Posts

Shifting ownership to students through feedback and reflection... not points

Image
One of our first activities of the year was to convince me that accumulating points demonstrated their learning. Points were not my friend Last year I found a newfound opponent that impeded learning. Points. While reading Articles by  Alfie Kohn  on learning, points, and motivation and reflecting on my own life, I found that points simply motivated me to complete work, but not actually learn. While some learning took place during the completion of assignments, points were not helping long-term retrieval and the motivation to change behaviors. Throughout the year I found that students looked to me as the gatekeeper of their grade and it was on me when they did not succeed. Students regularly admitted to doing the minimum on their notes or copying their peers. Screenshots of daily quizzes were commonplace. Sure, scores were high, but was learning actually taking place? This school year I completely changed the way that class was structured with regards to homework, a...
7 comments
Read more

Making Homework Meaningful

Image
Making Homework Meaningful If you have been following along, I have been discussing going "gradeless" in the classroom. This has included much more formalized formative assessment, reflection, and student ownership. One of the comments Joy Kirr made in a recent podcast (#tg2chat or Teacher's Going Gradeless ) was that it takes 10 positive comments to overcome 1 negative comment. I felt my students were hating the way in which I flipped the class on their heads because the vocal students were the ones who were sounding the horns for a mutiny. After asking for feedback, I found the vast majority liked the way class had changed and they regularly used the phrase that they felt they were "owning their own learning" With all that being said, we just finished our second test since that shift and the mean was an 85% and the median was an 87% (typical tests all year had been about 79%-80%) so this was great news. Very few students were surprised by their scores be...
Post a Comment
Read more

I didn't "grade" for a full unit and here is what happened (Part 2)

Image
I didn't "grade" for a full unit and here is what happened (Part 2) Today was an awesome day. I was nervous to see how my students would do on their summative assessment on our Developmental Unit. I had not "graded" anything, but I had given feedback on their formative assessments and they self-assessed continually. Students Initial Concerns/Comments - Why would I do anything if you don't grade it? - I am not going to try now - This is stupid - Go back to the way we always did it - This is too hard and a waste of my time - Wait, so I decide how I am scored? Can't I lie? - How do I get points?! - This is great, I get to pick what I can do Many of these questions I was able to answer by discussing the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. I also referenced the fact that I did not "grade" any of their in-class work throughout the year, but they still worked diligently on that (I am lucky and have some ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Grades: What do they really motivate? (part 1)

Image
Grades: What do they really motivate? Recently, in my psychology class, we looked at what motivates us and how these specific types of motivation affect the way we perceive these situations in the future. Our focus was around intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and we even had a brief discussion of motivating teachers using monetary rewards based on test scores (at first they were all in...then they found all of the flaws with this system). Here is a brief snippet of a meta-analytic review out of Rochester University ( Deci, Ryan, Koestner, 1990 ) (or the  Harvard Business Review that we looked at, Chamorro-Premuzic ) " More specifically, for every standard deviation increase in reward, intrinsic motivation for interesting tasks  decreases  by about 25%. When rewards are tangible and foreseeable (if subjects know in advance how much extra money they will receive) intrinsic motivation decreases by 36%."  In other words, when we expect an extrinsic motivation, o...
3 comments
Read more

Don't tell me grades should only reflect learning

Image
Don't tell me grades should only reflect learning To start, I have to come clean, my grades solely reflect learning. Students earn full points for late work and they are not graded on participation, effort, or any other factor other than their formative (~20%) and summative (~80%) assignments.  My first question is: What does a 40/50 on a multiple choice summative exam? Free response? What does that truly mean in your class?  When I reflect back on high school (10 long years ago), I have probably forgotten 70+% of the content, but still, use many of the skills that I learned. When I say skills, sure I am referencing reading skills and problem-solving skills, but the soft skills like timeliness, respect, leadership, participation, organization, and empathy are the ones that have shaped me into the person I am today and have led to any success that I have earned. Many of these skills occur naturally in classrooms, but none of these are assessed. Nor do I think they ...
1 comment
Read more