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.

My Intermediate Algebra Targets (Su13)

I used these targets as part of a my standards-based grading effort in a summer offering of our Mth110 course (Intermediate Algebra) at GVSU.

They are not perfect. Some changes I would make for next time include:

• Reducing the overlap between certain pairs of targets (Target 1.2 and Target 1.14 are examples of that).
• Splitting some targets that merge two concepts or skills in one target (Targets 1.5 and 1.11 are two examples of that).

But overall these worked well and were well-received by my students.

Feel free to use or modify for your own non-commercial educational purposes. For all other purposes, please contact me and let me know what you have in mind.

Intermediate Algebra Learning Targets