Back to school and Blog!

Goal: Get back to blogging this school year! I started this, then of course, life got in the way. Last school year, I had 2 brand new classes: AP English Language & Composition and American Literature. So it was a lot of trying, not only to keep my head above water, but to swim while I was at it. And looking back, we had a lot of successes last year - 60 percent of my AP students scored a 4 or 5; my co-taught students went from writing one paragraph essays to cohesive 5-paragraph essays; MAP scores improved overall. So swim we did. 

This year, I have those same classes again. My goal now is to refine what we did last year and reach even better results... which brings me to my focus for today: Standards-Based Grading. This summer, I read Fair Isn't Always Equal, by Rick Wormeli. 

It was recommended to me on a site visit I went on last spring to an international school in San Antonio. The book completely changed my way of thinking about mastery learning and grades. Some of my favorite insights: 

- Give open prompt test at the beginning of the unit. Students take it at the end of the unit, so that they know what they are expected to learn. We haven’t done our job if a student asks, “Will this be on the test?”

- A D is a coward’s F - the student failed, but the teacher didn’t have the courage to tell him

- Teachers who are focused on students’ growth and mastery usually allow work and assessments to be redone.

- If grades are meant to stand for the students’ level of competence at the end of the quarter, teachers must ask themselves, “Does it matter how quickly they reached competence? Does it matter if it took extra feedback or a second revision?”

- Solutions for grading come in two ways: through conversation and constant reexamination.

- One of our potential concerns with this format is that our assessments often incorporate more than one standard. Does this mean we have to record the assignment under more than one standard, and because of that, give more than one grade on each assignment? Yes.

Standards-Based Grading - the Rationale

Wormeli inspired me to reevaluate my grading systems and what they mean. I used to subscribe to categories-weighted grades: homework, assessments, etc. But now I know that those point values basically mean nothing. When a parent looks at a report card with a traditional grading system, they see points on assignments. This tells us nothing about the student's specific skill levels, though. Grading students on standards, however, exemplifies their skills and creates a grade book that reflects a student's strengths and weaknesses.

It's kind of like a baseball card. On the back side, you read Babe Ruth's statistics in each area of the game, not just an overall score assigned to him. This allows to create a picture of what kind of player he is. And that's what our grades should do - paint a picture of our students.

To figure out how this translated into an English classroom is for the next post.... Come back soon!