SBG Targets: Rubric or Checklist?

As I prepare learning targets for my next unit of instruction, I am contemplating whether it might be useful to split my targets into two categories: Checklist Targets and Rubric Targets.  

Advice for Getting Started with SBG

One of our teacher ed grads emailed one of my colleagues in search of SBG resources for a pre-algebra course he's developing for next year. He wrote:

When I had you for ____, you graded our assessments using a form of standards based grading. I remember receiving a paper back that listed what standards I had mastered and which ones I still needed to work on. I have wanted to try using a standards based grading system ever since I saw it in your classroom. Would you have any resources that you would be willing to share with me?

My colleague replied with several tips and resources, including Matt Townsley's growing list of scholarly articles SBG. He also Cc'd me, and while I was drafting my own response I realized it might be better to write it as a blog post. So here it is, for what it's worth: my list of suggestions and resources for getting started with SBG in the math classroom.

...why rubrics? (part 1)

Why I use rubrics, #1: Rubrics help me to focus on proficiencies, not deficits, and they support my efforts to give feedback that can be used to improve future performances.

In earlier posts, I discussed the "In the cups" performance task and my use of a proficiency-based assessment system in my intermediate algebra course. In this post, I'll share an example to illustrate how the use of an evidence-based rubric has supported my implementation.

Those Less Convincing Performances

I recently completed my second semester of standards-based grading. I have learned a lot, and will try to post more about that this semester.

After a conversation with a colleague, Pam Wells, about the SBG system I'd been using. The conversation got me thinking about how to handle the, shall we say, less convincing performances. 

Email to Pam on the matter:

Pam, I appreciated the opportunity to talk with you about SBG on Friday. Since then, my thought keep returning to the rubric and the question of what a “1” means. I think I will change how I use 1’s in the future.

When we talked, we agreed that 1 basically means “you don’t get this yet.” In that sense, a 1 should not count as evidence of proficiency at all. So a 1 and an 0 are similar: they mean “no evidence provided”, but for different reasons. Anything at a 0 or 1 simply does not count as a piece of evidence for that target. If we require two pieces of evidence for each target, this reinforces the mastery mode of grading implicit in SBG. If you don’t get to two pieces of evidence, the grade is reduced.

I'm not grading this

I asked my students to turn in a draft of the Cheesecake Task last week. But when I sat down this weekend to prepare to write feedback on their tasks, I hit a snag. Simply put, the work was not good, but their self-evaluations were off the charts high. How could this be?

 Before I started inking comments, I decided to sort the stack into two piles:

Pile one: Almost got it, needs minimal feedback. 
Pile two: Needs a lot of work (and lots of feedback).

Pile one had 5 papers in it. Pile two had 19.

Ugh. 

Show me what you can do

I have a new mantra this semester, reflecting a new (for me) way of thinking about my assessment and evaluation. The mantra is basically: "Show me what you can do." It's a big shift from my early assessment systems.

"Show off!"

How might you improve?

How convincing is this? How might you do better?

These questions were bothering me. I had just completed a paper with colleagues Lenore Kinne and Dave Coffey on the effective use of rubrics for formative assessment (in press). In it, we wrote:

...a good rubric provides feedback on the progress that has been made toward the goal while simultaneously communicating ways the performance might be improved (emphasis added).

My rubric did the first part, but it bothered me that it didn't do the second part.

For that, I had to write comments on students' papers. I realized I was writing the same sort of comments over and over. I needed to do something about that.

From the Syllabus: My SBG Blurb

 It is getting on toward the end of the 6-week summer semester in college algebra, and I am once again thinking hard about my standards-based grading (SBG) implementation. As part of my reflection, I looked back at the relevant sections of the syllabus, where I spelled out in some detail what I thought my students needed to know about my SBG implementation this semester, including a bit about the philosophy, the implications, the expectations, and classroom procedures.

In event that some of it may be useful to other educators embarking on the SBG journey, and in the hope that others will share their ideas and insights, here are those relevant sections of the syllabus: