Why Precision Matters

The following home workshop was used with preservice teachers in an effort to highlight the importance of attending to precision when doing mathematics investigations.

Home Workshop - Angles of Polygons by hasenbaj

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.

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.

Volume & Surface Area.. or, Wrapping Pancakes

We had pancakes tonight. And we had leftovers. So we decided to store them in the fridge to reheat later.

This is the way you are supposed to do it. 

But we just wrap them in foil and stuff them in the fridge. So, as usual, I pulled out a sheet of aluminum foil, eyeballing how much I would need and adding another inch or two for good measure.

Then I stacked the pancakes on top. It looked like this. (Ok so far...)

Two side-by-side stacks, and one extra on top. (That's odd...)

But then I folded up the foil, and that looked like this.

My tweets to #m432 (Fall 2013)

This is a PDF printout of my tweets to the #m432 hashtag for Fall 2013. You may also view the saved search Twitter's website.

How to do SBG, better, next time!

Wordle of this semester's SBG Targets

Over the last few semesters, I have begun implementing a standards-based grading approach in my classes. My first real attempt was over the summer in a small intermediate algebra class. The results were very positive, but I had fewer than 12 students in the class for most of the semester. Plus it was summer. Could SBG stand up to the challenges of an academic year? Thinking the benefits were worth it, I decided to go for it.

It was worth it -- and I'll talk about why another time -- but I also learned a few things along the way. As the semester is drawing to a close, and I'm grading a lot of student work as they seek to fill in "holes" in the SBG gradebook, I thought it was prime time to reflect on what I would do differently next time: hence, this post.

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