The current school system is more outcome based--we, or rather the government, expects all kids to master the same things by the completion of each grade level. For our students who take longer to understand and master material, this can be really discouraging. I think checklists are better than grade cards at measuring improvement. Also, allowing kids to correct or redo work that is incorrect sends the message that you want them to improve and learn rather than pass or fail. I do a lot of error analysis on my students work--meaning I identify what they did right and what they did wrong so they can do better next time. My students are so accustomed to being wrong they expect it and do not look at their returned homework to see where their mistakes were. They just toss the paper in the trash and are happy to be done with it so they can go on to the next thing. When I go over their work with them, we talk about what they did right as well as what they did wrong and most of the time they did far more things right than wrong. For example, I once had a student who was super excited about an upcoming test on division of fractions. She had been working hard and was sure she was going to ace the test. When the teacher returned her test to her she was devastated that she got a 0%. When I went over the test with her, she had made the same mistake on every single problem--she had forgotten to take the reciprocal of the 2nd fraction when she changed the division to multiplication. It took about 3 minutes to help her correct that one error and I guarantee she never forgot the reciprocal again. If I had let her throw the test away and walk away thinking she had done nothing right we would have likely spent days reteaching a concept she obviously knew.
I agree with you that teachers should give students the chance to fix the work but some students would get so cuaght up in fixing all the work that (at least some of mine) would not hand it in the first time. Not to metion most students at the high school here do not take advantage of this even when it's offered. I think teachers should tell them its OK to re-do things and know one will think less of them if they do it again.
Improvement focus is what my team does with our one-one-one students that are in the Interrelated room for the majority of the time. For the most part, their (one-on-one) gen ed teachers also focus on improvement over grades. I think that it is easier to focus on improvement over grades in CTE classes. I like the ideas of Quality Boosters...... as a positive way to give feedback for improvement. I like that name better than error analysis. The current school system focuses on grades as a way to measure student success. The state testing...all the testing focuses on "instant" success as measured by how well students do on a formal test.
I like the idea of Quality Boosters as well. I know several teachers who have students graph their own progress towards a goal, this would be another way for them to get feedback, in a way that they would understand, on how to improve. It would also be beneficial for the students giving the quality booster - to master something well enough to teach it and to give feedback to others.
Change is hard, and very slow. Students have always worked for the grade, as have parents, so would need to be a gradual change, and maybe better in the long run. Improvement is a bit harder to document and is somewhat a judgement call, so harder to show. Overall it is an interesting concept!
I agree, we are so grade focused that progress on individual skills often get lost in the mix of it all. My school loops their sped students and by doing that I can see more progress over a 3 year span versus a 1 year span. 8th grade IEP's are especially easy to write if I have had them all 3 years!
If they move towards every student having a more individualized education I think it would be feasible that every student have their own goals and therefore a lot of data collection. The data should show the growth but can you imagine collecting data for 30 students every month?! Yuck!
Grades are so ingrained in the school system. I love when classroom teachers are progress-minded and allow students to improve their work over time. Even if this doesn't change the grade, students are learning that progress and growth is important!
When I work on projects with students, I like to create a rubric with students so they get to help decide the items on the rubric and how they’ll be assessed. I feel like using a rubric does take learning to improvement, especially if we look at the rubric part way through so students can compare what they’ve done with the expectation. I don’t think the current school system really focuses on improvement. There are aspects, like the MTSS process that focuses on students’ deficiencies and tries to bring those areas higher. However, since we are so regimented in our ideas about grade levels and grading policies, the push for improvement focus isn’t there.
I would agree that too often teachers are worried about the desired outcome of the class. For example did I get to Chapter 9 in the math book so that the students will have been introduced to that concept for next year. Instead of thinking, my students did not really understand Chapter 8 maybe I should go back a re-teach it. Not enough teachers in my building go back and re-teach concepts to help in student improvement.
I use rubrics often in my room too. One problem I found when I worked with gifted students was they are very much teacher pleasers. They would ask me over and over what I wanted to see from their finished project. If I gave them too much information or was too specific on the rubric, I did not get the creativity I was hoping to see from their projects. Their projects would all fulfill the requirements, but lacked the ingenuity I wanted from them.
In order to move my class away from grade focus, I would simply start by making things worth participation points. Since participation is one of my classroom rules anyway I would look at how much effort a student gave me on an assignment, offer feedback and look over corrections. If the student was able to meet the objective they get all the “points” for the day. If a student does nothing then that is exactly what they get nothing for participation points. Once this is explained to parents, most come on board. After all if you think about it our society already uses this method in the work force. The harder you work the more “benefits” you get. I know some teachers in my building use this method for reading aloud in class and watching videos in class So it would not be too far off of what is already being done. It seems easier than going through and grading all the assignments by hand. Not to mention I just finished a lesson where I was more interested to see if they knew how to solve the problem rather than actually solving the problem.
I also do participation points. I don't necessarily grade them on correct/incorrect answers but that they tried and attempted problems, participated in discussion, etc. I also rarely just mark things wrong on papers or worksheets- We (the student/group and I) always review and correct before the final is turned in. This goes for math and reading. I think this benefits the learning process- checking and fixing what needs to rather than just getting a paper returned and seeing what you got wrong.
In our district the elementary schools still use the skills type report cards. We have often talked of carrying that over in the middle school. The logistics of it all with the core teachers having 100 or so students would not be very fesible. So that leaves us stuck with entering grades in the computer and going from there. At PTC teachers can have a skills progress discussion with parents, if the parent comes! I would like to see a report that focuses on skills progression and improvment along with grades. Unfortunately at the end of the day some are only interested in the grade! With my sped students I started using an IPad app called SeeSaw. It is an online journal where the teacher or student can take pictures of work and attach it to the students' folder. Teachers, students, and parents can all have access and can communicate about the work. That is a nice and easy way to show progression over skills learned in the classroom and a good visual too! Sped teachers are fortunate to use skills progression and improvement in our IEP's and to be able to discuss that with parents once a year. Everyone gets a more indepth picture of the student when the focus in on improvement and progression verses a grade!
I will have to look into SeeSaw. We have been looking for something that we could use for our student led conferences or if we move to online conferences for our middle school students. Was it a free app or did it cost?
Will definitely be checking out the SeeSaw app. I've been taking some pictures w/ the Ipad, but sounds like it would be a great way to share w/ parents
I've never heard of SeeSaw, but already have a teacher in mind who I think would really like to use this with a couple of her students. Thanks so much for sharing with us!!!
I think improvement is MUCH more important than grades wapecialy with our students. I can see the huge growth they have made over the year and I don't worry too much about what their standardized test scores tell me. I know what they can and cannot do YET! I wish all schools would focus more on what they can do and what the next step is and show the improvement rather than the grade.
I've been in staffings where the parent comes in defeated right from the get go because they know their kiddo's not where everyone else is. But then when we go over little Johnny's progress monitoring and show mom/dad how much the student's actually accomplished, they're genuinely SUPER proud (As they should be!). However, if we just looked at the end score, it wouldn't be near as impressive or give an accurate depiction of what the child's capable of.
How can you move your classroom more towards improvement focus and less on grade focus? I really try to do that already. I give grades and the kids see them, but I really try to focus on growth of improvement focus. I love really looking at 21st century skills as talked about in the book. I think that would be a great first step in that direction. I love to see when the student recognizes growth and is excited about it. Grades do not always do that for SPED students, but improvement or growth on a particular skills does.
How does the current school system regard this idea? The current school system does not put much focus on this. They have even gone backwards I think. The state test is even more unfriendly to students that struggle and they are expected to take the same thing all the students take. It will be interesting this year after they take the first section to see what kind of test each student is given on the next section that is suppose to reflect their level better.
I agree about the state testing, I have many students leave the test extremely discouraged. Some will say, " I didn't know anything on there, I probably got them all wrong." When really this doesn't show anything personally about their learning experience- except add a stat to state and national scores.. is this beneficial for the student at all on their learning process?? NO. it is only beneficial for state and national organizations.
Well grades obviously play a big roll. There is a huge emphasis on grades.. we do a save your grade party- so all the kids who have C or better and no missing assignments each semester get to go to the party. Parents get online to check the students grades- we send progress reports with grades, and so on. However, we have been doing a lot of AIMS web and this has an emphasis on progress made- the teachers show this to the parents as well. For our IEPs, our data collection is all progress monitoring. I love seeing this. I have a couple students who may not being doing so well, GRADE WISE, in the mainstream classes, but the improvement they have made in reading and math is huge! So what is more important here??? I have some students that have to get a grade so an A is put in the place but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. The progress and data collection means so much more. For my students to realize this, I like to show them there improvements on a graph or with numbers. For example on sight words or reading passages I'll show them: look you got 10 words last time and this time you got 20! do you feel like youre getting better?? And they love to explain how and why they feel better and what is still hard for them. I really like to show parents this a meetings too, because so many are concerned that their student may have a C or D (whatever it may be) in a class. I'll explain, they are a bit behind but look at the growth they have made! It is difficult sometimes because not all teachers use the growth over grades strategies- but explaining the importance of growth over grades to students and parents may change their outlook when getting a report card and when learning new things for the rest of their lives.
I know with my more severe students when I am writing their goals and check lists I really try to focus on things that I know they can show growth in and see success. I also try to keep in mind if they are a student I will have to provide a grade for how I can use their check lists to provide their grade.
I would say the majority of school systems (that I’ve been in) are still using a grade-focused classroom. And maybe not even ‘grade’ focused per say, but DEFINITELY an end-result focus in regard to student performance on the state assessment. On the other hand, I also work with a few teachers who are like, “I know this kiddo’s going to do awful on the state assessment, but she’s working her tail off in the classroom and doing the very best she can, so it is what it is.” I wish I had more teachers like that… When I’m around them, they don’t seem as stressed out about state assessments, and, in turn, neither do their students. It just feels like a more productive learning environment when you walk into their classrooms.
I really appreciate the perspective of the early grades with their checklists for grading. It provides parents and kids with an idea what will need to be mastered and an idea of their progress towards mastery, so much more than an A,B,C, etc. It reinforces that the standards will continue to be taught through the year, not just a one shot and done opportunity. I've seen some new high school teachers incorporating this as well, allowing students to continue testing on a concept until mastery.
The current school system is more outcome based--we, or rather the government, expects all kids to master the same things by the completion of each grade level. For our students who take longer to understand and master material, this can be really discouraging. I think checklists are better than grade cards at measuring improvement. Also, allowing kids to correct or redo work that is incorrect sends the message that you want them to improve and learn rather than pass or fail. I do a lot of error analysis on my students work--meaning I identify what they did right and what they did wrong so they can do better next time. My students are so accustomed to being wrong they expect it and do not look at their returned homework to see where their mistakes were. They just toss the paper in the trash and are happy to be done with it so they can go on to the next thing. When I go over their work with them, we talk about what they did right as well as what they did wrong and most of the time they did far more things right than wrong. For example, I once had a student who was super excited about an upcoming test on division of fractions. She had been working hard and was sure she was going to ace the test. When the teacher returned her test to her she was devastated that she got a 0%. When I went over the test with her, she had made the same mistake on every single problem--she had forgotten to take the reciprocal of the 2nd fraction when she changed the division to multiplication. It took about 3 minutes to help her correct that one error and I guarantee she never forgot the reciprocal again. If I had let her throw the test away and walk away thinking she had done nothing right we would have likely spent days reteaching a concept she obviously knew.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that teachers should give students the chance to fix the work but some students would get so cuaght up in fixing all the work that (at least some of mine) would not hand it in the first time. Not to metion most students at the high school here do not take advantage of this even when it's offered. I think teachers should tell them its OK to re-do things and know one will think less of them if they do it again.
DeleteImprovement focus is what my team does with our one-one-one students that are in the Interrelated room for the majority of the time. For the most part, their (one-on-one) gen ed teachers also focus on improvement over grades. I think that it is easier to focus on improvement over grades in CTE classes.
ReplyDeleteI like the ideas of Quality Boosters...... as a positive way to give feedback for improvement. I like that name better than error analysis.
The current school system focuses on grades as a way to measure student success. The state testing...all the testing focuses on "instant" success as measured by how well students do on a formal test.
I like the idea of Quality Boosters as well. I know several teachers who have students graph their own progress towards a goal, this would be another way for them to get feedback, in a way that they would understand, on how to improve. It would also be beneficial for the students giving the quality booster - to master something well enough to teach it and to give feedback to others.
DeleteChange is hard, and very slow. Students have always worked for the grade, as have parents, so would need to be a gradual change, and maybe better in the long run. Improvement is a bit harder to document and is somewhat a judgement call, so harder to show. Overall it is an interesting concept!
ReplyDeleteI agree, we are so grade focused that progress on individual skills often get lost in the mix of it all. My school loops their sped students and by doing that I can see more progress over a 3 year span versus a 1 year span. 8th grade IEP's are especially easy to write if I have had them all 3 years!
DeleteIf they move towards every student having a more individualized education I think it would be feasible that every student have their own goals and therefore a lot of data collection. The data should show the growth but can you imagine collecting data for 30 students every month?! Yuck!
DeleteGrades are so ingrained in the school system. I love when classroom teachers are progress-minded and allow students to improve their work over time. Even if this doesn't change the grade, students are learning that progress and growth is important!
DeleteI agree with Carol's comment, looking back over the previous three year's growth for triennials, helps put kids progress into perspective.
DeleteWhen I work on projects with students, I like to create a rubric with students so they get to help decide the items on the rubric and how they’ll be assessed. I feel like using a rubric does take learning to improvement, especially if we look at the rubric part way through so students can compare what they’ve done with the expectation.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think the current school system really focuses on improvement. There are aspects, like the MTSS process that focuses on students’ deficiencies and tries to bring those areas higher. However, since we are so regimented in our ideas about grade levels and grading policies, the push for improvement focus isn’t there.
I would agree that too often teachers are worried about the desired outcome of the class. For example did I get to Chapter 9 in the math book so that the students will have been introduced to that concept for next year. Instead of thinking, my students did not really understand Chapter 8 maybe I should go back a re-teach it. Not enough teachers in my building go back and re-teach concepts to help in student improvement.
DeleteI use rubrics also for projects and unit studies. I take the skills I want assessed and break them down Rubrics are the perfect way to do that!
DeleteI like the fact that you have your students help decide the items on the rubric and how they will be assessed.
DeleteI use rubrics often in my room too. One problem I found when I worked with gifted students was they are very much teacher pleasers. They would ask me over and over what I wanted to see from their finished project. If I gave them too much information or was too specific on the rubric, I did not get the creativity I was hoping to see from their projects. Their projects would all fulfill the requirements, but lacked the ingenuity I wanted from them.
DeleteIn order to move my class away from grade focus, I would simply start by making things worth participation points. Since participation is one of my classroom rules anyway I would look at how much effort a student gave me on an assignment, offer feedback and look over corrections. If the student was able to meet the objective they get all the “points” for the day. If a student does nothing then that is exactly what they get nothing for participation points. Once this is explained to parents, most come on board. After all if you think about it our society already uses this method in the work force. The harder you work the more “benefits” you get. I know some teachers in my building use this method for reading aloud in class and watching videos in class So it would not be too far off of what is already being done. It seems easier than going through and grading all the assignments by hand. Not to mention I just finished a lesson where I was more interested to see if they knew how to solve the problem rather than actually solving the problem.
ReplyDeleteI also do participation points. I don't necessarily grade them on correct/incorrect answers but that they tried and attempted problems, participated in discussion, etc. I also rarely just mark things wrong on papers or worksheets- We (the student/group and I) always review and correct before the final is turned in. This goes for math and reading.
DeleteI think this benefits the learning process- checking and fixing what needs to rather than just getting a paper returned and seeing what you got wrong.
In our district the elementary schools still use the skills type report cards. We have often talked of carrying that over in the middle school. The logistics of it all with the core teachers having 100 or so students would not be very fesible. So that leaves us stuck with entering grades in the computer and going from there. At PTC teachers can have a skills progress discussion with parents, if the parent comes! I would like to see a report that focuses on skills progression and improvment along with grades. Unfortunately at the end of the day some are only interested in the grade!
ReplyDeleteWith my sped students I started using an IPad app called SeeSaw. It is an online journal where the teacher or student can take pictures of work and attach it to the students' folder. Teachers, students, and parents can all have access and can communicate about the work. That is a nice and easy way to show progression over skills learned in the classroom and a good visual too!
Sped teachers are fortunate to use skills progression and improvement in our IEP's and to be able to discuss that with parents once a year. Everyone gets a more indepth picture of the student when the focus in on improvement and progression verses a grade!
Never heard of SeeSaw. But definitely
DeleteLooking it up! Thanks Carol!!
I will have to look into SeeSaw. We have been looking for something that we could use for our student led conferences or if we move to online conferences for our middle school students. Was it a free app or did it cost?
DeleteWill definitely be checking out the SeeSaw app. I've been taking some pictures w/ the Ipad, but sounds like it would be a great way to share w/ parents
DeleteSeeSaw sounds like an amazing app. Thanks for sharing!
DeleteI've never heard of SeeSaw, but already have a teacher in mind who I think would really like to use this with a couple of her students. Thanks so much for sharing with us!!!
DeleteI'll be sharing SeeSaw also. Thanks!
DeleteI think improvement is MUCH more important than grades wapecialy with our students. I can see the huge growth they have made over the year and I don't worry too much about what their standardized test scores tell me. I know what they can and cannot do YET! I wish all schools would focus more on what they can do and what the next step is and show the improvement rather than the grade.
ReplyDeleteI've been in staffings where the parent comes in defeated right from the get go because they know their kiddo's not where everyone else is. But then when we go over little Johnny's progress monitoring and show mom/dad how much the student's actually accomplished, they're genuinely SUPER proud (As they should be!). However, if we just looked at the end score, it wouldn't be near as impressive or give an accurate depiction of what the child's capable of.
DeleteHow can you move your classroom more towards improvement focus and less on grade focus?
ReplyDeleteI really try to do that already. I give grades and the kids see them, but I really try to focus on growth of improvement focus. I love really looking at 21st century skills as talked about in the book. I think that would be a great first step in that direction. I love to see when the student recognizes growth and is excited about it. Grades do not always do that for SPED students, but improvement or growth on a particular skills does.
How does the current school system regard this idea?
The current school system does not put much focus on this. They have even gone backwards I think. The state test is even more unfriendly to students that struggle and they are expected to take the same thing all the students take. It will be interesting this year after they take the first section to see what kind of test each student is given on the next section that is suppose to reflect their level better.
I agree about the state testing, I have many students leave the test extremely discouraged. Some will say, " I didn't know anything on there, I probably got them all wrong."
DeleteWhen really this doesn't show anything personally about their learning experience- except add a stat to state and national scores.. is this beneficial for the student at all on their learning process?? NO. it is only beneficial for state and national organizations.
Well grades obviously play a big roll. There is a huge emphasis on grades.. we do a save your grade party- so all the kids who have C or better and no missing assignments each semester get to go to the party. Parents get online to check the students grades- we send progress reports with grades, and so on.
ReplyDeleteHowever, we have been doing a lot of AIMS web and this has an emphasis on progress made- the teachers show this to the parents as well. For our IEPs, our data collection is all progress monitoring. I love seeing this.
I have a couple students who may not being doing so well, GRADE WISE, in the mainstream classes, but the improvement they have made in reading and math is huge! So what is more important here???
I have some students that have to get a grade so an A is put in the place but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. The progress and data collection means so much more.
For my students to realize this, I like to show them there improvements on a graph or with numbers. For example on sight words or reading passages I'll show them: look you got 10 words last time and this time you got 20! do you feel like youre getting better?? And they love to explain how and why they feel better and what is still hard for them.
I really like to show parents this a meetings too, because so many are concerned that their student may have a C or D (whatever it may be) in a class. I'll explain, they are a bit behind but look at the growth they have made! It is difficult sometimes because not all teachers use the growth over grades strategies- but explaining the importance of growth over grades to students and parents may change their outlook when getting a report card and when learning new things for the rest of their lives.
I know with my more severe students when I am writing their goals and check lists I really try to focus on things that I know they can show growth in and see success. I also try to keep in mind if they are a student I will have to provide a grade for how I can use their check lists to provide their grade.
ReplyDeleteI would say the majority of school systems (that I’ve been in) are still using a grade-focused classroom. And maybe not even ‘grade’ focused per say, but DEFINITELY an end-result focus in regard to student performance on the state assessment. On the other hand, I also work with a few teachers who are like, “I know this kiddo’s going to do awful on the state assessment, but she’s working her tail off in the classroom and doing the very best she can, so it is what it is.” I wish I had more teachers like that… When I’m around them, they don’t seem as stressed out about state assessments, and, in turn, neither do their students. It just feels like a more productive learning environment when you walk into their classrooms.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate the perspective of the early grades with their checklists for grading. It provides parents and kids with an idea what will need to be mastered and an idea of their progress towards mastery, so much more than an A,B,C, etc. It reinforces that the standards will continue to be taught through the year, not just a one shot and done opportunity. I've seen some new high school teachers incorporating this as well, allowing students to continue testing on a concept until mastery.
ReplyDelete