Standards-Based Grading Update - July 2020

Since beginning my work on standards-based grading (SBG) practices, I have come a long way.

This reflection covers my first experiences with SBG, my efforts over the years, as well as my future plans.

I hope to have SBG fully implemented within the next couple of years. The process of implementation is one that cannot be rushed into, a lesson that took me a while to learn.

My Early Experiences with SBG

First of all, I have been interested in standards-based grading since I began teaching in 2014. As I was one of three middle-high school Social Studies teachers in a very small district, I had many different classes to prep for. This was my workload during my very first year of teaching: US History, World History, Government, AP US History, and AP Government. Talk about overwhelming. I made it through and I am a stronger teacher for it; the one regret that I have is that I wasn't able to dig deeply into standards-based grading right away.

I tend to be someone who dives in head first, gets overwhelmed, and then slowly backs away from my new initiatives a few months after they start. Standards-based grading is not one of those initiatives. I began to read about SBG in 2014 and I have reached out to my PLN on Twitter and within my school community to discuss grading practices.

I really got serious about SBG when I moved to a new district, as I was less involved in meetings and teams and had more opportunity to focus on grading practices, which really should have been my priority in the past. I also had a great PLN at my new school that was dedicated to SBG. I had a wonderful PLN at my last district whom I miss a ton, but they weren't as far on their SBG journey as my new colleagues are. The expertise of my new colleagues has greatly advanced my understanding of SBG and I am very glad to have them!

In addition, I began to reach out to my virtual PLN on Twitter more often asking for advice on SBG and my process. In 2018, the state of Wisconsin released the new Social Studies standards and my work could really begin. The 2018-2019 school year (my first in my new district) was dedicated to unpacking the new standards and really understanding what was required of my students. I also redesigned many units to fit the new curriculum, though I did not have the opportunity or time to complete them all. I have to remind myself that this is ok, as change takes time!

Since the 2019-2020 School Year

The 2019-2020 school year was focused on writing new assessments to match the standards and working to align learning activities to the standards. This is where I fell behind a bit. The assessments certainly assessed the standards, but daily learning activities were not always meaningful and many ended up being busywork. I greatly regret this, but again, change takes time.

During the last quarter of the 2019-2020 school year I worked with my student teacher on creating a full SBG unit, backward-designed and all. I discuss that unit in my post titled "Inquiry Mindset: Types of Student Inquiry (Including my "Global Interactions" unit)." Before creating the unit, we chose power standards. Then we decided which unit to create (Global Interactions) and walked through the standards that related to this unit, choosing which ones we could feasibly address within the time frame of the unit. We broke down the standards and created 4-point rubrics for them. (This is another development - the 2019-2020 school year was the first in which I switched my grading scale to a 4-point scale, though I still had to convert it to a 100-point scale. Formative assessments were graded this way, but summative assessments were graded based on the number of questions. In the most basic example, a 30-question test would be worth 30 points. This is not representative of SBG and is something that I am working on.)

I will be using the Global Interactions unit as a model for future units that I create. It will take a great deal of time to create brand-new units, so I am trying not to bite off more than I can chew. I will focus on World History first and create new units and assessments. Then I will find or modify learning activities that help students practice the skills that they need to master. After World History is completed, then I can move on to US History, then Economics, then Psychology, and finally, Sociology. This process will take a great deal of time, so I need to remember to be patient.

Along my SBG journey, I have done a lot of reading and collaborating to better understand the process and implement SBG in my classes. (It is something our district is thinking about, but we are nowhere near being able to have all classes take part.) In the summer of 2019 I took part in a Book Club. Here are my updates from the book club:

Update on "#SBGBOOKCLUB 2019: Rethinking Grading"

I have included my key takeaways and my reflections on the takeaways:

• Unpack the new Social Studies standards that Wisconsin has recently approved
• Done for the most part. I have yet to include necessary vocabulary, but it's a work in progress! - View the unpacked standards here!
• Write student-friendly learning targets using the standards
• This is being done on a unit-by-unit basis, though learning targets are also outlined on the Standards Unpacking document linked above.
• Organize my grade book categories into learning targets
• I'm planning on determining how to do this before next school year. Depending on how school resumes, I might not put this into practice yet. If we are continuing remote learning, it could just get very confusing for students and parents with all of the other new things we'll probably be implementing for virtual learning.
• Focus on skills (easy with the new standards) and find ways to provide student choice in the content they study
• Working on it! New learning targets focus on the skills, but I have to be intentional in making sure that my everyday learning activities sync up to the standards as well. Student choice will be easier to allow once my inquiry units are set up. I have one completed, but others in progress. Each inquiry unit focuses on one compelling question. Students will choose which topics they want to research in order to answer the compelling question. More on this later as this process develops. This Civil Rights lesson plan is one example of how an inquiry could be set up.

Inquiry

To better prepare for SBG, I have also been delving into inquiry. The new WI State Social Studies standards include the following strands: Behavioral Sciences, Economics, Geography, History, and Political Science. The standards also include a strand titled Inquiry.

I have begun research into how I can incorporate more inquiry by taking part in MOOCs and by reading Inquiry Mindset by Trevor Mackenzie and Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt. To see my reflections on inquiry, please view the posts labeled with "Inquiry."

So Far This Summer and Next Steps

So far this summer (besides reading Inquiry Mindset) I have read What We Know About Grading: What Works, What Doesn't, and What's Next by Thomas R. Guskey and Susan M. Brookhart. I will be writing a blog post including my reflections from that book soon.

My next endeavor is to read Grading from the Inside Out: Bringing Accuracy to Student Assessment Through a Standards-Based Mindset by Tom Schimmer.

I have a lot planned for this summer, but I believe it is important to do as much reading as possible before trying to write more curriculum. I want to make sure that I am doing it correctly, as I often just forge ahead and then realize that I have to revise. Revision is a natural part of the process, but research should come first.