"I don't know what it's called..."

We just recently had our spring parent/teacher conferences here at West Marshall, what a joy to know that Spring is on its way and I will soon be outside on the baseball field for the summer. Our conferences are student lead and we always have 90-95% of our students show up, which is great! The students work through their folder explaining their current grade and showing some work that they have done within each classroom. It is a great experience to see the students interacting with their parents and get a better understanding of where each student is coming from.

Yesterday, our SINA group met with teachers to discuss another formative assessment idea. Since we are a School In Need of Assistance that group has been studying data and have formed a plan to lead the middle school in formative assessment ideas and how to implement them within the classroom. Toward the end of that meeting I brought up the idea, that has been floating around about Standard Based Grading (see previous post), that "are we here to fill our grade book full of F's or are we here to make sure learning is taking place?"

That led to some discussion but ultimately led to a teacher telling me about her 8th grade conferences and students talking about my class. At semester, I started taking part in the formative assessment movement and looking at my standards as the benchmarks to which my students would receive grades. Obviously, since I can't change my grade book to reflect standards met, students have very few marks but also have A's in my class. Why? Because we continue to reteach and relearn and investigate and wonder until the students have all learned and met a standard. What is the outcome, for now I just give them an "A".

For the 8th grade conferences then, the students had to explain that to their parents and according to the teacher I talked to many were able to explain it and connect it to the news dealing with Waukee's middle school system. The quote from many was "I don't know what it's called but we all have to get it right before we move on to something else, he won't let us fail or not try to understand it."

GREAT JOB 8th GRADE! We have had great discussions in class about expectations and I feel many are really buying in to this system. They enjoy the fact that the classroom is now more student centered and they are in-charge of their own learning. Some days I sit back, watching the class, and wondering why wasn't I doing this before?!

It has been a great learning experience for myself but has also led to some good discussion between me and our staff and principal! I look forward to trying to get more teachers to buy in to this system and look to eliminate giving "marks" just because that is the way we have always done it. I was so glad to see Waukee pass a movement to SBG and I look forward to the day that all schools are doing it!