Standards based grading has made such a positive impact on my teaching practices this year. When I started reading Ken O’Connor’s book, How to Grade for Learning last year, I felt validation for my teaching philosophies. As my district has begun putting these practices into play this year, my list of benefits for standards based grading abound. I have felt better equipped to help struggling students, as I know exactly what standard they need more time and support with. I also now have short standards-based assessments that I can use to not only track the whole class’ progress, but also those I am giving specific interventions to which directly guides my instruction and allows me to teach what is necessary and to the students who need to hear it.
In addition, the emphasis on feedback to guide learning instead of vague letter grades has really been transformative for me. I have provided feedback in the past, of course, but never to this extent or depth. With the focus on growing toward a standard, my feedback this year is far more specific and meaningful for students. (This could also be said for parents, in that they can have a much clearer picture of where their student succeeds and struggles with the standards delineated on the report cards and progress reports, but since I teach fourth graders, I really want the students themselves to understand, internalize and use the information for growth.)
But it wasn’t until our first conferences that I realized that while I was giving written comments on work providing praise and areas for improvement, it was only during our conference conversations that I was telling families and students what tools they might take better advantage of. I had been remiss in providing this information to students in a more timely fashion on their work. I had been providing positive comments as well as areas to continue working on, but I had failed to ever share with students how to improve in those areas. To that end, during our last large writing, I created a very quick and easy Google doc that allowed me to provide feedback to students in a more organized and meaningful way than simply writing comments on their papers. I wanted a better way for students to see, “Hey, this is what I am good at!” while also helping students see mistakes as just areas for growth and learning to occur and to have specific ideas on how to improve in those areas. The half sheet I created was received so positively by students that I wish I had thought of it a very long time ago. I have always provided compliments as well as suggestions in my written feedback, but somehow this form really helped my young writers see their successes in a more concrete and visible manner.
Each one of the columns provides critical, specific information to students (and parents). I make a bulleted list of “wows!” so students can see specifically and clearer areas they did very well in. The bulleted list of “now” steps I intentionally keep short, to just a couple suggestions, and I take these items directly from the rubric – from what would have moved their score from a “2” in one area to a mastery level of “3”. The last column I use to list specific ideas, resources and tools that will help a student get better at those “Now” steps. Sometimes that means reviewing notes we took, using a checklist more thoroughly, working with a partner, doing extra practice examples or slowing down and double-checking.
The “Wow, Now, How” form has become my go-to for feedback. So far, I’ve only used it for writing projects, but I intend to increase its usage to reading assessment tasks and spelling and grammar as I can, too.
Teaching at 3am 