In the beginning, we were learning how to talk about learning without numbers or letters. Now, we are just talking about evidence and learning. I think I have worked out some effective and efficient routines to confer for final reading grades, so I thought I would share five routines that have helped make this final conference with my seventh graders the most honest, positive conversation we’ve had about learning.
I’d rather not replace letter scores with number scores in this standards-based grading movement. Students tend to see the 5 (or whatever score is highest) as they did the “A,” and they will until we talk about learning in much more nuanced and complex ways — the ways that defy measurement and conflation of learning into a number or letter.
Write about what we’ve done in writing class since midterm and what you learned. This is the first sentence of the “final exam” in our seventh grade writing workshop this quarter. This school year, as I discussed in last week’s post about assessment in the reading …
Your assignment is a 2nd Quarter Summary blog post to me and your parents about what you’ve learned and how, using the standards and evidence from class. That is the first line of the “final exam” I wrote for our second quarter, seventh grade reading class. …
When I wrote last week about cheating with my no-grades classroom, I talked about how I was using narrative feedback (written and verbal) to communicate with students about their learning and how, for the most part, the revision part was not happening. I was reluctant to …
“You can’t just declare that you have a growth mindset,” said Dweck. “Growth mindset is hard. Many educators are trying to skip the journey.” To do it right, Dweck says that many teachers have to change how they teach, offering more critical feedback and giving …
After spending the summer researching assessment and grading, after meeting with colleagues and my principal about facilitating a no-grades classroom this school year, after resisting numbers and letter grades on student work for nearly nine weeks, after countless hours of writing narrative feedback to students …
How can we communicate learning to students and parents? Self-assessment letters go home with midterm reports in a seventh grade writing class.
Kelly Mogk talks about the ethics of writing in schools focused on grades and scores. She says, “When students submit a piece of work to me, my first thought is always the same: First, do no harm. I want to develop writers that can express themselves with ease, and more than that—I want them to see themselves as writers and find joy in the learning.”
A three-perspective approach to peer response involves responding as a human being, a reader, and a writer.