Standards Based Grading - a mid semester update

It's now been three months with grade books and assessing strategies completely aligned with Standards Based Grading. So far, we've posted three times in particular about how we are using Standards Based grading:

• Making SBG work in a traditional grade book
• Setting up our new grade books with SBG
• Everyone needs a little R, R, and R

For this mid semester update, I want to focus on the reactions we've had to what we are doing and the things we're noticing in our students. 

Grading Procedures and Schedules

Doing this the way we are, by using Active Grade in conjunction with our county grade books has resulted in a few road blocks that we are over coming, but also some interesting things we otherwise wouldn't be able to do. 

1. Extra Time - Yes, doing it this way requires extra time from us. It takes me longer because I enter grades into Active Grade (which does all the math for me, so I think it's worth it) and then transfer them to our county grade book. What I have done is that I separate my schedule out and grade one class a day and transfer grades once per class each week. A student or parent can log onto Active Grade at any time, but since our county grade books only update at night anyways, we can do this once a week. We are all handling this in our own way, but this is what I've found works for me. It also keeps the pile of work to pass out from stacking up and getting mixed together.
2. Saved Comments - Using Active Grade allows me to put in specific comments per student, per standard, per assignment. These comments are saved online for my or their viewing any time. Unlike a traditional grade book where the grade is input and nothing else, I can pass messages to students and save them so that when a parent or student comes to me with questions, a record is saved. Since it is done by standard, comments have moved away from things like, "you missed 5 questions" to "you should try the following extra exercises to help with this" or "you got this grade because you...." They are more detailed and personalised. 
3. Student Perspective - The by far most difficult part of this, I feel, is changing the student perspective. When I presented the idea both to my former students, and to this year's students, they were on board, but they struggle to understand that the numbers mean different things. Whenever I pass back a test, or quiz, or assignment I get a barrage of, "what does 4 mean?", "I missed 2 questions, what grade is that?", etc. I have to remind them that they  need to check Active Grade and familiarise themselves with the proficiency guidelines. Some are becoming familiar and appreciate how things are being done, others are trying to master this new territory, but need more guidance. 

Assessments

1. Terminology - I have really had to change my terminology when considering assessments with SBG. Students have commented how my assessments (see bullet point 2) are more like their quizzes in other classes rather than tests, so we've changed the name from quiz or test to quest. Students aren't panicking and appreciate the brevity, clarity, and content of the assessments. Students are also understanding now how each assessment is broken into sections by standard. It makes it clearer for them, and reminds them, what we expect them to be proficient in and gives a nice guideline of what they need to work on, should their proficiency level be low. 
2. Structure - It occurred to me as I was writing my first test that, if I'm grading by proficiency in standard, I really ought to separate the test by standard, so I began doing that. Rachel was thinking along the same lines and we've both found it very helpful for students and for us. Organising the assessments this way speeds up grading tremendously and allows for easier commenting on proficiency. Grades are no longer about missing a certain number of questions, but rather about how proficient someone is in a certain skill.
3. Teacher Perspective - By assessing standards repeatedly and in multiple ways, I view assessments very differently. I no longer view them as this end all activity that students must make a certain grade on for us to move forward, but rather a checkpoint. What standards are they proficient in? What standards do we need to practice more (see our recent posts: The Fault in our Plans and Robert Patrick's Guest Post)? It is like a little reminder each time of where we are, where we've been, and where we are going.

Student Voice

1. Confidence - Students seem somewhat more confident when it comes to their voice, their concerns, and their needs. Students know what is expected of them more clearly and so they know what they need to do or what they need to ask for. 
2. Student Choice - Without a textbook, student can have a real say in what they are learning. This year in Latin I, I've decided that I want them to read longer readings and really learn how to communicate in Latin (based on our standards) at a deeper level. To that end, I gave students choices for the Spring semester. All were longer readings (novels really), but they had a wide span of content from science and history to legend to fantasy and adventure. The students really appreciated being able to make their own choice, which means they will enjoy what we do next semester - making for happy students and happy teachers. 

I'd love to hear if you guys are trying Standards Based Grading and how it is going for you. Are you seeing these things? What else are you observing?

Guest Post: Success is often the product of a failure or two

Robert Patrick Ph.D., a colleague of ours, and my father as offered this guest post as a follow up to my post on "The Fault in our Plans". I am excited to share this post with you as he and I have continued this work with our students.

Success is often the product of a failure or two.  Or more.  Unfortunately, in the behaviorist world of rewards and punishments to which most schools belong, we don’t cultivate an awareness that allows us to see the relationship of success to failure.  Our continued journey into Untextbooking and Standards Based Grading is allowing us to work on those deeply ingrained reactions:  when I fail--panic!  When I succeed--be surprised!

Miriam has written of our recent “midterm mishap” as we are now calling it.  I had seen another colleague do this wonderful assessment in which he described animals with colors, shapes, sizes, locations, geographical forms, habitats etc in the target language and students simply wrote down the names of the animals.  It was an exquisitely good example of listening comprehension based on a significant amount of daily input from the teacher up to that point.  I suggested we use the same format for our midterm, describing gods and goddesses, their features, realms, relationships and activities in Latin.  All students would have to do is write down the deity’s name.  

There was one problem.  We had not included a significant amount of listening input up to that point.  No question that we verbally circled all the new vocabulary, but when it came to describing gods and goddesses and telling their stories, we did that primarily through reading and discussion, in Latin.

The midterm was a bomb.  There were moments of panic.  And then we remembered that we did not have a textbook to cover.  We were grading by standards and not individual tests.  We had all the freedom we needed to back up and begin giving students a significant amount of input about these gods and goddesses in their stories.  Rather than reading, we did three days of telling, listening and clarifying comprehension.  We gave the midterm again, and they well exceeded the 80/80 rule (where 80% or more of the students score 80% or higher on the assessment).

Built on that midterm mishap, we have created a new kind of experience--whether through live oral reading or audio recordings (saves the voice a bit) students listen to the story of Pluto and Proserpina as we read together Pluta: Fabula Amoris.  As we describe a scene or character or set of characters Latine tantum, students write down notes about the character and scene.  After listening, we ask students to tell us back what they have heard.  They use their notes.  They add to their notes from what their peers say.  Then, after listening to these scenes, we break out the books and they silently read the appropriate capitulum from the novella. After the reading, they did a 10 timed write in which they wrote all that they could about Pluto and Proserpina.  

Students blew their own minds!  One student who had only been able to write 6 words on his first timed write wrote 93 about Pluto and Proserpina--in ten minutes.  A young lady who had still not performed so well on the midterm was diligently involved in the listening and volunteering to tell what she heard.  She increased her writing from 10 words the first time to 23 words the second time.  There was not a single student who didn’t best his/her own writing record after this combination of listening and reading.

Right now, my personal reminder is written on the wall:  Listen.  Read.  Write.  In Comprehensible Input terms, that amounts to doubled effort on input before any output.  

When things don’t go well in a CI classroom, it really is a golden opportunity.  We should refuse to see it as anything else.  

A Snake of a Different Color: A Review Game

Not too long ago, I posted about a worksheet I gave out to my students named "Serpens" due to the way I wanted students to choose their activities.

This time, this is a game called "Serpens," named for the snake I draw on the board; I got the game from the beauteous and sagacious Caroline Miklosovic, one of my colleagues at my school.

The game is called Serpens and it requires little preparation on your part, though it should review material that students are very familiar with.

Preparation

The serpens before the game starts.

• Create a list of questions concerning your material. For my most recent game, I used vocabulary students would see in the reading we were working on and comprehension questions about the story. I created a list of forty questions, and I think that is a good number--we never ran out of questions but we didn't leave too many questions unanswered.
• Draw a snake on the board. Or have a student do it. The snake should be divided into two and segmented into twenty sections on each side.

That's it!

Game Play

The class is divided into two teams (Red vs Blue in my class).

The finished snake!

I ask the first student in the Red team a question. If that student gets the question right, his team gets to color in a segment. If that student misses, the Blue team gets to try to steal the question. I let anyone who raises his hand on the Blue team answer. If the Blue team answers correctly, they get to color in a segment.

Then I ask the first student in the Blue team and the pattern repeats. If the student on the Blue team gets the answer correct, he colors in a segment. If he misses, the Red team gets a chance to steal. The final segment is the head, and that may have inspired me to suggest to the class that they are actually battling for control of the snake's mind and their future survival (the losing team is subsumed into the will of the winners). Just to up the stakes a little.

The game is quick; I paired it with a Kahoot to finish up the class. But it's a nice, relaxing way to review a story and another way to create repetition without being repetitive!

Miriam had her students draw the snake and had them fill in their own segments. Some cool art followed!

The fault in our plans

I have the awesome privilege of working with three other amazing Latin teachers. As we continue on this journey of untextbooking and Standards Based Grading, we are documenting a lot. We document everything from amazing lesson plans we fall in love with to assessments that really speak to what we are doing to student feedback to lesson plans that fail. Today is a post about a plan that failed.

Robert Patrick and I administered a Latin I midterm. What we discovered after the midterm was that we, as teachers, had not prepared students for the skill we needed them to have for the midterm like we thought we'd had. In this post, I am going to separate things out as follows: What we did, what we learned, and how we fixed the issue.

What We Did

The idea for this midterm's format was based on a great assessment in another teacher's classroom. The midterm would consist of a listening section where characters we'd been reading about were read to students and students had to identify the character. In preparation for this, we gave student a list of descriptions and asked them to identify each character listed and make a picture for them. We also created a series of kahoot games to help them review shorter descriptions. Below is the script made for teachers at the very beginning.

For the midterm, we read the shorter descriptions and students were to write down the name of the character. We provided a character bank, but while there were 9 characters (Chaos was left out), there were 20 blanks, providing for multiple examples of each character.

What the midterm looked like for this section

What We Learned

It became very apparent to us that students were not prepared for this portion of the exam. I think a lot of things ran through our minds: Did they not study? Did I misread their comprehension? Did we not spend enough time discussing in Latin? What we discovered was that while this skill is necessary and is one we thought we had been preparing for, it differed from what we are doing in class enough that students needed more practice specifically in this skill.

Listening vs. Listening with visuals

I realised after our first of (honestly) about four discussions on this that we had been speaking Latin, regularly, to our students, but each time we provided some kind of visual:

• teacher created images
• student created images
• text
• cloze passages
• parallel universe passages
• questions
• false statements

Even when we do TPRS stories and TPR, visuals accompany listening skills. Students perform actions, demonstrate items, hold stuffed animals, watch the teacher for visual clues, and have vocabulary written on the board and referenced. All of these things are great activities and help build skills, including listening comprehension, but they do not prepare students for listening without visual aids. 

Fixing the Issue

The solution to this issue, we determined, is two-fold. First, we must re-administer the midterm. Second, we must prepare students better for this skill in the future.

The Midterm

We decided to re-administer this portion of the midterm. Students had the option, if they scored 16/20 or better to retake. If they scored less than 16/20 they were required to retake. In preparation for this retest we decided on two days of review to build the skill, in group levels, and individually. Robert Patrick put together my descriptions into their long form again, but only what was on the midterm, and recorded audio of these descriptions. On day one, students were placed in groups randomly and told that by the end of the period, they should be able to complete this activity on their own. We played the audio one by one and told students how many indicators each set of audio had. The audio played the description three times. Students identified the character and all of the indicators/descriptors each character had. On day two, we'd repeat this activity, but students would do it individually. On day three, we'd re-administer this portion of the midterm.

Example

1. Play recording (created by Robert Patrick)
2. Identify character - Saturnus
3. Identify 9 indicators
   English - Titan king, his mother was Gaia, his father was Uranus, he had a sister, his sister's name was Rhea, he had six sons and daughters, he feared his sons and daughters, he ate five sons and daughters, he ate one rock
   Latin - rex Titanius, mater erat Gaia, pater erat Uranus, deus sororem habebat, nomen sorori erat Rhea, sex filios et filias habebat, filios et filias timebat, quinque filios et filias comedit, unum saxum comedit

Preparing for the Future

We are still working on ways to foster this particular skill in the future (and are putting an all call for ideas!) So far, we've come up with some ways to practice this skill daily, weekly, or every once in a while.

• extended TPR (longer instructions)
• review of previous day's story (what kids remember happening)
• character/item descriptions (much like the activity in the midterm)
• listen and draw (teacher reads description, students draw what [s]he says)

Conclusions

This, I feel, was an important process for me. I am already seeing my thought processes change because of Standards Based Grading, and for the better. While this plan was, originally, a failure, it has really guided my thought processes even more to be even more critical of what I am teaching and how. It also points to a skill that, often as Latin teacher, we overlook. We are really good at using readings and visuals, but we miss the listening part by itself. Robert and I have discussed ways to ensure that our students are proficient in this skill. I know that I am now looking for ways to incorporate it into my daily practice. 

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Everyone needs a little R, R, and R

I am very excited to write this post. This is something that I've been working on since we decided to switch to Standards Based Grading: R, R, and R, or, Review, Reach, and Relax.

My original idea was that every once in a while, we'd give kids a chance to get some review, do some extra work that they needed or wanted, and connect with each other in a way they may otherwise not. Since then, we've all been working on ways to make this work well inside a classroom.

What is it?

What it isn't:

• a free day
• a day to work on other classes' work
• a day to check out
• a sleeping day

What it is:

• an opportunity to get extra work and prove proficiency
• an opportunity to make up missing work
• an opportunity to get tutoring
• an opportunity to go beyond requirements and prove proficiency
• a brain break

Set Up:

We began by creating a document with each standard at the top of a page. Then, as we go through activities and content, we add possible review, and reach activities to help students demonstrate proficiency. Here's the Latin I list of activities.

For relaxing activities, we all offer whatever we have. Rachel has more games than I, but what I offer is: card games (regular cards and Crazy 8s), various puzzles, the lego Minotaur game, or books in Latin, on history, and on culture to read. I am trying to expand this whenever I stop by the dollar store or Target and look at the simple game and puzzles they have. I also bring in books, and am looking at games made for Latin as well.

How it works in real time:

We've so far done this two ways. Rachel gave an entire day to Latin II to work and I gave half a day to Latin I. I'm breaking these down a few ways: procedure, observations, changes.

Latin II - Full Day

Procedure

Rachel and I posted all the standards we had activities for on the board and asked students to check their grades. If they had less than an 85% proficiency rating overall, they were required to work to bring up this grade. If they had better than an 85% proficiency rating overall, they could choose to better their grade or relax with some activities. 

Observations

These are observations of my own:

• Most, if not all students met the requirements.
• Because of their grades, few students chose to better their grade.
• Students chose a brain break and really got into it, making for a great bonding experience
• Because of the variety of activities, everyone had an opportunity to do something.
• Students seemed to appreciate the opportunity, and were very open to this new way of doing this.

Changes

Rachel and I discussed a few things and I am making these changes for next time.

• More activity options for each standard
• More relax activities to make smaller groupings
• More time between R, R, and R days instead of the planned once every two weeks.
• Take students to a computer lab and go over how Active Grade specifically works so that they can use it properly and not just as a "viewing" of their grades.

Latin I - Half a period

Procedure

We began our day with a review of a story we'd read. I was out the previous day and so this was a great way for me to see if students understood. Then, I explained R, R, and R day and my requirements. The main difference here is that I did not offer all standards or activities and I added a requirement. Students must have a proficiency grade of 85% overall and if they had a 0 or 1 in any standard (50-60%), they had to work on that standard, or a similar one. If they met both requirements, they could better their grade, or choose a relaxing activity. The other difference is that, in these classes, I did review grades and pulled students who were missing grades and asked them to complete an assignment.

Observations

• Most students met at least one requirement, if not both.
• Students were very open to completing or re-doing assignments, more than I've seen in the past where make up work or tutoring is extra and outside of class.
• Students found assignments easy to complete quickly.
• Students chose a brain break and really got into it, making for a great bonding experience.
• Because of the variety of opportunities, everyone had an opportunity to do something.
• Students seemed to appreciate the opportunity, and were very open to this new way of doing this.
• Half a period seemed like an appropriate amount of time to do this in for Latin I.

Changes

These are changes that I either wanted to do this time, but couldn't, or things that I noticed as the day went on. Between the Latin II day and the Latin I day, I did have time to bring in a few more books, Crazy 8s, and a new puzzle, so I even could implement the smaller group change.

• Take students to a computer lab to go over Active Grade so they feel more comfortable using it.
• Schedule another R, R, and R day in 2 weeks or so. 

Final Thoughts

I am really happy with this activity. I think, after doing it twice, and typing up this post, that it serves a lot of great purposes. My hope is that the more we do this, the more benefit the kids get. 

1. Allows me to check in with students
2. Allows students to really understand grades and proficiency levels
3. Allows students to have a brain break.

Extra Extra! Read All About It! One Sentence Stories

As we progress through our first year of complete Standards Based Grading, I find myself being more critical of the assignments and tests I give. I also find myself trying to find new ways to assess things, while still keeping the affective filter low for my students. One of our county standards is that students can write simple sentences appropriate to their level in Latin. In Latin II and above, this isn't such a big problem because they already have experience with this through timed writes and they can write for longer. In Latin I, however, I need to ease them into writing and prepare them for timed writes, which we plan to start in a week or so.

To achieve this, I've started including some basic writing and transcribing activities like:

• Dictationes
• Sentence Frames - mad libs for Latin. Here is an example.

I wanted one more activity, with a little more freedom, to review vocabulary and see what skills they'd already picked up (while not grading those skills for accuracy). So, we did an activity called

One Sentence Stories. 

Process

I set this up very simply by creating a document with instructions and also an approved list of words. I expanded this list to include est (is) and et (and), as well as the new words we'd learned that day on the board. Students were to write a single sentence that could tell a story, much like a newspaper headline. While their sentences could be simple and didn't have to be "above the fold" quality  (if you will), they needed to be interesting and make sense. Students then accompanied them with a detailed picture. The picture gave the assignment a visual quality and a fail-safe which allowed me to understand what they were saying even if the sentence wasn't perfect. These were graded on a 5 point scale as follows:

0 - student wrote English sentence, or only submitted a picture

1-2 - Student wrote an English sentence with a Latin word or two

2-3 - Student attempted a Latin sentence, but used names instead of Latin words or the sentence didn't make sense

3-4 - Sentence mostly made sense, but had an extra word (or was missing one)

4-5 - Sentence made sense and may have had the extra verb "est" (see observations below)

Observations

1. Students got very excited with this activity. The vocabulary list provided assistance, but also kept the assignment simple enough for those still working on vocabulary acquisition.
2. Most students worked with what they were given. Some wanted to know extra words or constructions. I told them to "work within the confines of what we know."
3. The most, by far, common mistake was that students would put "est" (is) and another verb. This is a reflection of how English works. In English, we often use a helping verb along with
   
   another for present tense. In Latin, however, this is not the case. I've seen this mistake year after year, so I am not at all surprised by it. I did not cause a huge deduction on account of this because it is a common mistake for beginners to make. I do, however, want to draw their attention to it. 
4. Students were excited to be using vocabulary outside of the context of our stories.

Conclusions

• This was a great way to get kids thinking outside the box. They weren't tied to the mythology we'd been reading and were able to enjoy the vocabulary in a new way. 
• There were lots of grammar mistakes, but I know these to be later acquired for a Latin I class.
• I know which vocabulary the students know really well and which they don't. 
• My purpose was to see if they were able to use Latin vocabulary to create simple, meaningful sentences. They were.