I believe in standards based grading, and think it has great power to help teachers give students the autonomy to be accountable for their own learning. As my school transitions from a traditional grade book to standards based learning, I have been looking for ways to make my formative assessments better aligned to this type of grading. The Plan My students are currently working on a summative project where they have been tasked to design an exhibit for our local science museum about light and/or sound waves. In order to check their progress, I asked students to turn in a rough draft of their exhibit proposal, and include with it a self-assessed rubric of how well they think they have met the performance outcomes (basically longterm learning targets) for this unit, and why. The Results I received a wide range of data from my students, which was intriguing to piece through during my weekend grading. The literature states numerous benefits to this type of formative assessment, some of which I observed and some of which I did not. About half of my students were honest with their self-assessment, marking themselves at or below grade level expectations for their project so far. A quarter of my students clearly paid no mind to the language in the rubric, and instead claimed to be meeting grade level expectations despite the lack of evidence to support this claim. A final quarter of my students were confused by the assignment and their self-assessment didn't actually follow the guidelines of the assignment. The Analysis My students are used to numbers and easy input-output grading styles. "I do this work with a certain level of effort, I get this grade," type of grading. Some of them are used to skating by with barely passing marks on summative assessments and relying on effort-based work like homework and classwork to get them a C in the class. Standards-based grading takes away this model and offers instead an approach that is simpler in some ways and more complex in others: did this student demonstrate he/she/they reached or exceeded grade level expectations for the standards? I think that this assignment was confusing for students that aren't used to being asked questions like this. They are used to rubrics that are check lists -- did you write in complete sentences? Did you include an introduction, body and conclusion paragraph? Did you make a 3D model? -- rather than more abstract inquiries into the learning that happened throughout the unit. This is going to take time and repetition for my students to get used to, as well as careful modeling and presentations of exemplars. For the students that found success with this assignment, however, I saw a high level of reflective thinking demonstrate in their self-assessment rubrics. Those that understood the goal of the assignment paid careful attention to the depth of knowledge language in the rubric and were able to provide me with a quality analysis of where they are at so far. I am going to ask a few of these students if I can use their rubrics as exemplars to help my students who are struggling to understand this transition in grading styles. Moving Forward I learned a lot from this formative assessment about how well my students understand our new standards based grading system. Hopefully, the feedback I provided them in this formative assessment will help guide them towards better understanding how to meet the performance outcomes in their final product. I know this will be a year long task for me of reiterating the point of these kinds of self-assessments in order to help my students transition into standards based grading. At times, this feels a little redundant for a group of 8th graders that next year will move on to high schools that don't use standards based grading, but my hope is that this one year of standards based grading might help them connect deeper to their own learning for years to come. References Essays, UK. (November 2013). An Essential Component Of Formative Assessment Education Essay. Nicol, D. J. & Macfarlane‐Dick, D. (2006) Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice, Studies in Higher Education, 31:2, 199-218, Spiller, D. (Feb, 2012). Assessment matters: self-assessment and peer-assessment. Teaching Development.
6 Comments
Rhea Gillespie
9/30/2018 11:32:11 am
It was good to see how you used the standards based rubric with the students. I have been struggling to figure out how to do this with my students, but I think I am supposed to be using a similar approach. My sixth and seventh graders have not taken any of my rubrics seriously yet. Did most of your students seem to take this seriously?
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9/30/2018 01:41:54 pm
Rhea, I will send you a copy of my rubric so you can check it out. My kids mostly did take it seriously. I think because I told them that this was the rubric that I was using for their final project, they understood the importance of it -- but they also still didn't read through it with the level of detail I was hoping for. But I can understand why because it's so many words for a middle schooler to take in at once! Not very kid friendly. I am wondering how to make it more kid friendly for my next unit.
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Julie Huey
10/4/2018 04:03:20 pm
Emma,
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Emma
10/5/2018 01:55:15 pm
I agree, this system seems to be really good for keeping us as teachers accountable that we're actually teaching to the standards.
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Morgan Kueter
10/6/2018 07:43:41 am
I have also struggled with getting students to understand how grading from a rubric works. While my school does not use a standards based grading system, I do use rubrics in my classroom often for many different types of assignments. I have noticed in the first few weeks of school that students rarely refer to a rubric when working on these assignments, they are more concerned about what is required for the assignment and simply completing those requirements. I have had to restructure and reworking student-teacher conferences to reteach the importance of and how to use a rubric for assessment.
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Jill Choate
10/11/2018 06:05:05 am
Nice conversation lady! I think it's a process for the kids to understand just as much as the teachers. My daughter in 8th grade understands the rubric for the most part but she still wants it related back to a grade. Grades have been emphasized for so long that the biggest struggle will be to to get that idea out of student and parents head. Love your thoughts and willingness to share! Nice job!
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Emma BooneFirst year 8th grade PBL math/science teacher and graduate student, wondering a bunch and figuring a few things out here and there. Archives
December 2018
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