Thinking More About SBG

Published: 2023-09-21 8:38 PM

Category: Assessment | Tags: grading, standards based grading, sbg, systems, learning

We're finishing our first month of school and I'm thinking a lot about my grading system. I use standards-based grading, which boils down to the majority of a student's grade coming from skills they can demonstrate and do rather than the papers it took to get there. The entire point of SBG is to make sure that students are focused on learning and not assignments. The trick is that it takes assignments - and work - in order to learn the skills.

I've done a lot this year to put standards front and center, including giving students several ways to track their progress. I still haven't cracked the nut of getting them to look at skill development over assignment completion. Arthur Chiaravalli talks about how many SBG systems still fail because of complexity and the fact that a score is still often tied to the feedback, which defeats the purpose. He is also candid about the effort it takes to help students develop skill through feedback. I am grading a ton right now and I am feeling the pain of wanting to give quality feedback on as much as I can.

I also struggle with disconnected systems of feedback and how mutiple outlets for feedback make it hard for students to focus on what makes the most sense. While I was Googling for ideas, I came across a post from an old friend, Ramsey Musallam, who has tried to streamline his assessment into digital and physical notebooks. I've got my students using interactive learning logs, based on fantastic models from Lee Ferguson which has helped many take better notes and actually learn how to reference materials in writing. But it still feels like too many moving pieces.

I think the crux of my issue is that I want students to own their learning. And I say that completely aware that school does not necessarily equate to learning. We learn all the time and own that learning far from the classroom. But, I have an opportunity to help students build life-long learning skills and part of that is the metacognitive process of reflecting on growth. Providing them with tools and setting up a structure which fosters reflection for growth is the end goal.

I'm not really sure what to do for chemistry at this point. I know I need to grade less and that I need to streamline feedback outlets. I've figured out how to put no-score rubrics in Google Classroom (that's another post) so they can get quick feedback in the context of their digital work. All of their physical papers have the same type of quick feedback indicators. What I really need to do is build the habit of looking at their feedback and cataloging it somewhere. Paper and pencil is what I'm going to continue to push and I'm going to specifically build it into each week.

I'm also considering some more portfolio-based ungrading options for my environmental science class as a small pilot group. It's an advacned science elective and I have a lot more freedom in how I run that course. I talked with those students about the potential for portfolios and one-on-one meetings and I'll see what they think tomorrow after they've had some time to chew on it. I don't know if I'm ready to take that jump down to chemistry yet (I'd also need to convince the other teacher that it's not a terrible idea), but maybe I can learn some lessons before bringing that option up.

In the end, I think I know my answer, even though I want to tear it down and start over. I need to simplify and set up systems of refelction as part of the learning cycle to help students track skill development and not worry so much about specific assignments. The activities help build skill and if they take more of the ownership in identifying their strengths and weaknesses, maybe I can move the needed a little bit more in the next month.