My first assessment failure

...and certainly not my last.

Before I knew anything about standards-based grading, I only knew that the way that we graded stunk. So I developed my own system. It turns out there's a reason teachers who have been in the classroom for only two years usually don't develop their own systems. My system sucked.¹ I wanted to share it though to let you know what I learned from it and why the new system I use is much better.
I called it the Learning Matrix. Here's what a sample sheet looked like:
Learning Matrix

I based it off of two principals that still show up in my work with SBG:

1. Separate learning goals instead of one lump score.
2. Start with the end in mind and create a path to get there.

I decided to base it off of Bloom's taxonomy. Why Bloom's? I don't really remember at this point, other than we're always getting it thrown at us and maybe I figured I should use it. I recall at that time I used Costa's questions to create my question bank so I'm not sure why I didn't use that. Perhaps it just had a whole bunch of levels which I thought was cool. I don't know.

It worked somewhat similar to the skill checklist that many math bloggers use. The students had a set of questions or tasks that were specific to one of the grid boxes. Once or twice a week students would pull out the matrix and look at their grids. They'd select a box and find the accompanying assessment and work on it. The lower levels would involve definitions while the higher levels might be involve the completion of a mini-lab. After completion they'd bring it up to me and I'd give them a quick oral assessment. If they could satisfy my grilling I'd stamp it and they'd color in the box. There was also a pocket chart with the grid on it. Students would move an index card with their name on it to whatever they were currently working on. The idea was that a student could look for someone working on a higher level for help.

So what went wrong?

Ultimately the problem with this method was its basis on Bloom's. Bloom's is a classification system, not a learning progression. A learning progression lays out the steps needed to get to a learning goal. The current system I use creates a learning progression. How do I know this? Because I designed it that way. I started with my goal (in this case, the 3.0 concepts) and worked my way backwards. Let's say my 3.0 goal is for students to be able to calculate the average speed of an object. What do I need to know in order to do this? Some basic vocabulary, an idea of what motion is, some SI units, and how to measure stuff. That's the 2.0.²

I was waylaid by two other big things.

Number 1: I didn't teach the verbs. This wasn't necessarily a problem with my system so much as it was a problem with my teaching. I have a number of assessment pet peeves. Grading things that should be practice. Extra credit for non-academic stuff. Rubrics that focus on product guidelines instead of understanding. But gun-to-my-head I think I might say that my number one assessment pet peeve is grading something you don't teach. How in the world were my kids supposed to be able to "evaluate" when I didn't teach them how? I expected their mastery at one level to automatically gift them with the knowledge of how to do the next level. Even worse, I'd be surprised that they always got so badly stuck after starting a new level.

Now? I directly teach any higher order thinking that I will assess. If you're expected to "Compare/contrast speed, velocity, and acceleration," I'm teaching my kids how to make a comparison matrix. If I expect my kids to evaluate something, I'm teaching them how to create decision making criteria. Now, when a compare or evaluation question shows up on a test, they've got a set of skills to draw on. We need to directly teach thinking skills along with content knowledge. I used to think they just didn't get the content. They got the content. The thinking skill just got in the way.

Number 2: False equality. Not all topics need to be learned to equal depth. For the rest of their science lives, do all students need to understand the atomic theory? You bet. How about Archimedes Principle? Umm...not as important. The state of California dictates what I need to teach my students each year. That doesn't mean they all deserve equal time. In the new system, the atomic theory gets its own topic while Archimedes Principle falls under the topic Forces in Fluids. Some things (I'm looking at you polymers!) get demoted all the way down to just being vocabulary.


What's the take home message?
More than anything, that experience made me realize that this is going to be a long process. I felt like some sort of mad genius when I was designing the system. Two years into a formalized standards-based system, I'm still tweaking and learning. If you've been implementing a standards-based system you know what I'm talking about. If you're planning to, you'll know what to expect.

PS -  Don't forget to explicitly teach higher order thinking skills.


1: It still didn't suck as much as the way we regularly grade.
2: I could definitely be wrong in the setup of the learning progression. Perhaps learning doesn't occur in that order. However, my scales are fluid from year to year and I take solace in the fact that the research on learning progressions isn't all that solid.

Checklist Manifesto v1.0

A couple of months ago I read all of Atul Gawande's books. I highly recommend them. He's the kind of reflective practitioner I wish I was.

My personal favorite was Better, the section on Cystic Fibrosis had me pacing my room. It hit so close to home when I think about the weaknesses of my school and my teaching.

Just as I finished Checklist Manifesto, a post by the Science Goddess on checklists in education got me thinking about how I could use one.

In Checklist Manifesto, Gawande cites three different reasons for failure: the task is beyond our capacity, ignorance, and ineptitude. The first reason means we just can't do it. For example, telling me to fly by flapping my arms. The second reason means our knowledge is incomplete or missing for some reason. We just don't know how. If you told me to rebuild an engine, I would fail due to ignorance. The third reason is where checklists come in. We fail because we don't do what we know we are supposed to do. In the book, washing hands before interacting with patients is a primary example.

I've been working on a checklist to help me overcome my ineptitude.

Step one: Identify my own failures

I did this fairly informally. A few things I had in mind from the start and then I took 30 seconds at the end of each day to jot down whatever it was I forgot to do. I also did that at the end of the week and at the end of the unit I was working on. During lunch time, I asked a few teachers what were some things they knew they should do but sometimes forgot.

Step two: Prioritize

Turns out I'm pretty inept. I had a big list. I had to get it down to a manageable level. I'm not going through 30 things every day. The first thing I considered was bang for the buck. On my list, I wanted things that I felt would make a difference. I used a combination of research on hand and my gut. If I occasionally forgot to have my students turn in their notebooks on Friday, it wasn't the end of the world. On the other hand, I had to make sure I allowed for an extended writing period at least weekly.
The second thing I considered was my ability to execute the item. Again, I'm trying to solve my ineptitude, not my ignorance. I could have said something like,"Integrate one of the six writing traits into a lesson," However, I'd have to google the six traits to be able to even list them. There's no way I can execute that item. I also understand the awesome power of socratic seminar, but I have no idea how to do that either.

I also think it's unlikely that I'd do something 100% of the time if right now I'm only doing it occasionally. What I want out of this checklist is to move certain behaviors from 80% to 100%. Most doctors washed their hands most of the time. The checklist helped shift that behavior to all of the doctors washing their hands all of the time.


Step three: Build it

Gawande says there are Do-Confirm checklists and Read-Do checklists. Did I want to stop and check or do the checks as I go? I'm not going to carry around a checklist with me and checking items off. I decided to use it as a Do-Confirm checklist. I broke it into three sections: Topic, Weekly, Daily. The way it works is I plan my topic and then stop and confirm that I've included the items in my unit checklist. My weekly planning works the same way. My daily checklist has become more of a Read-Do. In the two weeks I've tried this, I've found that I've had the best success if I leave it by my laptop. Before class I take a quick glance to remind me. I often go to my laptop during class and I can take a peak throughout the day.

Step four: Evaluate and revise

Here's my list so far:
checklistv1.1

It's actually version 1.1. I made a revision already. My first checklist said Check for Understanding in place of Pause. Check for Understanding wasn't quite what I wanted. I wanted to make sure I stopped and quickly assessed how things were going, rather than just checking to make sure my students were understanding what was going on. Certainly Pause and Check for Understanding are related but I felt the latter made me focus too much on whether students were getting what I was doing, rather than whether what I was doing was at all valid. It's the difference between looking out of your window while driving and knowing where you are versus knowing you're on the right path to get to your destination. Pause reminds me to stop somewhere and make sure we're heading in the right direction.

My list also trends away from specific pedagogy and towards the non-academic. I'm good at science teacher stuff. I'm less good at teacher stuff. I've never been Harry Wong or Fred Jones or Rick Smith or whoever else I had to read when I was a new teacher. I can't even remember my own procedures, much less enforce them. I'm not a community builder either. This is one of my glaring weaknesses as a teacher. Being a single-subject teacher at a middle school makes this all the more obvious. Probably 80% of the teachers have a multiple-subject credential and about 50% have taught a self-contained class before. They're really good at the non-content specific stuff. I used to think they were wasting time with get-to-know you stuff and ice breakers. I was wrong.

The items that might need elaboration:
Tell a Story could be anything. It could a historical narrative on the development of the atomic theory but usually it's something like, "Two atoms walk into a bar....." I included this because of the stickiness of stories.
Extended writing or free response refers more to quickwrite type activities rather than lab reports or research papers.
Talk with Partner actually refers to the science teacher next door. Perhaps it shouldn't go on this list but I need reminding to do it. It falls into the category,"Stuff I know I should do but don't always do," so it went on the list.
Set Goals refers to my students setting a weekly academic goal (Learn how to differentiate between an acid and base) and a non-academic goal (Raise my hand to ask a question at least once). It's something new I've tried this year but I've been really bad about remembering it on Monday.
Names is squarely in non-academic territory. In the beginning of the year I'm really good about greeting my kids at the door, shaking hands, talking to them, and all that. By mid-year I'm scrambling to get the labs setup again and they get a good morning. At this point in the year I'm down to head nods. I want to say each kid's name every day. It doesn't have to be right away but by the end of the period, I want to have acknowledged every kid by name.
Closure is something I'm painfully bad at. I'm sure it relates to my procedure weakness but I often get caught by the bell.
Reflection and Feedback are both Friday things. Reflection relates to how well they've done at accomplishing the goals they set on Monday. Feedback is from the students on how the week went and what we should focus on next week.

As of now it's been 3 weeks of checklisting it. Except for closure, I'm pretty close to 100% on everything. It's a short time but I've caught myself a couple of times already. I'm not really sure what to do about closure since it's so dependent on other things going well. Perhaps I should concentrate more on quickening my transitions instead and that will give me the time I need for closure. On the other hand, the goal is still closure so maybe I should just leave it on there to remind me what I need to work on.

I'm looking for feedback on my checklist. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff.  

How can I improve on my checklist format/execution/content? What would you include on your checklist?

School observations

In a couple of weeks, I'm going to visit three other schools to see why they're so great and we're not. I've had this planned for about 3 weeks but I've finally got all of the schedules worked out.¹

Although it'll be nice to actually see another science teacher teach a class², I'm primarily going to look at the stuff those schools do that create a successful school culture. Well, that and to look at anything assessment related of course.

I've never done this before and am making it up as I go. I've scheduled the schools so that I'm observing a class and then I get to talk with a teacher during his/her prep. I have about 2.5 hours at each school. I've written out a ton of questions to ask and things to look for but I'm looking for help from anyone out in cyberspace.

I have my assessment-related questions, mainly pertaining to common assessments and use of data. I have teacher collaboration questions. I have school structure questions (interventions, advisory, scheduling, class placement).

Two of the schools were on a Schools to Watch list maintained by the CDE. One of those schools I'm specifically going to for the way they've built collaborative time into their schedule.The other one I selected based on a big science CST score jump.

The reason I wanted to visit other schools in the first place is because my school still takes the every teacher for her/himself approach. We do our own things with little regard to what everyone else is doing. I understand the need to unite under a core vision and have everyone working towards that vision, I'm just unsure of how to do that on a school level.

Any questions  I should definitely be sure to ask? Anything I should look for or ask about? Is there anything that your school does that's great and I should know about?





1:My principal was all for it, but now she's a little less so because I started mentioning it to people and we've got four of us going now. We're not a school that easily gets substitutes and four people out is probably about double our number of capable subs.

2: I was a university intern. I don't know if other states have these but I taught full-time while taking classes at night at the local university. That means I never student taught. By my second year I was the most senior 8th grade science teacher and I'm currently (my fifth year) the second most senior teacher in my grade level. I haven't had a lot of any mentors. One of the many reasons I turned to the internet for support.

I'm already doing that. Part 1

When I first started really examining my assessment practices, I'd often read a practice or strategy and think, "I'm already doing that," and just skip ahead. Turns out, I wasn't already doing that. I was doing something only nominally related to what I should have been doing. This series is dedicated to the former me that felt like I was "already doing that."


Advice: You need to teach the standards.
Me: I'm already doing that.

<<
Begin brief interjection
Ok....I understand the anti-standards argument. Trust me. I get it. However, at least in my district and I'm assuming in my state, teaching the standards is your job. It's not optional. You can't just choose to ignore them. How you want to teach them is up to you (within reason). But if your kids aren't learning the standards, you're not doing your job.
End interjection
>>

It turns out I wasn't already doing that. I'm a science teacher. Science teachers are probably more guilty than other teachers of being a little.....off. We like to blow stuff up. We like to see stuff blow up. We like it when things sparkle and flame and glow and give off terrible odors. We really love when our experiments are loud enough to bother other classes. If we set off a fire alarm, we're secretly proud of ourselves.

I thought I was teaching the standards. I wasn't.

What I was doing was gathering a long series of really, really fun experiments and demos. Afterwards, I'd fit them to my standards. Build a bridge? Umm...forces! Trebuchet? That involves velocity. Gummi bear sacrifice? I think that has to do with...the periodic table....somehow.

I wasn't teaching the standards. I was fitting them in where they were convenient.

Sounds fun right? It was. But this way is also inherently lazy. Turns out if I started with the standards, I could still find the fun stuff and satisfy my inner pyro. Sometimes it just took me longer to find or develop something for that specific standard.

I also had a ton of fat in my curriculum. I had to squish in the stuff I was supposed to teach around the stuff I wanted to teach. I was always behind.

Now? I'm like a laser. Do I occasionally take a little wander to satisfy my inner pyro? Sure. But I've cut enough fat I'm not sacrificing what I'm supposed to be teaching. I also don't delude myself into thinking that building a blinking LED circuit is anywhere on the California 8th grade science standards.

Next time you feel yourself reading a book or at a training and you catch yourself thinking, "I'm already doing that," instead of shutting down, take a second and try to figure out if you really are actually doing that.