Standards Based Grading and Redos

What should a grade book reflect?  Far too often the answer to that question is "how well a student is doing."  How well they are doing at what though?  Learning or compliance?  Traditional grading can leave students unclear of what they are supposed to be learning as things such as behavior, effort, extra credit, and other trivial points accrued cloud their grade, while teacher expectations vary vastly from classroom to classroom.

The best answer here is that grade books should accurately reflect and communicate what a student knows and demonstrates.  The math and science classrooms at Valley Southwoods quickly jumped on board with standards based grading for that very reason.  Josef Sigrist explained that standards based grades give grades meaning and allows students and parents to focus on specific skills that need to be addressed, while allowing teachers to easily adjust instruction to meet the needs of each student.

This means less clutter in the grade book, as students should only be receiving one score per learning goal that shows where the student is at with that standard at that point in time.  So how does homework fit in?  Rys Pate said that homework is essential in terms of making connections between the standard, learning objectives, and the assessment.  Homework is also crucial for providing descriptive feedback and should influence instruction.  However, it shouldn't be heavily graded and ideally it should not be entered into the grade book at all, but rather seen as practice.  This philosophy has not led to further late and incomplete assignments by students, but rather toward a focus and desire for learning and doing well on assessments.

Standards based grading also means you have to be open to redos, which Abby Cunningham said leads to some common misconceptions of a lack of accountability, responsibility, and work ethic.  Each standard and learning target isn't a high stakes assessment where a student gets it or they don't, but rather a process towards true mastery.  Zeros and other low scores just convey the message that the learning target was not important.  Abby and the rest of the department have a strict set of procedures for students to utilize and improve their performance.  Erin O’Connell is convinced this process teaches the students a growth mindset and instills continuous improvement as a way of life.

John Upah and Adam Kent in the science department believe standards based grading makes parent/teacher conferences and other communication very easy.  The standards based gradebook is very transparent in communicating what a student does well and what specific skills they need to improve.  John and Adam are confident that the grades on student transcripts are much more accurate and put the sole responsibility of that grade on the student.

All departments and classrooms at Valley Southwoods are going through the procedure in the graphic above and either have or are developing the common power standards and assessments needed to do standards based grading.  Many also allow and have procedures for redos and reassessments, so while math and science have made the jump, many more departments are closer to doing standards based grading than they may realize.  Contact an instructional coach if you would like to look at the possibility of implementing standards based grading in your department or classroom!

Seven Reasons for Standards Based Grading

Grading in the 21st Century

Rick Wormeli's Response to a High Achieving Student w/ Concerns about SBG

Valley Southwoods Standards Based Grading Handout

Valley Southwoods Math Reassessment Procedures

Do You Even Flubaroo???

Pre-assessments, common assessments, differentiated instruction, data-driven instruction, PLCs. These are just some of the many buzzwords and acronyms teachers hear all the time.  Sometimes these things are extremely difficult to implement in the classroom.  Some teachers may wonder what it actually looks like. Others know how to do it, but question how they will find the time to work out the logistics of it.

To start out the school year, the social studies and science departments at Valley Southwoods decided to use Google Forms to accomplish many of these tasks.  During their PLC time they would go over what standards need to be mastered, what questions would address that content, and collaboratively created Forms that all teachers would use.  Adam Kent said the science department saved a lot of time here too by having all simultaneously write questions on the same form for different standards. Common pre-assessment: check!

After having students complete the Google Form, the social studies and science teachers had a wealth of data to look at and analyze.  To make this easy, they enabled the "Add-on" called Flubaroo. Grading a stack of papers or running a scantron become a thing of the past. Flubaroo automatically assesses Google Forms as they are submitted by students. Students even had immediate feedback on how they scored, since Flubaroo automatically emails them their score within a minute of submission.  Luanne Baker noted that students really like the immediate feedback, as well as the option of taking the assessment on a computer rather than paper and pencil.  Time efficient: check!

Flubaroo gives a great breakdown on scores beyond just a percentage for each student or a class average.  It also analyzes each question and quickly informs you what standards your classes will need more instruction on.  This allows you to create flexible grouping for each standard based on content.  Ross Bower was amazed by the conversations and learning that occurred in these newly formed groups as he got into instruction and the students were able to reflect on what they know and what they are learning.  John Upah may have summarized it best by saying, "I instantly know which learning targets students mastered and which ones they struggled with, as well as how students performed as a whole.  After that first quiz, as a department we were able to see that all students in the building struggled to answer the same questions, and now we can develop strategies to help those students." Data-driven instruction and differentiated the content/processing: check, check!

TL;DR VERSION: 
Pre-assessments are valuable. Flubaroo is easy, fast and awesome. See an instructional coach for help using Flubaroo in your classroom.

New Blog!

Welcome to a new school year and the new blog presented by your Southwoods Instructional Coaches!  Hopefully you will find it filled with useful and relevant information that expands on our building goals and collaboration content, challenges us to implement new tools and strategies, and most importantly celebrates our successes.

We will look to update the blog regularly with new tools, strategies, and links.  One link that I want to point out is the “Instructional Coach Request Form” link on the right side of this page.  We ask that you fill this short form out if you would like to schedule an appointment with a coach so that we can research your request beforehand and find also find a good time for us to meet.

Lastly, I just want to thank everyone for being so welcoming to me in my new position.  Many of you have made me feel right at home during my first couple days on the job, which is a testament to the kind of people we have here at Southwoods.  Many teachers have shared with me new technology or strategies they are going to implement this year with great excitement and I have heard so many great collaborative conversations centered on what is best for students and their learning.  I am looking forward to assisting all of you in any way I can!  Good luck this year!