Bryan Lindstrom (Adams Social Studies Department) - UPDATED 2022
The voyage to a Standards Based Grading environment in my classroom has been a thought-provoking and professionally satisfying undertaking that started with some classroom goals I had yet to conquer. I was missing the conduit between my vision of what I wanted my classroom to look like and the particulars on how to actually make it happen. In Standards Based Grading, I found philosophical bedrock to start implementing some professional beliefs I have had on homework and classroom culture, but just couldn’t organize them into the right cohesive structure.
The Eight Cultural Forces and Visible Thinking
When I was introduced to Ron Richart’s work, observing him at a parent presentation at Reuther Middle School, I was captivated with the possible transformations I could make in my classroom. What do we mean when we ask students to think? How can we get students to be cognitive about their questioning and thinking? Have students been conditioned not to think in the classroom? What can you do to improve the culture of thinking in your classroom?
In the Social Studies classroom, some of the fundamental skills we want our graduates to have are the abilities to question and to value different perspectives. By using techniques that highlight the thought process and by place a high priority on digging deep into questions and perceptions, it was easy to see that Ron's work would be best practice for my classroom. I decided to be “all-in” with thinking routines and creating a new culture in my class.
I completely understood that it wasn’t about the number of times you used a routine throughout a week or a month; it was about the type of thinking that was taking place. However, I had to create a personal goal that was measurable for my evaluation and arbitrarily landed on implementing a routine several times a week in my classroom to satisfy this need.
Since I incorporated behaviors and activities in my gradebook the first question I had to tackle was, “How do I grade this stuff?” I thought I had a grasp on how to implement the shift curriculum wise, but grading it became a huge hurdle. Conversely, I also knew I was not supposed to grade it at all. Grading a thinking routine can have a negative impact on creating a culture of thinking. Grades may stifle students from sharing thoughts or insights that are not perceived to be correct; they can limit the conversation. Grades can also impede collaboration.
Yet, if routines were going to be a focal point in my classroom shouldn't they be in the gradebook because they are taking up our class time? I always had the mindset if a classroom activity was important enough to do then a grade should accompany it. Over the years, students have also been conditioned to play the participation game. Students will correlate their participation with how much influence it has on their overall grade. Thus, it came as no surprise when students would ask if they were being graded on the routines or their participation.
When I started seeking some professional guidance and looked to others at the secondary level, I soon realized that a lot of people were in the same boat that I was. They wanted to make the paradigm shift, but the gradebook was getting in the way. Routines were viewed as "events" and "events" had to make their way into the gradebook somehow.
However, when I started asking questions about grading routines to elementary teachers they looked at me with confusion. They did not grade routines and their students certainly did not ask what grade they would get by partaking in the event. Teachers at the elementary level were already in an environment, a standards-based model, where their grading style promoted growth and supported an inquisitive nature.
I am now convinced that if one truly wants to create a culture where thinking, exploring, and growth mindsets are embraced, how one grades has to be the first critical conversation and decision to be made. I found that my grade book did not support my vision or actions and, consequently, the incentives my grade book provided to students still drove the culture in my classroom.
Homework
By the time I started researching Standards Based Grading, I had already crossed the bridge of eliminating homework from the gradebook. Homework that appeared to be the result of genuine effort was often not. Notes were copied no matter how many different types of note structures I used. Answers to homework questions were copied or paraphrased from someone else. AP Economics graphs were commonly traced from some online source; usually the wrong graph at that.
In Myron Dueck’s book, Grading Smarter Not Harder, he notes for most teachers homework-completion issues are the root of many negative confrontations with students. Instead of being advocates for students, homework turns them into adversaries. I certainly have had many moments where I was questioning character because of homework and was an antagonist to my students in the classroom.
Besides the hard conversations and non-productive moments of teacher-student confrontation, the homework I assigned just didn’t translate into real meaning or actual learning for my students. There was some utopian part of me that wanted to believe students would want to immerse themselves in Economics and they would see the benefits of practice and extra study. Deep down though, the main reason why I assigned homework was because it was a “pillow grade” for students, especially hard-working ones, to fall back on in the event they didn’t do well on the test. I found myself saying, “If you work hard and do the assignments, you can still get the grade you want.”
Ultimately, there were students who were doing well in my class, but they were not reaching the end goal of truly mastering the material. Since my grades were inflated by items that did not tell the true story of learning, students would receive a boost in their grade from “doing” homework and be disillusioned (parents were also disillusioned) that they were successful in gaining knowledge.
I couldn’t use their final grade to counsel them on what they should prepare for on a unit test, final exam, or AP test. I was ignoring a large portion of the grades in the grade book to provide guidance because it didn’t represent real learning and was, in some sense, pointless. If I told them they got a low grade on their notes for a particular topic, did it mean that they didn't complete it in the format that I wanted? What were the key pieces of information they were missing? My gradebook did not help me decipher what exact skills they needed to work on.
Don't get me wrong, note taking is an important skill for students and is a necessary tool to have as they move up the educational ladder and transition over to "self-learners." Also, homework is not a bad thing and I freely admit that I had assigned tasks which were trivial; it didn't give me the information I was looking for to guide my instruction and it often was just another task for students "to do."
I still give homework, yet students have learned that its purpose is to master the benchmark at task, not a grab for points. Ultimately, their effort and attempts at the assignments I provide to help scaffold learning and knowledge will appear in their overall understanding of a bench mark.
My Gradebook Now
Of course, grades are still a huge motivator my classroom because we still have them. The conversations revolving around points in my classroom, however, have changed. Instead of students asking how they can get more points on an assignment, they are now asking how they can show mastery or proficiency of a key concept. They are specifically asking how they can prove they know more instead of how they can redo a multiple-choice question or turn in a late homework assignment.
Every title of an assignment in the gradebook is now a standard or a skill. I post the standards or skills for the unit we are working on and students receive feedback based off of the Check Point Rubric from Craig and Jill's Math classes that I modified for Social Studies (found here). All of the grades go in with a weight of zero until the end of a unit. Thus, when I do pre-assessments or a standard's check point, the students can see their growth on a topic and they know they have multiple opportunities to increase their score. The "zero weight" allows their overall grade to not be changed until then end of a unit.
I use a total points system, so each benchmark is worth 10 points. This is beneficial because if I usually cover more topics in a typical second quarter than I would a first quarter - the amount of learning in first quarter will not be weighted equally to what we did in second quarter.
My Assessments Now
I still give unit tests and quizzes, but I do not have those titles labeled in my gradebook. Each question on my test has a standard labeled at the end of the question. As I grade my assessments, I see how students do relative to each standard (not as an overall assessment). This allows students to see how they performed on each standard and it allows me, as the teacher, to see how they performed on each standard.
Where applicable, I also separate skills from knowledge. For example, students in economics are required to understand what shifts supply and demand for a particular market in the product market. Students are also supposed know how to represent those changes on a supply and demand graph. Instead of the label of a standard appearing in my gradebook, I identify it as a skill.
Student Voice
In order to increase student voice in the grading process I decided to come up with a unique way of getting their input - I let them give me their first impression of how they felt they did on a standard. When a student took a unit assessment, I would break down what questions fit with the benchmarks in the unit. I would then grade their multiple choice questions (if you have not used Zip Grader, I HIGHLY recommend it) and their written response or graph questions. The students would then take the benchmark grading sheet and mark off the questions they got wrong. Finally, I would have them mark where they thought they were and add comments if necessary (see the student examples below). Of course, I had final say as to what the final benchmark score was, but I truly valued their input when processing the grades.
When I first started this, I was worried that students would inflate their "grade opinions," but in all honesty I found students were tougher on their themselves. I attribute this phenomenon to the fact that students had the ability to re-do their benchmark scores through a Flip Grid assignment and via the final exam. On occasion, I would have to ignore a student's opinion of themselves, but our typical conversation tended to revolve around a student proving to me what they know about a benchmark instead of them just asking for "more points."