Giving Students the Ultimate Power - Grading for Good
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The document discusses giving students more power over their own assessment and grades. It argues that traditional grades do not fully capture students' knowledge and abilities. It proposes that students should help determine their own grades by assessing themselves against learning standards with teacher guidance. Students would gather and present evidence of their mastery to justify their self-assessed grades. The goal is to make assessment more meaningful and shift the focus from grades to learning.
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Giving Students the Ultimate Power - Grading for Good
- 1. Giving Students the Ultimate Power @pernilleripp
- 2. My day (is awesome) Oregon School District, WI “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 3. “ I used to be the queen of the “F”
- 5. Some truths about grades That we might already know “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 6. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 7. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 8. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 9. What do grades really measure? “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 10. My students said to tell you... and they don’t hold back “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 11. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 12. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 13. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 14. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 15. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 16. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 17. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 18. So what does this mean for us when we have to grade?
- 19. That our students are bigger than the standards we teach.
- 20. That the labels we give students through grades are not meant to define them, but rather shine a light on yet another facet of them. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 21. That we seem to constantly strive for perfection in our students, but forget that perfect does not exist. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 22. That their perception of reality is their reality. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 23. What do grades mean? The conversations we must have “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 24. Five Steps to Ease the Transition 1.Discover your goal 2.Determine the product 3.Determine assessment 4.Keep a record 5.Start a conversation “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 25. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 26. My Standards ■ Determine/analyze development of central ideas/themes in a text; ■ Analyze how story elements interact. ■ Write informative texts to convey ideas; select, organize, and analyze content; summarize ■ Write narratives to share events, using vivid detail & ordered sequence. ■ Draw evidence from texts to support written analysis. ■ Command the conventions of standard English grammar, usage, and vocabulary. ■ Present focused claims with support, using eye contact, volume, and elocution “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 27. Covering Them ■ Students deconstruct ■ A few standards at a time ■ Spiral approach ■ Keep parents informed ■ Have continuous goal progress and discussion ■ Allow your standards to cut your curriculum down “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 28. Students Grade Themselves ■ Discuss what the learning outcome should be ■ Define what each standard/grade means ■ Students assess themselves and gather evidence ■ Meet with teacher to discuss ■ Final grade settled “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 29. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 30. Students Defining Grades ■ Received mostly 3.5’s or 4’s throughout the two quarters on all summatives ■ Done all re-takes needed to show mastery of content ■ Completed the 25 book challenge (or personal book challenge goal met) ■ Participated in classroom discussion to help support learning of others ■ Shows a deep level of understanding of work covered and has used this knowledge to support the learning of others “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 31. So if we don’t do traditional grading, then what?
- 32. A Few Ideas ■ In-class designed rubric ■ Standards Based Score ■ One-to-one feedback with goal setting ■ Written feedback ■ Outside audience feedback ■ Self-assessment ■ Ask the students! “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 33. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 34. Some points to think about If you feel like it “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 35. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 36. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 37. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 38. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 39. ““What does a grade tell me about myself? Sometimes it says a lot, other times nothing. I feel sometimes if people/teachers look at some grades, they might get the wrong idea about me.” Payton, 7th grader “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 40. “ “What does a grade tell me about myself? If I am strong at that subject or weak or maybe that we don’t give a darn about it.” Thor, 7th grader “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 41. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 42. “Giving Students the Ultimate Power” © 2015 Pernille Ripp
- 43. Where can you find me again? www.pernillesripp.com @pernilleripp
Editor's Notes
- So I taught like I thought I should. I scolded, waved fingers, told kids to sit still and listen, and above all I wielded my grades—not as proof of great learning, but as tools for compliance. A few years in, my class was a mixed bag of emotions with various big personalities that needed a lot of love and a lot of patience at times. I started every year the same way: detailing how to get an A, how to earn a class party, how to get on the “Awesome” board. Basically, how to be the best students they could possibly be. Yet really all I did was tell them the rules and then tell them the punishment there would be for breaking those rules. How is that for inspiring the youth of America? So I taught like I thought I should. I scolded, waved fingers, told kids to sit still and listen, and above all I wielded my grades—not as proof of great learning, but as tools for compliance. A few years in, my class was a mixed bag of emotions with various big personalities that needed a lot of love and a lot of patience at times. I started every year the same way: detailing how to get an A, how to earn a class party, how to get on the “Awesome” board. Basically, how to be the best students they could possibly be. Yet really all I did was tell them the rules and then tell them the punishment there would be for breaking those rules. How is that for inspiring the youth of America? Grades were used to punish Behaviors were apart of the grades If something was late then points were deducted I was just like pretty much every teacher I knew This was the system, the system worked, who did I think I was to question it
- After a few years of teaching, doing the average, and assigning the letter grades, I had a few realizations. A\Besides needing to limit homework, removing punishment and rewards, I also had to take a long hard look at how I was using grades to control students.
- The first realization was this; if grades only affirm what we already know then that child doesn’t need to do all of our assignments
- I had a detailed late system - one day late you lost 10 percent and so forth until you got to 0 Kids can’t recover from a zero Behavior has nothing to do with content or knowledge Must be graded separately
- Students are done once a grade is assigned Doesn’t matter how much you write, they don’t care Andrea’s story of the red lines and just throwing it out -it doesn’t matter what the color of our pen is
- Discuss Then discussion prompt
- That grades sometimes become the one thing that their parents look at, nothing else. The minute a grade is placed on something that is all their parents can focus on. Their parents don’t always care about the effort, they don’t always care about the growth, just what the final result is. The conversations then centers around reaching the “3” or the “4,” to get that A, rather than what they learned, how they liked it, and what they are working on next.
- That publishing honor rolls or GPA’s mean that their private learning is now public. We may see releasing these names as a way to celebrate their learning, but many of my students says it just creates a divide. And it’s not the students who are not on honor roll that said this to me, no, over and over it was the students that made it. They didn’t see their accomplishments as anyone else’s business.
- That grades are for the future, not for the now. So many of my students reported that grades mattered because they want to go to college, and while at first I found this to be great (they care about the future!) I soon realized that this is so far from the purpose of what school should be. Students should keep an eye on the future, yes, but they should also keep an e eye on the now. They should be focused on the learning journey they are currently on and be excited to see their own growth and how it will help them right now, not 6 years from now.
- That a grade tells them whether they are smart or not. We may say that grades are in their control and that they don’t reflect how smart they are, but they are not listening. If you get good grades, you must be smart, if you don’t well then you are dumb. Grades are leading them to a fixed mindset, rather than the growth mindset we are all hoping for.
- That they feel they have little to no control over what grade they get. Even in a standards-based grading district, where I ask them to show me mastery with deconstructed standards using rubrics we have created together, they still feel that they have little control over how they are assessed, and more importantly what that assessment means to them. Now imagine how students feel when they haven’t created the rubric, self-assessed, or deconstructed the standards. They don’t understand the rubrics we give, they don’t understand at times what they should know to be labeled proficient. They don’t understand the number they are given. They crave feedback and conversation, rather than a number or letter. They crave classrooms that relish growth, failure, and attempts at learning.
- That grades means they are done. The minute we grade something, they are done with it. It is the signal they need to move on, no matter that I teach in a district that allows and encourages re-takes for everything. If we want them to continue working on something then we should give feedback but no scores.
- Discover your goal.Whether they are based on district standards, common core, school outcomes, or even those listed in the curriculum, figure out what the goal is for each thing you teach. These can be large or small (don’t do too many small ones though, trust me) and then figure out what the outcome should be. Everything you do should have a learning goal because without that there is no point to the lesson. Determine the product. What does it look like when students have accomplished the goal? What is finished? What is just another stepping stone? How will students show that they have mastered the goal? I love to have this discussion with my students, they have amazing ideas for this. Determine assessment. Will it be written feedback? Will it be a rubric? Will it be a conversation – great tip; record these with a Livescribe pen and you have it for later! Once again, ask the students, what type of assessment will help them? How do they learn best? Keep a record. This has been my biggest hurdle. I have had charts, Google Docs, grade book notes, relied on my faulty brain, and yikes. This year I am bringing my iPad in and using Evernote to keep track of it all. Students will each have a portfolio in Evernote with conversations, pictures of work, links to blog posts, as well as videotaped events. This way, everything will be at my fingertips when needed. Communicate! Assessment is not helpful if kept to yourself so have the conversations with students, take the time, write things down, communicate with parents. All of these things need to be taken care of for this to work. The allure of letter grades is just that; the ease of communication, nevermind that they can mean a million different things. So when you step away from those make sure you replace that with communication. Give students ownership of their goals and have them write a status report home, send an email, make a phone call. Something. Everybody should know where they are at and where they are headed throughout the year.
- Have them define each standard - rewrite it in their words. leave room for the tough conversations; why should we learn this, why does this matter?
- Let them grade themselves - what grade should they get and why?
- End of quarter conference to discuss their grade. This is where you have honest conversations and settle on the final grade. They have to understand that they have power over it.
- Let them grade themselves on any task, if your scores is far from theirs is then that is a conversation waiting to happen!
- We need kids who see the scores we assign as helpful tools not limitations,so you have to remove the fear and the helplessness that comes with traditional teacher assessment.
- In the end we are working with children, human beings that need to know more than the boxes grades place them in
- If students don’t have the words to discuss their learning journey then we need to help them find the words.
- We cannot let grades define everything we do in our rooms Grades should not be the end of the conversation but the beginning Why not let students determine their grades? What holds you back?
- So as you plan to change the way you grade and what grades are used for
- For too long our practices have left students disengaged, now is the time to empower them. And we can start at the very foundation of our classrooms; the way students are assessed. no longer can we leave their voices out of the conversation, no longer can we be the only experts on their learning.