SBG 3: Reflection Time

We're in week five at my school and so this weekend I spent some time reflecting on how things are going in my freshmen world history class. It was a good time to do this because they had just completed their first summative assessment and we had spent time discussing their progress reports; plus I had just graded their first unit essential question answers.

I'll start by saying that even though it took a good half hour to discuss their progress reports, it was time well-spent because it gave them a chance to think about the process of learning, and how that was more important than thinking about the final product (i.e. a grade). For the discussion I had printed a progress report for each student and then we went over each component using a fake Justin Bieber sample as a comparison (see below). 

I explained that their overall grade was not shown because I wanted to emphasize that the skills and unit goal parts of their grade are still in flux, which meant their overall grade is in flux. Yet if I had to give a converted grade, then their 'beginning', 'developing', 'succeeds', and 'excels' standard grades would equate roughly to 'D', 'C', 'B', and 'A' percentages (respectively) for the standards portion of their grade. I'm happy to say that they responded pretty well to this discussion and there weren't any frustrated or confused remarks.

Nonetheless after grading their answers to the first unit essential questions, I was disappointed by their responses. They had done so well on the summative assessment, so what went wrong here? They tried to 'include evidence', as I had talked about in class, but they really struggled to answer the questions. It was basically clear they didn't understand my questions.

So it dawned on me that our constant conversations about standards were making them comfortable with the idea of learning, but that they are still struggling with understanding what they need to learn. For instance, what does it mean when I ask for them to include evidence? How do they connect primary sources we discussed to the objectives of the unit? What became troubling to me was the fact that I don't think my essential questions as I articulated them for the kids were actually all that good for this first unit. And it's important I clarify that difference: the questions themselves weren't poor, but the articulation was. After all, they had done well on the summative assessment, but it also occurred to me that the questions on that test were very different kinds of questions than those I had given as essential questions.

So I spent some time on Skype last night with one of the best teachers out there, my friend Gary. It was an invigorating conversation and he gave so much good advice that I filled up three big notecards with ideas (both front and back I might add!). Firstly, he convinced me not to beat myself up for perhaps having less than optimal essential questions at the start. Just as I was asking my students to reassess their own writing and skills, I had to reassess my own framing of units. We also had a great conversation about the type of questions I should be asking my kids. Really I should center much of my content around debate questions and have my kids learn how to articulate the criteria with which they reach judgment. So, for example, instead of asking 'Why is Socrates important', a better question would be 'Is Socrates important?' This seems rather obvious in some ways because in history, after all, we are teaching kids how to be persuasive, and while on summative assessments I am great about asking more debate-type questions to get them to apply what they know, nonetheless I may be more 'conclusions' based in my backwards planning than might be optimal. In other words, I think about what students should know about a time and place, when really I should be thinking about how my students should wonder about those time and places.

What is also fantastic about Gary's advice for structuring my essential questions around 'defend or argue against' type verbs is that it gives me more options for reassessments as well. It encourages a type of creative thinking from both myself and my students that makes the class much more collaborative than having me hand down pronouncements for what they should know. I also thought Gary's observations were so insightful because as my department head once said, part of the reason why students have a hard time finding relevance for a history class is because they don't have enough baggage themselves at their age to understand how the past can be important, so questions in which students are forced to confront ethical or philosophical questions by using historical and even their own experience will give the material so much more meaning.

Hence I will spend some time rethinking my essential questions, which in turn will help me rethink the way I craft my lessons. I will admit, with head bowed, that my classes have always proved successful in the past, so in my own arrogance I was a little concerned at the start of my reflection that this whole standards thing was somehow ruining my mojo. But as I thought more about it and talked with Gary, it has instead become fulfilling to realize that although at first I was a little frustrated that my students did so poorly on their first unit standards, it also helped me come to a pedagogical epiphany about what would better frame the content. So yes, as Gary said, it is worth embracing this first foray into standards because it will only improve & strengthen the way I craft the curriculum, and I am excited to continue to update this blog with how it all goes.

Lastly, if anything my conversation with Gary only continues to solidify my belief that collaborating and working with other teachers is the best resource for any teacher. The advice, encouragement, and empathy of other teachers has made this profession all the more meaningful, and I will always be grateful for those moments of discussion.

SBG 2: Online reports

Last year I started to use Easy Grade Pro as my electronic gradebook, and part of the reason I chose Easy Grade Pro is because it allows me to easily upload a progress report to my school's network that my students can access anytime they are on campus and thus get a real-time view of their grade. This successfully helped prevent surprises about missing work and low grades - most students made use of the online report, and even for those who didn't, I could explain to their parents how accessible my gradebook is.

Yet this year the SBG component has made this process a bit more complicated for my freshmen class. I'm not the first to run into a conundrum with releasing frequent progress reports (see here); the SBG inherently disapproves of the idea of focusing on results, but instead emphasizes process, so telling a student that they can always find their cumulative grade in a class that wants to promote formative learning is somewhat counter-intuitive. So I've spent the last few days playing around with Easy Grade Pro and trying to decide what would be the best way to show students their progress.

Ideally I would like for them to have access to a graph that would show them how they are doing on standards. I tried a quick draft in Excel and it came out something like this:

The top graph shows their abilities in using evidence, and the bottom in writing skills. In this way of visualizing the student's process, for example, it's easy to spot that he/she improved in standard ES 2.3. My freshmen could easily keep track of their standards in such a way, but Easy Grade Pro does not make for internet reports that are graphic. So this isn't really an option unless I want to make a separate report card through Excel instead, but I am not sure how I would securely get such a report on the network for my students, and I haven't spent enough time considering Excel as my ultimate Gradebook.

Fortunately Easy Grade Pro does allow for showing the proficiency on each standard per assignment, so this is a snapshot of ultimately what my students would see:

The only slight problem is that this report shows a 'cumulative' standard grade (see "Succeeds" for ES 1.3), which is really an average of all of the scores per standard. I think this is ok for the purposes of progress reports, since the students should understand that their standards grades are meant to be in flux until the end of the term, but at the end I will have to calculate their final grade differently because I plan to weigh the scores at the end of a term more heavily than those at the start of the term (i.e. I'm not averaging the scores).

I have also decided that I will not show their current overall grade on this progress report - really the purpose of this online report will be for students to examine closely where they are 'beginning', 'developing', 'succeeding', and 'mastering' in the Essential Skills standards, and where they need to reassess for the Unit Goals standards. 

I will also take some time at the mid-term to have them reflect on their own progress - they'll get a physical copy of their standards scores and complete a reflection something like given here. The point of SBG is to get students to reflect on their learning process, so I want my online gradebook to show the least number of final results as possible, while still giving them a good idea of what assignments they are missing and what skills/content material they need to focus on. 

The first day of class: not too shabby

First confession: I was a little nervous today in anticipation of introducing the standards based grading system to my freshmen. I had written a concise but informative description of how I planned to implement the system in my syllabus, but I also decided I wasn't going to introduce it by just reading the syllabus together. That just would have been too wordy and boring. So instead I told them they could read all the details in the syllabus (indeed their first assignment is to sign a mutual agreement of expectations that I also signed and that their parents need to sign), but that I would explain the system using visuals and we'd have a discussion.

Second confession: I cribbed *a lot* from my friend Bowman to introduce the concept of standards based grading to my freshmen - in particular, he came up with a wonderful analogy between SBG and the game Angry Birds. So I will also give him all the credit for just how well they responded to the explanation. It was actually kind of thrill to see their positive reactions. 

First, it was obvious that they really welcomed the idea of having it be made very clear on every homework what they could work on and what skills they were required to master. I thought they'd be intimidated by it all, but instead they were really receptive. In fact, some of them almost anticipated some of my visuals with their questions. I think showing them a sample homework and explaining how it would work really helped (see sample homework image below).

Second, they clearly loved the idea that they could fix their knowledge of content with my unit goals component. I'll be interested to see which students end up actually pro-active about it, but at least today they made it clear that they understood they could be rewarded for improvement as well has penalized for not being pro-active about understanding the skills and content necessary for the course.

So we'll see how it goes, but third confession: I'm quite relieved that introducing my grading system was not as painful as I feared. In fact it only took about 15 minutes total with their questions and my visuals. 

I'll also say that while they didn't seem immediately sold on the concept of having a notebook solely devoted to my class, and the idea that we'd be gluing handouts in it, they clearly perked up at the idea of designing the cover of their portfolio. I had already decorated a cover for my portfolio and so I showed them mine and challenged them to make theirs look better because I'm a terrible artist. We'll see what they come up with next week!

SBG 1: The Syllabus

School is definitely around the corner: proctors have arrived back on campus, classrooms are being decorated, and the tone is being set for an exciting new year. In the midst of it all I have spent some time rethinking how I will apply SBG in my class, and have had some really thoughtful conversations with colleagues here about the process as well. In fact, the number of people on campus who are going to use SBG in some form this year has grown exponentially over the summer, and so it's been an exciting opportunity to talk with people from many other disciplines about how they plan to do it.

I drafted the syllabus for my freshmen and I think it articulates fairly well the grading system I will employ. You will notice that this end result is a much adapted concept from what I wrote a month ago, and in particular I have cut down drastically on the number of standards I hope to keep track of.

So here is the plan. Below is a table explaining how the final grade will be calculated.

How will this work? I am conceptualizing the 'Unit Goals' component of the standards grade to be a chance for students to reassess on summative, content driven assessments. The 'Essential Skills' component of the standards grade is a chance for them to reassess continually on formative assessments.

So let's start with the 'Essential Skills' component. For every assessment I give (whether it is homework or a quiz), I will grade their proficiency in mastering a certain set of standards on a 1-4 scale. Depending on the homework, I will grade all or just some of the standards in the table below, as announced in class.

STANDARD	ID	DESCRIPTION
Using Evidence	ES 1.1	I support my argument(s) with specific, relevant, accurate, verifiable, and logical evidence
	ES 1.2	I support my argument(s) by accurately drawing on or critiquing evidence from several points of view
	ES 1.3	I ensure that any facts I give to support an argument demonstrate a logical connection with my argument
Writing	ES 2.1	I can use word choice that is thoughtful, relevant, & precise
	ES 2.2	I ensure that my writing has clear organization so that each sentence and paragraph supports an overall structure that is logical and builds to a compelling, persuasive conclusion
	ES 2.3	I ensure my writing is appropriate to purpose and audience
	ES 2.4	I ensure my writing lacks spelling and grammatical errors

That's only seven standards, which is a much more manageable amount than what I had earlier, and I like that I (and maybe eventually the students!) can pick and choose which standards I want to grade for each assignment. Students can always improve their standard grade in later homework – the more they show mastery in a skill, the more their grade will reflect it in the end (more on that later).

Yet I wasn't comfortable with just allowing students the chance to reassess on skills - I felt like they should also have the chance to reassess on content. This is why I built-in the 'Unit Goals' component. The way this will work is that at the start of each unit students will receive a table to glue into their portfolio that includes a list of essential questions. By the end of each unit they will answer these essential questions and be graded according to the following rubric:

  

STANDARD	ID	DESCRIPTION
Content Knowledge	UG 1.1	I support my answer with specific, accurate, and verifiable evidence, drawn from discussions in–class, and from primary/secondary sources
	UG 1.2	I can use primary sources carefully, considering questions of point of view, context, and audience, as well as gaps in the available records
	UG 1.3	I can clearly, thoughtfully, and thoroughly explain and analyze the connection between all evidence and the arguments I make
	UG 1.4	I thoughtfully evaluate facts for their reliability and relevance to support my answer

The goal is to boil the list of essential questions down to only 2-3 per unit. I originally had 5-6 questions for a unit, but a colleague smartly reminded me that many of my questions could be combined. I will work on these essential questions throughout the year, and it will be a great exercise in thinking about what are my 'essential' questions! It seems so obvious now that this will help me backward design, but in all honesty this whole process has been rather revolutionary in my own planning of units. 

So, going back to the grading - let's say a student does not answer a unit question well because they did not use a lot of evidence, then they will have the chance to reassess. To do this, they just have to schedule a quick 5-10 minute discussion to formulate a reassessment. As my colleagues have pointed out, this is a great chance to allow a student to do a more 'personal', perhaps creative kind of project to demonstrate understanding (e.g. write letters between historical figures drawing on evidence; making a documentary etc.) I like to think of this actually as a more focused way of giving motivated students extra credit. The goal is to work together to come up with another assessment to demonstrate that they have a 4-level understanding of a certain standard.

So what will the grading look like? I will give my students the following rubric, which I adapted from MissCalcul8.

LEVEL	NUMERIC EQUIVALENT	HOW YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND IT
Exceeds expectations	4	I completely understand this skill and can repeat it without supervision with few, if any, mistakes. I would be comfortable explaining this skill to someone else.
Meets expectations	3	I understand this skill but there are times I make mistakes when I do it on my own. I still need help in figuring out where I am going wrong because my ability do apply the skill is inconsistent.
Needs practice	2	I have basic understanding of the skill, but I often get stuck. I need some more practice because it is clear I am having trouble applying this skill.
Beginner	1	I have very little understanding of the skill. I try to apply this skill, but it does not come naturally. I am frequently unsure of how to start with this skill.

I also love her StarWars rubric, which I will also introduce to the students.

The real problem is how to translate all of this into something that makes sense for their final grade. I decided the fairest way of dealing with this will be to weigh the final grade more heavily toward the last level grades. So this means if a student started off in the 1-2 level, but by the end of the term scored in the 3-4 levels, their positive progress will be what is most reflected in the final grade. Conversely, if a student was a master most of the term, but started to slack towards the end because they got lazy and ended up losing their mastery, that downfall will also be reflected in the grade. I have started playing around in my EasyGrade Pro gradebook with how I will keep track of all these records - I will post in the future how this weighing and record keeping turns out.

Some last thoughts: as you will also notice, I kept a fixed part of the final grade. For example, grading assessments in a more traditional fashion is still 20% of their final grade. So let's say I give an assignment where students read selections from the Epic of Gilgamesh and answer questions based on the reading. They will get a grade that falls into the 'assessment' category for completion (e.g. they answered 4 out of the 5 short essay questions thoroughly, so they get 4/5) and maybe get separate standards grades for ES 2.1 and 2.4. Then I may have them write a focused essay that forces them to reflect on how the Epic of Gilgamesh helps them to understand Mesopotamia and the Neolithic Revolution, and that will also be graded for completion as well as all 7 ES standards.

I have also kept the 'Citizenship' portion of the grade because I think my students need feedback as to their behavior, and although I very much understand that it is not easy to objectively grade a student's participation, I think writing thorough and specific comments on the report card about a student's behavior will go far to help explain the student's proficiency as a punctual, engaged student.

The 'citizenship' portion also allows me to start a new way penalizing students for late work. I used to take points off for dilatoriness (5% for one day late, 15% for two days late, 50% for 2+ days late), but I decided there may be a simpler, less drastic method. Each assignment will be marked according to its timeliness per the scale below:

0        1        2

Not turned in        Late        Met deadline

This number will go into the 'citizenship' part of the student's grade. It won't murder a child's grade (it's only 10% of their grade) if they are constantly late, but it does penalize them in a track-able way.

And finally the final exam. I plan to make it clear to students that it is the chance to show me what they have retained. Throughout the year they will have had the chance to see the skills in which they are strong and weak, and to improve the latter. The final will be their opportunity to pull it all together and show me what they understand from the term in its entirety. And theoretically the SBG portion of their grade will give them a chance to know exactly how  and what they need to study to do this.

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.