War on grades begins and readers are curious
My New Year's resolution, launching a war on traditional grades in all schools, is sparking plenty of attention here at Brilliant or Insane and on social media. Good questions are cropping up -- encouraging me to believe that this resolution is gaining traction, rather than ridicule.
I'm running into people like Anneke Radin-Snaith here, at workshops and on numerous social networks; most are inspired and asking questions like Anneke, who posted the ones below here:
Anneke Radin-SnaithJanuary 2, 2014 at 8:05 PM
First of all, I love the idea of feedback instead of grades and have slowly been moving in that direction for a while now. Reading your piece brought up a few questions for me. What age do you work with and do you see this method as applicable across the board? How much time does this take? Do you use this method with every assignment, or only some? When you involve students in grading themselves (for report cards) do use some type of process whereby they look back at their work/progress?
Let me fire the first salvo at grades by addressing these issues in order.
- Narrative feedback, using the SE2R system, is effective in any grade or subject. Meaningful two-way feedback creates a conversation about learning, which should start at a young age and continue throughout adulthood.
- The SE2R system is time-consuming. When learning is done right, though, teachers should spend most of their time providing feedback, using a variety of tools. Remember, all feedback does not have to be written. Much of it can be part of verbal conversations.
- Narrative feedback should be the evaluation system used for all activities, projects or assessments. It frames learning far more effectively than numbers and letters ever can.
- For report cards, the student must be involved in deciding the final grade. At the end of a marking period, I sit down with every student and reflect on all activities, projects and feedback. Then, I ask a simple question: "What grade should you receive?" Students are our most important stakeholders. Leaving them out of any final report card grade is poor practice and a true injustice.
It is this kind of dialogue that will help us win the war on traditional grades. Please keep the questions and comments coming.
Thank you for your responses. In my mind I'm trying to reconcile these ideas with the practical reality of the classroom. My thoughts keep coming back to time - and also to record keeping. Time (or lack thereof) is a HUGE issue for teachers in my district right now. What can we remove from our plates to make space for this? I see 20 middle school students per 44 minute period each day. That's an average of two minutes per student (for an oral narrative assessment), if I do nothing else. What are the other students doing during that time? My daughters are in first grade. How does their teacher manage a classroom of six-year olds while having these assessment conversations (which have to be oral for emerging readers.) As far as record keeping goes, what does our grade book look like? I need some way to keep track of student progress because I cannot remember the details for each of my students and I need information to present to parents, CSE meetings, etc. I currently do quite a bit of informal oral feedback and one of the biggest problems I'm running into is how to keep track of the assessments. I also wonder if all student work needs to be assessed by the teacher. There are times when I feel it's appropriate to create a learning experience for my students, but not necessarily assess it. If one of our goals is to sharpen students' self-assessment skills, then are there times when work can be self-assessed or peer assessed?
ReplyDeleteHey Anneke, thanks so much for keeping the conversation going. This is what will ultimately get us there. I'll respond in a series of posts. Please stay tuned and keep the feedback coming.
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