Assessments and Grading

July Blogging Challenge Day 16

I am in the beginning stages of planning for the upcoming school year and one of the things I want to work on is the way I assess and grade students.  So to satisfy my goal of blogging every day in July (already missed 2 oops) I'm going to write a little about some of the things I've been reading and thinking about.
Then to make things even easier for me, the #eduRead article this week was all about grading and quizzing and was awesome!  Check this out now: Why I Stopped Putting Grades on Papers

What I really liked and took away from the article is that I don't have to go full out with SBG and can just work with the quizzes to start and its a way to get my feet wet.  I also love the idea of not putting the grades on the quizzes.  This is more about mindset then sbg, which is another thing I am focusing on in my classroom this year.
So here is what I'm thinking about -making my list of skills and using quizzes and other formative assessments for students to work towards.  I am hoping to not use a ton of paper/pencil quizzes for these formatives and hopefully use conferencing a lot more as in math workshop.  I am not going to use unit or chapter tests, only the 4 benchmark tests that I am required to give.
What I'm not sure about is what I'm putting in my gradebook.  I will use the benchmark as a test grade and since they fall a few weeks before the end of each marking period I can have a retest day on the learning goals that were not mastered.  But I can't just have a test grade as the only grade I give.  I hate the idea of grading homework, 1) this should be practice only 2) its a pain to grade! 3) it can be easily copied, but I know that if I don't my kids won't do it.
I like what I read (I think) on  Jason Buell's blog http://alwaysformative.blogspot.com/p/standards-based-grading-implementation.html  (which is an awesome resource no matter what!!) such as assigning the academic work formatives and summatives 90% of the grade and behaviors homework, notebook check 10%  I can see that working for me.  Then do I wonder if I should give the summatives/formatives different weights or use a points scale which I've never done before.
What I need to work on is how to enter a grade for the formatives (that I'm not putting grades on for the students)   I've seen entering the median score but then again I'm not 100% sure I'm going to use a 1-4 scale. Or just grading them out of 100 and letting students and parents know that it can change often as mastery is obtained.

Back to my list of skills, I took a look at the Parcc website and was wondering why I couldn't use a variation of the PLDs?  It seems like everything is just laid out, why not use it?

Wow made my challenge goal for the day with 30 minutes to spare!

The Right Amount of Struggle

July Blogging Challenge -Day 2

Yesterday I was excited to read about and join in on @druinok's July blogging challenge and today I am also excited to join in on #eduRead.  I am constantly reading, especially math and math ed books.  Right now I am reading Guided Math and Building Mathematical Comprehension both by Laney Sammons.  I am also reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and my son's summer reading book, Loser by Jerry Spinelli.  Yeah, I love to read.  I especially love reading things and getting to discuss it with other people reading the same thing.  Last summer I participated in a book study organized by Sherrie at Middle School Math Rules! on Wendy Ward Hoffer's Minds on Mathematics: Using Math Workshop to Develop Deep Understanding in Grades 4-8, learned a ton and it really had a positive impact on how I teach.

The article this week is Faster Isn't Smarter: Messages About Math, Teaching, and Learning in the 21st Century by Cathy L. Seeley.  This is an excerpt from the book, and to be honest, I really want to read the whole thing!  The message I took away from the article is similar to everything I've been reading lately, that we don't offer students the opportunity to wrestle with complex mathematical  problems which is needed in order to develop a deep understanding of the concepts we are trying to teach.  It reminds me of when I was trying to learn to drive a car with a manual transmission.  My hubby (then boyfriend) would let me practice  driving his truck in the empty mall parking lot each week, but I just couldn't get it and never felt comfortable on real roads with real traffic.  Then I found a cute little red Toyota pickup truck that I HAD to have.  Only problem was it was a stick.  I bought the truck and that was it.  I had to learn or I couldn't drive it!  Sure enough it only took me about an hour to get it, and I learned to love it.

Back to students and allowing them to struggle, I admit I am guilty when it comes to sometimes swooping in to save the day and thankfully each year I get better and better about not doing this.  I've learned to answer kids questions with questions in order to lead them out of trouble or towards the answer.  One way of doing this is never picking up a pencil at their desk. It's too easy to say "here let me show you" and just doing the work while they watch.

One thing I highlighted in the article is the line "It turns out that offering students a chance to struggle may go hand in hand with motivating them, if we do it right."  My quest is finding out how to do that.  Last year I dabbled with the workshop model, and that is where I had the most problems, my kids didn't seem motivated or interested in solving the problems.  Its finding that "right amount" of struggle and making sure kids have the tools necessary for completing the task that I need to work on.

I think it also take changing students mindsets and ideas about what should be happening in a math class.  I have found that students think they should be able to immediately see the answer to any problem posed in a math class, just like recalling a multiplication fact.  I'll never forget when one student commented after I had just finished modeling a new concept "Mrs. Nehila, I would have never known how to do that without going over it like we just did."  She was so upset with herself until I asked her "Would you feel better if you knew how to do every concept before I taught it?" and she realized that she would be bored.  Kids need to know that not only is it OK to make mistakes, its also OK to not know how to do something before you learn how to do it!

One of my goals this year is to start the year off by not only teaching kids how to work collaboratively, but also HOW to struggle and to work though problems before we get into the curriculum.