Thanks, Rose. You're right, it may take longer, but some of the best things do. We can often get caught up in just surviving, but that can perpetuate an ineffective and unethical status quo. The news about NH's new directions for reporting competencies is a wonderful first step! And wow, there's that shifty "para-diggum" lurking in the minds of all who lead the schools. It's a very real creature worth pursuing. As you know, it's always wise to bring parents and business leaders into the conversations as soon as possible. Thanks for your leadership and insight, Rose! I hope folks know what gold they have in having you along for the journey. -- Rick Wormeli

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Thanks a bunch for your input, Rick. I will definitely pass that information along to my former colleagues and former principal. If you don't mind, I'd like to quote your exact words to them, especially to the principal, as I believe it will make more of an impact; may I? --Lori

That's fine, Lori. And if you find a better way to say it, feel free to edit it and I'll stand by whatever you say. :-)

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Hi Everyone! My colleague Linda and I can't stop talking about the conference with our colleagues. We have met with mixed reactions. Our grades were due for 1st semester the Friday night of the conference. I went back to my grades and changed my zeros to F's and suddenly the grades did in fact reflect my students' achievements and mastery versus the fact that 4 months ago they missed an assignment. The next Monday Linda and I handed out new grading policies - our students kept saying, "who else went to that conference." It was as if they had a whole new lease on life. Some of our colleagues have entered into really good discussions, while others have put up the all and basically said that retakes and taking away zeros rewards students who don't do the work the first time. They can't see past the belief they have that low grades inspire cooperation and better work in the future. I was really convicted that I have been using grades as punishment for students who didn't do every speck of homework I gave them. How is the best way to deal with people who can't get past the "crazy" notion that students who don't hand in the homework (graded on a 100 pt scale) should only get an "F" and not a zero?

On a positive note - our Associate Head of School wants us to do a presentation to the faculty on what we learned at the conference - oh my - there was so much. We came back with more than a new mindset about assessment, but also a new way to think about DI. It is a lot to take in, but I just wanted to thank Rick (and NELMS) for a conference that was truly mindset changing!

Hey Lori and Linda (through Lori) -- This is a wonderful outcome on so many fronts! The students grades are now accurate, students feel unshackled from a seemingly inappropriate grading system, and teachers are talking about grading philosophy -- WOW! Thank for sharing all of this with us. Here's a couple of thoughts to pass along to those teachers who are still struggling with this:

1) Low grades do not inspire cooperation and more personal investment in students who struggle. It's a mistaken notion on the part of teachers. Low grades push these students away. Kids divest from the teacher and subject when they feel rejected by them -- whether it's because of something they did or not is irrelevant to their feeling of rejection -- they were found wanting. We have to keep them in the game in order to teach them. Pushing them away and basically saying, "That'll learn ya'" is ineffective and unprofessional. It's like sitting on the rim of the deep pit students dug for themselves and waving a scolding finger at them for digging themselves so deep a pit from which it seems impossible to climb.

2) Ask these disagreeing teachers a larger question: Will anything change if a student fails due to an immoral reason or a sincere reason? Will anything change if it's a big F or a little F? No. We don't need degrees or classifications of F. No matter what the reason or degree, an F means the student has not demonstrated mastery -- not that he's a jerk or slow or whatever else we think. It means the student hasn't learned yet or he hasn't presented evidence of learning yet. No matter the reason, we will still do the same two things: Investigate and take corrective action. We are there to save students from themselves. By giving that student's immaturity so much power over his learning and destiny, we've abdicated our professional duty. This is malpractice. Our commission is to teach so that students learn, not merely to have presented curriculum and document students rise and fall with it. On the pretense of teaching accountability and ethics to students and giving students the most punitive and
unrecoverable end of the F range, they actually do the opposite -- breed resentment, confirm that school is only about seat time and jumping through a teacher's arbitrary and unmeaningful hoops, and even inviting unethical behavior -- cheating -- as they have nothing left to lose and they need to survive. There's no hope. If a student has no hope, the teacher has a much bigger problem than his grading system. Hope is everything. None of us would be here today if we were held to our digressions like this or if hope were removed from our radar scope.

In addition, we can remind these folks that students who get 50's or 60's instead of a zero on a 100.0 point scale are not getting points for having done nothing. That's not even close to the truth of what's happening. What we're doing is mitigating the mathematically and ethically unjustified and imperfect grading scale that convention requires us to use. Just like we don't want an A to have undue inflationary influence if we gave it 60 points' range in the scale as we now do the F grade, we don't want the F to have an undue deflationary influence. Share with them the weather average example in Norfolk, VA and how important it is that grades be accurate in order to fulfill their role: clear and accurate communication for how students are performing against standards. We are actually lying to parents, students, and ourselves if we weave in zeroes on the 100.0 scale and so distort the grade. This is basic 3rd grade mathematics. Teachers should be models of virtue and honest communication.

Thanks for sharing the ideas with faculty and for exploring their application in your own work. And thanks for using this forum to share the journey with us!

-- Rick Wormeli


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Thanks, Rick, for your thorough and thought-provoking response. I'd like to add that my school is handling the desire to continue to assess participation, effort and citizenship by creating separate categories on our (still a ways in the future) new report card design. Students are going to participate in designing rubrics for all three categories, and the idea could apply to other categories like "Personal Skills" (bad name - but at any rate some general category that could include "meeting deadlines"). "Citizenship," of course, would include the goal teachers at Lori's school have of wanting kids to learn cooperation.

Even as I say all that, I am reminded, though, of Chris Toy's sentiment that not everything that can be asssessed is important, and not everything that is important can be assessed. That could be a good topic for teachers to chew over.

Take care,
Bill

Chris's comment is very true. Einstein said something similar, though I believe he was paraphrasing Chris. I hope folks are clear on this: We definitely should evaluate and provide feedback on all those aspects of students' growth and learning regarding character, ethics, and behavior, but as you indicate your school is exploring, they should be reported separately from the academics. If they are woven with academic renderings of students mastery of specific objectives, they distort the accuracy of that grade and that can undermine the reasons why we grade students in the first place. -- Rick Wormeli

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Edited by author 02-11-2008 10:01 PM
First I would like to thank Rick for a very rewarding two day experience in Sturbridge last week. It was a very thought provoking two days.

One of the ideas he presented that I felt I could institute immediately was the idea of allowing the students to have a redo when necessary or wanted. I went into this thinking that the students would be very excited about this opportunity and possibly not work as hard on the initial test.

I did place some requirements in order to retake the test. I believe Rick convered all of these:
1. Must have test signed (I have all of my tests signed anyway whether good or bad it is a policy of mine so the parents are aware of progress)
2. Must show a renewed effort in their preparation for the redo (the students came up with some examples of what this can look like)
3. Must stay after school in order to do the retake.

I also let the students' parents know that I would be instituting this change in policy and that parents would get a phone call if the student earned a grade of below 80 and did not stay after. (with a few exceptions)

The response of the students surprised me. As a whole they wanted very little to do with this new idea. More time studying, after school. "Mr Olson what if I am happy with my 72?" My response was that you would not be given an opportunity to demonstrate you knowledge and if I did not only offer you this opportunity but demanded it I would not be doing my job. So if you give your best and honest efforts the first time the exam is given then there is a good chance you would not have to retake the test.

What a wonderful eye opening experience. I look forward to overcoming this initial reaction to this change in policy and demanding the students meet with the success that I beleive they are capable of with the right support.

Once again thank you for your efforts Rick and I look forward to gaining more knowledge through this medium.

Edited by author 02-13-2008 03:24 PM
Peter,
Congratulations on taking action after thoughtful reflection of your grading practices. Although I have been out of the classroom and in the world of administration for quite some time, I can remember the day I walked in to my principal's office and told him that I would be using a different grading system. I had read an article on the fairness of using the median as a measure rather than an average. It also gave me the latitude to weight different portions of the grade. I found that the students worked harder than previously, they always knew their grade and didn't feel so defeated if they did poorly on one thing. It also took me less time to do my grades! It gave every task so much more perspective. I do believe that the students perceived me as a fair teacher for them and I know that almost all of them worked to their capability. By the way, my principal's reaction was basically to make sure that I explained it to the kids and the parents and let him know how it went. Oddly enough, he started showing up in my classroom a bit more often and I noticed that he engaged with the students about their grades. That principal was responsible for moving me forward in the leaderhsip in my building.
Keep up the good work!

Hi Rose,
That was a great scenario and story. I also believe in school administration/leadership supporting a work smarter but not harder principle that clearly defines what students are accountable for and parents have been notified and are vested in the grading policies. It is not easy to keep everyone on the same page but you did it and my hat is off to you!!!!! Thanks for sharing your past experience.

Mike B.

Hi all- I just instituted yesterday that students could redo writing assignments in my foreign language classes but they would need to come before school or after school to do so. I sent a letter home to the parents explaining the change in my policy. Some of my students had expressions of joy and I explained that when you take the SAT you can take it more than once and that I wanted to see you produce your best work.

This is great news! Better be careful, or you'll start a revolution! :-) Thanks for taking the steps and keep us posted on how it goes. -- Rick Wormeli

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I did a communication activity where students had to write down foods and ask in spanish do you eat this or drink this food. We did this activity in the form of a bingo game. Is this time suckage or what about games such as bingo, verb relays etc.?

Hi -- Thanks for thinking about this. I don't have data on those specific games in terms of effect size (impact on learning), but I think that Bingo is basically a matching game, which is helping students memorize information for the short term: a student hears "Papas Fritas" and remembers that this is Spanish for "French Fries" and places an X on the square containing the words, "French Fries." If your goal is to get practice basic recall of terms and have some fun, this activity works. That's fine on one level, but it won't move the terms into long-term memory, especially if this is the only way students interact with it. There must be meaningful interaction from multiple angles, which implies an immersion experience, such as we might provide when asking students conduct daily conversations using the terms, or when they use those Spanish translations as they prepare a cookbook full of favorite recipes, or prepare a cooking video (or podcast) using only Spanish terms, similar to something Rachel Ray or Emeril would present. If it were my own class, I'd do Bingo and similar games once in a while for the fun of them, but I would be mindful of: 1) What is my goal with this game and does this game achieve it? [If not, change the rules of the game so it achieves what I want or scrap the game], and 2) What am I sacrificing while playing this game that might lead to more long-term retention of the Spanish translations. We want students to actually start thinking in Spanish, naturally putting the adjective after the noun, for instance, naturally understanding the direct and indirect objects, etc., not just see Spanish as something with which they have to stop what they are doing and stumble through word-for-word translations. It's kind of like moving an early reading student from, "word+word+word= meaning" reading to reading whole chunks of sentences at a time and using context clues to gather meaning.

'Anyone else want to chime in? -- Rick Wormeli

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Rick, I agree with you that Bingo is useful for moving from simple recognition to genuine recall of single words, and having fun. I know a lot of FL textbooks (including all the French 1A, 1B, 1 and 2 books I've used) present large chunks of vocabulary and then practice them, more or less, in context by presenting large chunks of related grammar points. So if you are early on in the "acquiring large chunks of vocabulary" stage and want to reinforce single word associations prior to more advanced and creative language usage, I'd say Bingo is a fine activity. I've used Pictionary and Charades to similar effect.
I will add, though, that early in my career I had students fill in their own Bingo boards. Yipes. THAT is definitely major time suckage, especially since some kids finish in no time and others don't. This is when you want a time machine :-(

Hi- I have a student teacher who will be working with me in March and she is reading Deborah Blaz Differentiation Instruction: A guide for Foreign Language Teachers. Any thoughts if this a good resource or not?