why I took the course). While it is very dense with facts, it is also readable, effectively analytical, and up-to-date, so it was a great way to provide background information for class discussion, and it will be a great resource for me should I want to provide case studies on Latin American countries.

• In the workshop the professor asked short-essay questions for which we spent time writing answers in class and then shared our ideas. Here are the 8 questions we ended up discussing in full:
• What are the hurdles in teaching about Latin America?
• What were the differences between the Latin American and North American experience of conquest?
• What commonalities did indigenous peoples have before the arrival of the Europeans?
• What were the values of Latin American civilization? (i.e. What's 'Latin' about Latin America?)
• What were the global consequences of settling Latin America?
• How does the Freyle story reflect and modify the casta system as we illustrated on the board?
• Is there a parallel between the North American and Latin American revolutions?
• What were the challenges facing Latin America in the 19th century?

I ended up having over 7 pages of typed answers after fully digesting our discussions, and they will provide a good framework for putting Latin America in a world historical context as well as studying it on its own terms.

• My favorite part of the workshop were the assigned readings from The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories. It has been a while since I've taken a literature class, so after reading the first few short stories assigned before the workshop started, I was baffled as to how we were supposed to use them. Yet the professor proved to be very adept at unfolding the stories for us and revealing not only the allegories and metaphors involved in the writing, but also at helping us put the stories in historical context and using them to consider cultural studies. It was a phenomenal experience for me to be confused with a text at the start and then be so aware of the intricacies and nuances of the same text just thirty minutes later. It reminded me of how good analysis and close reading of short texts are critical in any humanities course, and how I must give my students that same intimate experience with texts as often as possible. This means I must work on my goal this summer of gathering meaningful but cropped primary sources for my classes to examine & dissect in-class. I want to give them a spread of sources to look at, like selections from literature (e.g. Epic of Gilgamesh) and artwork (our professor had us compare Baroque Latin American compositions with the more abstract music of late-18th century Latin America), or newspaper clippings (e.g. feminist activities in early 20th century) and political texts (e.g. The Communist Manifesto). Yet it is difficult to find the right selections as well as translations that are appropriate for my students, particularly for my freshmen, for whom English is a second language. (Any suggestions for resources online or otherwise to help in this endeavor would be appreciated!)

• Our group also got the chance to talk to our professor about the challenges that he faces with university students, and it was interesting (if also somewhat disheartening) to realize that many of them are the same ones we face with high school students. Plagiarism, for example, remains a big problem, and we talked about what seems to be a trend in which students are not held accountable for their work as much as educational institutions are the first to be blamed….an interesting discussion that I will ponder more about in a future blog post.

 When I left TEC it so happened that coincidentally I got a chance to sit with Louise again and she, like myself, had had quite an enlightening workshop. So if you should have any questions about TEC or my specific workshop or want to discuss other PD opportunities, please feel free to comment!