A small seed,
spreads, grows, takes root…
How do I create more equitable and effective feedback and grading systems for the learners in my care?
This is a question I have been working on answering in the science classes that I teach. This past year I engaged in a passion project that propelled me to begin the process of creating new systems for grading and feedback for my learners. The final project was the creation of a video to share my journey.
One celebration of this work and the sharing of ideas is that several other teachers in my school have begun to only weigh the summative assessments in their gradebook. Learners are given the opportunity to practice skills by completing and taking the formative assessments however they are weighted at zero. This allows for learners who don’t have the time to complete all the work or learners who don’t do well on it as they are learning to not be penalized for trying. Offering retakes and intentionally providing time during the class period to reteach and relearn has also created more equity for learners!
Learners are engaging in a mindset shift as they begin to focus on gaining skills and learning content as the focus and not the grades. I find myself needing to reflect often and make changes based on what I am learning. We are all using mistakes to learn and grow. I believe truly believe that learners must be provided the opportunity to be met where they are and given a path to get where they need to be.
To create this type of learning environment I started dividing the standards for the unit into categories of knowledge, reasoning, skills and product targets so that it build up to them creating something to show their understanding of the standards and growth.
A multiple choice pre-assessment was created for the knowledge targets that learners used to determine where they would enter the learning. Assessment scores were added for learners in the pre-learning column on their Evidence of Learning Document through the Google Classroom. This gave learners a starting point in the Learning Opportunity Slides to set their goal for each day.
The Learning Opportunity slides offer different ways for learners to engage with and learn the content. Scientific models, video, text, discussion and hands on learning opportunities were presented and learners could choose what topic and type of learning to do. Once proficiency for the knowledge targets is achieved learners move onto the reasoning, skills and then product targets. Learners use the goal setting graphic organizer at the bottom of the document to set a goal each class period, reflect on their own progress for the day and define a starting point for the next session.
As part of the process I have also been reflecting using video on Flipgrid. In this reflection I describe the unit and how it is organized in more detail.
One realization I had as I was reflecting was that I wasn’t clear on the outcome of all the work at first (maybe because I still hadn’t figured it out yet), that learners would be designing, conducting and presenting their own scientific investigation answering a testable question of their design and that they need to use the question to guide the acquisition of skills and content knowledge. This is a change I will be making as I move forward with this work!
New questions to explore:
How do I create a system for doing mandatory retakes in my classes?
How do I combine giving feedback and reporting it in the gradebook?
How do I design the learning experience to include more collaborative work now that we are coming out of the pandemic?
How can the learning for the skills of science be designed so learners are collecting the data, creating the graphs, and analyzing data for the testable question they want to explore?
What real world problems might be introduced to learners to explore and investigate? SDGs? Other?
A More Beautiful Classroom Lead by Learning and Love 