The story yesterday in the
Des Moines Register, in regards to Waukee middle schools moving toward standards-based grading, gave me a chance to reflect on changes I am starting to make within my own classroom. The idea of student centered learning is indeed where our educational practices should be but as we may remember from our childhood and what we still see in many classrooms today is that the focus is on the teacher, not the students.
Students will receive statuses of "beginning," "developing," "secure" or "exceeds" in 10 to 12 objectives - or standards - per subject instead of traditional letter grades. By doing this it will make it easier for schools to align their grading standards with teaching standards of the Iowa Core or National Core. This will also allow students to better understand what they "get" or what they still need to try to understand at a higher level.
A good resource for this discussion comes from a blog I follow
MeTA musings. Matt uses his background in the subject area to explain this much more clear than I probably can. The idea that students will now understand what they "get" or "don't get yet" versus the idea that you got a 7 out of 12 on a worksheet (what does that mean?).
I am not sure that letter grades should go away but should be linked to the standards that a student has met by the end of a grading period. I still think students need to have goals and the idea that we should totally eliminate competition from our classroom worries me. To simply change to SBG without regard to challenging students to go above and beyond while also working at a pace that is suitable to our best and brightest might bring the bottom up but might slow down growth at the top.
If you would like more information about SBG, I would like you to take a look at
this open letter to the DMR that does a great job of taking on the ideas of those against change!
First, students worked in groups to direct learning on the Oregon Trail. Each group was to make some sort of presentation (Power Point, Prezi, Poster, etc) to teach the rest of the class about each individual state along the trip.
The game board you see is from our post-lesson assessment. Instead of taking a test, groups were asked to make board games to review materials we covered in regards to Westward Expansion in the United States. It was great to see students question each other on what the correct answers were or even that the answers were broader than what someone might have on their answer sheets!
