Systems of Assessment

Published: 2023-09-09 12:00 AM

Category: Assessment | Tags: grading, teaching, standards based grading, sbg, processes

Two weeks in, and I'm coming up on our first major grade check. I'm continuing to use standards-based grading as my main method of assessment and reporting becuase it focuses students on the content not the paperwork of the class.

In the past, I used Canvas to have a unified system of assessing and recording data. I was able to post assignments and track student progrss on standards using the built-in Rubric tooling. This year, I don't have access to Canvas, so I'm trying to come up with a systematic way to track attempts on stanadrds across time.

My first tool is just a clipboard with a spreadsheet. It lets me keep paper attendance for a quick reference as well as what we did on that day. I've been tracking student standard scores on my sheet so I have a log of how they did day to day. The problem with this is that it isn't indexed or sorted. I spend a lot of time skimming across my header row to find the standard I want - it's a clumsy way to get information. It's also detatched from the evidence (assignment) itself. I have a score, but no context for that score.

My school uses Google Classroom, which has a rubric tool built in, but there's no way to separate the rubric score from the assignment score like I could in Canvas. There, I could give a point value (mainly completion) and then still use a rubric to give qualitative feedback on the learning target. Any time a student or I looked at the assignment, the rubric data came with it.

I'm trying to experiment with ways to assess systematically:

• Frequent enough for good data on progress
• Linked to the actual assignment so students can see their progress
• Indexed and cataloged for me to look at progress over time and for the class as a whole

Unfortunately, I don't see a unified way to do this in Google Classroom - not in a way I'd like at least. What I'm thinking about doing is teaching students how to catalog their own feedback in their notebooks.

In each unit, students get a cover page with the learning objectives and major vocab for the section. I'm going to experiment with adding an "assessment log" template that they can also use to track their own growth. It's a simple blank table with "date," "assignment," "standard", and "score" columns. For each assignment they get back, they add it to their log so they can keep track of progress. It's in context with that section of their notebooks and adds more value to the learning log concept in general.

On my side, I've been building out my own application to track learning standards and to keep feedback and scores in one place. One unit into the school year and there are some rough edges, but I'm getting ideas about how to make it more powerful for me on the teacher end. It has student views, so they can also log in and see their progress and comments, but being detatched from our main point of interaction (Google Classroom and their notebooks), it's just another site they would have to remember. I could probably build more context into the site as a learning tool, but I don't want to add another thing at this point.

If you're using SBG, how do you track standards? What works well for you and your students if you don't have a unified system?