Assessment & Grading & MGMT

Current Reading: Formative Assessment

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I’m going to start sharing some findings in a series called “Current Reading” as part of a lit review I’m doing on assessment and grading; nothing too fancy or cerebral, but definitely more than blog post ideas.

Why the announcement?!

On the one hand, this is not new. I’ve shared plenty of direct quotes and sources in my blog posts in the past. Also, consider this a symptom of being steeped in academia once again. I’m reading hundreds of pages of research a week, and it’s important to digest and keep track of studies that support my own research. This includes knowing who wrote about what, and when. On the other hand, a second language acquisition (SLA) researcher Bill VanPatten mentioned something online recently when I shared a 2020 post with a summary of CI non-examples. His comment was how ideas in that post were oddly familiar ones throughout the field. That’s completely true; I never claimed they were *my* original thoughts. Like many of my posts written to pass along information, that 2020 summary doesn’t include citations to any particular study. It’s a collection of ideas that have consensus in the SLA community, and that lack of citations was intentional, not an oversight.

Why intentional? For nearly all of my blog’s 12 year history, I never wrote for the academic community that would be interested in that kind of stuff. I was writing for other teachers. I sometimes added just a shorthand author and year (e.g., Feldman, 2018) to some statements that would give most people what they needed to track down the original—if they really wanted to read that original! In my experience, though, most teachers don’t read research, so I haven’t bothered much with bibliographies. Since I’m no longer teaching, and I’m now using bibliographies a lot more these days, I do want to make a clear distinction between posts of the past and posts moving forward. Granted, my posts are still actually written for teachers, make no mistake! My degree program is Teacher Education and School Improvement (TESI), and I’m still sharing ideas for practical implementation. The one difference is that they’ll now include more breadcrumbs for everyone to follow—myself included. After all, there has been no better way for me, personally, to consolidate thoughts and work through concepts than by writing these blog posts. You might also benefit as well. Now, for the good stuff…

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Sorting vs. Grading: How To Properly Use Standards

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Years back, I wrote about how a standards-based model to learning and grading (SBG) fell short of the bar. This was true of a particular kind of SBG—the kind with 10-30 standards being tested and graded every single quarter, scheduling multiple reassessments for each one, and still using scores of 1-4 in a way that keeps focus on points (not learning). The good news is that not all models are like that. The bad news is that a LOT of them are, which in turn give standards and accompanying practices a bad name. Teachers end up hating SBG, and admin scrap plans for any schoolwide change.

To be clear, I’m more of a “burn it to the ground” kind of guy, advocating for little to no grading whatsoever, but I’ve also found that a basic understanding of standards is crucial to ungrading. In fact, I’m not sure you can do it without standards…

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Teacher Narratives + Student Self-Grading

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Maybe having students collect, evaluate, and grade their work entirely isn’t for you. This post offers a slightly different approach with the same outcome.

Narrative accounts of student learning aren’t new. In fact, I just read about them recently in Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don’t Have To) One thing I haven’t heard yet is anyone combining narratives with self-grading. This would eliminate a LOT of the issues teachers have reported, namely the time it takes to score them, and the consistency needed to score them well (Schneider & Hunt, 2023).

Narratives go back about 100 years. They were the next step in efficiency following the practice of teachers visiting homes of their pupils and presenting an oral report on how the child was doing. As high school enrollment skyrocketed, though, narratives were abandoned for even more time-saving percentages, with the A-F scale in place sometime in the 40s (Brookhart et al., 2016).

One way to resurrect narratives on a smaller scale by bringing them back into your classroom would be to a) look at students’ learning evidence, b) make a statement, and then c) have the student select a grade that they feel corresponds to what you wrote. For example, my Process criteria—one of two equally weighted categories/standards—was “you receive a lot of Comprehensible Input (CI).” That’s basically it; clear, and effective. When my students self-graded, though, I provided examples in a single-point rubric of what that could look like, as well as some non-examples to help 9th graders with some critical, evaluative thinking. Here’s a screenshot:

That worked well, but maybe you want to add a narrative account to the grading. To come up with a narrative from this criteria, let’s imagine a student missing assignments who doesn’t respond in class, and hardly ever asks Latin to be clarified. The statement could be “you’re missing learning evidence that could otherwise show you’re receiving CI. In class, you rarely show understanding, and hardly ever ask for Latin to be clarified.” Then, the student would select a grade on the 6-point scale (55, 65, 75, 85, 95, 100). If they say something like “85,” just follow up and talk about how missing assignments and rarely meeting expectations surely isn’t something represented by that number. If they say “75,” or “65,” that sounds about right depending on the degree of what is/isn’t happening.

This doesn’t have to be rocket science.

We already know that the more students think about how well they’re doing something, the worse they actually end up doing (Kohn, 1993), so limiting this exchange to once a quarter reduces any negative impact to to a minimum. Overall, this practice might be worth trying for teachers who want to retain a bit of control while still being in pursuit of getting scores and points mostly out of the picture.

Self-Grading: Explained

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Is self-grading effective, and worth it? All signs point to “yes.” Some research findings appear at the end of this post.

Along with the minimum 50, self-grading is another high-leverage practice often found in an ungrading approach that keeps the focus on learning. In practice, though, self-grading is often misunderstood. If anyone hears about students giving themselves a grade and imagines a kid with their head on the desk all quarter who suddenly pops up and says “I get an A,” that’s dead wrong. With a solid self-grading practice that maximizes teacher prep time and empowers students to evaluate their learning, this student would lack evidence to make such a claim. And that’s one focus of this post (i.e., making a claim). Let’s first start with what teachers have been doing—historically—to make a claim about students’ grades so we can explain self-grading…

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Minimum 50 & The “Something For Nothing” Myth

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One common objection to using the more contemporary 50-100 scale (i.e., 50 being the lowest score possible) is that students who in the past have had scores of zeros, 20s, and 40s in a 0-100 system now “get something for nothing.” This argument fails to account for the lack of understanding and knowledge that a 50 represents when it’s the lowest score. That is, the lowest grades—whatever they are—don’t reflect much learning under any system. Whether a student in one system has a grade of 40 because grades are averaged, or in another system has a 60 because they aren’t, the student isn’t walking away with much understanding and knowledge either way. One difference between these systems is being denied other learning experiences, either by having to retake a course, or having certain doors closed for their future. Let’s look into this…

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Crazy vs. Calm: Reverse Questions

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Reducing listening activities and doubling-down on reading last year had amazing results, even for a year with the lowest interest in the language I had ever seen. We read novellas, embedded readings from MovieTalk clips, tiered versions of various existing texts, and Type ‘n Talk (Write & Discuss) class texts. Overall, instead of what I’m gonna call crazy content creation (CRAY-CC), I had a lot of success with all that calm content creation (CALM-CC). The former is something like 110% energy-filled classes with a massive focus on interaction. The latter isn’t. Both are different approaches to comprehension-based teaching prioritizing input. The former has a far greater emphasis on communicative language teaching, which isn’t necessarily sine qua non as some make it out to be. While I truly believe this applies to all languages, it is especially the case for Latin.

Of course, I don’t disparage anyone doing the former, though I do recommend that language teachers do what they can so new teachers see CRAY-CC as just ONE approach to providing input. In other words, it would benefit anyone new to the field if experienced comprehension-based language teachers presented and shared the non-negotiables and principles of CI more than specific CRAY-CC activities, methods, etc. For me, CRAY-CC was trending when I started teaching. Granted, I did learn most of my strategies and techniques from all that, but it would have been nice to be presented with other options that fit my speed, style, mood, etc., and especially that of my students. Luckily, I became more responsive to their reluctance, and adapted. In the end after 9 years of focusing on CRAZY-CC, I finally settled on CALM-CC classes for my 10th year. The reading development truly was magical. We generated class texts based on what were were discussing, learning, and reading, and it was all more than enough content. No order-at-cafe/taberna role plays, and no paired speaking activities that lacked a purpose, either.

Granted, that doesn’t mean I ditched speaking Latin altogether, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend that. At this point, I would recommend a kind of speaking Latin in the classroom that looks different, though, such as communicating with students (fully accepting their English responses), and just skipping on the kind of listening demands that seemed to require 100% silence on their end—ultimately leading to classroom management disasters—that so often accompany CRAY-CC. For a CALM-CC approach, many greetings, instructions, and daily interactions can be done in simple Latin, and have value. Then there’s questioning.

Questioning IN LATIN can be tricky given issues with asking questions when reading a text, which I found became more of a problem when reading ramped up. But let’s say I wanted to ask more questions IN LATIN, and let’s say you do, too. Assuming you had a classic Classical background with approximately 0% speaking Latin, maybe you recently went to a conventiculum, and now you want to speak more Latin in the classroom. That’s a great idea, though not everything you learned and experienced can be applied to your students who have an uncia of the prior knowledge you do. Just as well, here’s an activity inspired by a graduate student who recently presented a selection of Virgil (in English) during a mini lesson, asking yes/no, either/or, and “do you think that” questions that reminded me of what I used to ask IN LATIN as early as the first weeks of school. I call it Reverse Questioning…

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Grading: An Ableist Practice

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I haven’t really seen grading presented as an ableist practice, but after attending a workshop at UMass, I can see how framing it that way illustrates the problems of grading in a thought-provoking way. Why ableist? Here’s an analogy: I’m certainly not *able* to contend with the top archers in the nation, but no one is forcing me to, either. It’s a choice. My lack of ability doesn’t close any doors. I just won’t win a medal. Yet elementary and secondary school is not an option for kids. Placing grading obstacles in the way of their learning and future learning is a bit like disallowing me to go to my local archery range until I were to place among the top athletes in the nation. So, consider these common characteristics of graded assignments as we unpack each one through an ableist perspective:

  • single standard of achievement
  • don’t acknowledge growth
  • require specific patterns of logical thought
  • require fast work on deadlines
  • only valid in written form
  • require fast, dense reading
  • require screen time
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Points: The Harvard Way

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I’ve shared that I’m taking the first of four courses towards Harvard’s Instructional Leadership Certificate. I really do find the course almost entirely helpful, which is a big endorsement from someone who’s been mostly disappointed by gen ed PD, and I would still recommend it.

Then there’s the points…

As I’ve revisited the problem with points, I also just experienced it firsthand as a student. In the course, there were optional message board activities each week with various point values for posting, replying, and/or “liking,” etc. There was a suggested minimum to “earn” over the six weeks, and a weekly maximum. But some points carried over to the next week. Not all. There was a maximum carry over limit beyond the maximum. As you see, this was not a straightforward system.

Now, I hadn’t been paying attention to the points, or perhaps better expressed, I actively tried to AVOID looking at those points. In short, when there was something to add to a topic and there were a couple replies between me and another participant, the weekly point maximum was met. Since I spent a lot of time posting and replying, I maxed out points each week.

Well, the Week 4 module didn’t really speak to me, so I did my OPTIONAL post, and didn’t really go back to look at what the other participants had to say. No biggie, right? Especially since I was nearing that six-week maximum at the end of the fourth week. What I find absolutely frustrating, though, is that I received an automated email “reminder to participate” at some point late in the week. That was just…insulting. I felt like replying “FU, bro. I’ve almost reached the limit, and these are friggin’ OPTIONAL?!” Oh, and I got another notification the following week, and a final notification after I completed the coursework. This only increased my frustration considering I had already overshot the maximum. Thanks, Harvard.

So, while the point (heh) of the message board was to encourage discussion and further learning, I was being told that I wasn’t doing it the way someone wanted me to do it. Makes me wonder how many teachers are trying to control their students in similar ways.