Sunday, September 20, 2015

Week 3: Navigating The "Grade Book" When There Are No Grades

Image via: HERE

Two weeks in...

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the third week of school here in NYC.  It has been a funky couple weeks with only three days of school each week because of holidays.  This upcoming week is the same, two more holidays on Wednesday and Thursday- it has made the establishing of norms, front-loading and developing routine challenging, but like any good school we trudge forward and do the best we can.

Two weeks ago I told AP that they would not be receiving any numeric or alpha numeric grades on the daily work or projects.  That twice a year- during what will look more like an intersession you would see in college (January and June) students will have to do a Defense of Learning that is in the process of being developed.  I am a huge proponent of portfolios and of students having to speak as to WHY they have earned the score they did for the semester or year.  Now that it is connected to Mastery Based Learning, my hope is that this will provide students with especially useful data to support their arguments- because it is about them.

The juniors dove in head first.  There has been no push back and in the first assignment they were asked to do for me- "Defend you seat in AP Lang: Why do you deserve to be here?"  They were surprisingly reflective and used anecdotal evidence well to support their position.  The lack of proofreading, as always, is astonishing but that is something to work on.  For the most part this is a strong group and even the kids who will struggle more will grow and move forward.  That is the larger goal- always.

I also kicked off assertion journals.  This year I have had students create blogs where they will do informal writing and homework.  I am shared as an admin on every blog and the blogs are linked from our class website so everything is 100% transparent for each other.  In addition to the weekly writing response (with required word count) they also have to read three peer blogs and provide a GLOW and GROW.  While some of the feedback is much better than others, I need to give more parameters for feedback- the biggest being, and it almost always is- SAY WHY.  I find this is where the kids always struggle the most.  Explain why you have the opinion you do.  It's not enough to just say it.  That doesn't help me as a writer.  SAY WHY.  However, the thinking is growing and developing and I am excited to see how the use of blogging helps student learning this year.



The Grade Book...

At our school we use a program from Data-Cation called Skedula.  I have been using Skedula as a teacher for most of my career now and we have grown up together.  The thing I love about this company is that it was created by teachers who know and understand what teachers need.  They saw a problem and created a solution.  Peter from DataCation came to out school this past week to do a training and he and I were able to talk more 1:1 on my #TTOG and how to modify the platform for our needs.  Thankfully Starr Sackstein, a trailblazing NYC high school teacher had already done a ton of work and advocacy to make Skedula a platform that would work for her as she TTOG last year and documented the entire journey.  Peter was great help and I now have some structures in place for how to "grade" moving forward.  

This weekend I began the documentation of tracking skills.  It defiantly needs some refining on my part.  I need to make clearer links to the College Board learning objectives and how they are linked to the mastery standards so students understand what each standard entails.  It is all language I have written up, I just need to be more transparent and spend some time (WHEN DO I HAVE TIME?) looking at it with students.  

I'll have students check Pupil Path (the student/parent facing side of the grade book) to support them with reviewing their development on mastery.  I am not sure that it really provides enough information for a student and I can see where parents may be frustrated.  What is the balance between feedback in Skedula and feedback on the paper?  Work smart, Towne.  

I would love to hear from teachers about how they give feedback and document in a MBA setting!  Tell me what has worked for you?  What didn't work and what did you learn from it?  

I'm off and running- Look out week 3!  Here we come! 

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Diving Into The Deep End: Goodbye Grades, Hello Mastery Learning!

Last year my school began the shift towards Mastery Learning.  I was keen on the idea of mastering skills or content rather that simply working from assignment to assignment- seeing how a kid did and moving forward with out revision or truly looking at the why of the learning.  I had some frank conversations with my AP Lang students last spring about what they thought class would be like for them if they didn't have the pressure of grades.  Their thinking was insightful and eye opening, confirming much of my own thinking about student learning.  When they are not working for a grade, but on a skill, they will invest in a different way, working to improve the skill.  Students don't work to improve grades on individual assignments in traditional classrooms.  They look at the grade on the paper, cheer or cry, and move onto the next assignment with the hope of improving the overall grade for the course by bringing the average up.

Mastery in motion: Theatre Arts

I also teach theatre.  It is a required course for all students at our school.  One of the units, solo performance is where students have to select, learn/memorize, create character and blocking and ultimately perform their monologue for their peers.  It is a big deal.  Some kids come in and blow it out of the water.  Other kids melt down and cry.  I have two rules though.


1. Everyone has to try. If you are absent you go to the end of the list, but everyone has to get up and make an attempt.  This is what makes a student eligible to do a make-up and try again.

2. If you have tried, and you are not happy with your score, you are eligible to try again and you can earn up to FULL credit.  There is no penalty for trying again the incentive being improvement.  They get the rubric back after the first try, they have time to rehearse and revise, work on the skills that needed improvement.

I would say 75% of students try again.  It's usually a range of make-ups: kids who failed and kids who did well and want to eek out those last few points.  This is mastery of skills with room for revision and improvement to demonstrate a higher level of mastery. Every time I do this unit I see the same results and impact on student growth and learning.  I knew it worked.  It was about moving to put the theory into practice across the board.


The AP Pilot

Numerous conversations have taken place since the spring when I read Assessment 3.0  by Mark D. Barnes.  With the blessing and support of my administration team I, along with another teacher (who will be doing a similar pilot with struggling math students to determine a different POV of data points on Mastery learning).  


  • I have created a series of rubrics on an assortment of Mastery Standards based on the language from College Board and the learning objectives students will need to work to master over the course of the YEAR.  
  • In starting with all the skills I am better able to plan and support student development.
  • Students will be required to come to office hours twice a month to conference with me about their development and revision of work, a non-negotiable. 
  • At the end of each semester, because we are a public high school with traditional transcripts, we will have to come to a decision on a semester grade for fall and spring.  Students will be required to present a Defense of Learning to a small group of peers and adult mentors where they will have to present their learning and development of Mastery and propose a numerical grade that they believe represents their learning. Then a conference with me...

This year...

I am going to use this space to reflect on my process this year of throwing out grades and seeing where it takes me.  



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