expectations-based grading

Year In Review: Updated Grading w/ Standards

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My one-standard-self-assessed grading system of receiving input (re: Input Expectations rubric) has been working out just fine for several years now. “Fine” is…well…fine…but we as educators should be open to refining practices whenever we get new data, especially whenever “fine” has the opportunity to become something awesome. This year I was able to do something better, getting ever so close to that awesome. If what I’ve been doing could be considered 85% of the way towards equitable, time-saving grading that shifts focus to learning, I’m now at probably 90%.

These updates are the result of some research I’ve been doing using primary sources from Grading For Equity (Feldman, 2018), Fair Isn’t Always Equal (Wormeli, 2018), Assessment 3.0 (Barnes, 2015), Hacking Assessment (Sackstein, 2015), and Ungrading (Blum & Kohn, 2020), along with 20 or so additional research reports on related topics. Updates included introducing new standards one-by-one, and their values changed throughout the year. The system also moved from 100% self-graded to 100% teacher-graded. I’m keeping some of these updates for next year, but more on that later on. Let’s take a look at those standards, first…

Process
Process refers to the things students *must* do to acquire language. It’s basically what the Input Expectations rubric was all along years before. Rather than a set of bias-ridden controlling rules that have circulated the language teaching profession for some time, though (e.g., “eyes up front, nothing in laps/on desk, intent to understand,” etc.), there is no dispute that students need input, and there are only three modes of doing so: reading, viewing, and listening. That’s it, and there’s no way to distill it further. Since a focus on providing input requires plenty of time and energy, there’s not much convincing reason to do or grade much else. Therefore, my grading system aligns with the instructional design 1:1.

The processes found in the older Input Expectations rubric have been 100% of my students’ grade for years. Students self-assess how well they’ve been receiving input about four times per year, and that’s it. How do they receive input? Well, I’ve been working under the Look, Listen, Ask framework, but have now separated out the latter into a workflow of Respond/Show/Ask. If students Respond (target language takes priority, but English is fine), we’re good to go. If they can’t, students Show their understanding (e.g., gestures, expressions, etc.). If students can’t do either, though, then it’s time to Ask. This update has the benefit of getting more engagement from students without requiring some kind of “choral response” rule. Also, the students who can respond—but choose not to—start to realize it’s easier to do so rather than having me check their comprehension (because I didn’t get any data and no data is bad).

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No More Reading At Home! & Look, Listen, Ask: What’s Your Focus?

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On my path towards simplifying everything I possibly can about teaching, this next grading idea is quite promising. Don’t get me wrong, my expectations-based grading rubric has worked wonders in terms of flexibility, equity, and efficiency. This new idea just complements the rubric by aligning more of what is expected during class with arriving at the course grade. It also adds more varied gradebook evidence.

In this most-unusual of teaching years, one problem we ran into was how to get evidence of learning, especially when students weren’t in class. The best solution I used was called My Time, the form students filled out to get equal credit by reading on their own and showing their understanding. Otherwise, the typical evidence I collected was fairly simple: upload/share a picture of the day’s “work” done in the notebook. At some point, though, I noticed that students weren’t reading daily from the digital class library—a major course expectation—so I replaced that weekly notebook pic with checking the digital library (Google Doc) and reporting how many days students accessed it. To my disappointment, though not to my surprise, very few students were spending any time at all in the Google Doc. Admittedly, there’s no way to know if the students who did WERE reading, and we gotta take that on faith, but the majority weren’t even accessing the document! So, effective immediately, I’m removing all expectations of students reading at home. This is BIG! However, I’m still maintaining the expectation of reading something old and something new, every day which means the adjustment is to build this into class time for about 5-10 minutes. This is different from FVR (Free Voluntary Reading), which lasts 15-20 on one to two days a week. I like “Free Reading Fridays” and then “Read Whatever Wednesdays” when it really gets rolling. Also, it doesn’t matter if a kid goes home to a peaceful room and naps, then spends hours reading for school, if they go directly to a part-time job, or if they take care of family members. This update is more equitable, and maintains a focus on reading. A simple Google Form follow-up (“What Did You Read?”) is evidence for the gradebook.

But the brain craves novelty…

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Core Practices

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I got thinking about what I’d say my core practices were if anyone wanted to learn more about CI and get an overview of what comprehension-based and communicative language teaching (CCLT) looks like. Would it be a list of 10? Could I get that down to five? Might it be better to prioritize some practices like the top 5, 8, and 16 verbs (i.e. quaint quīnque, awesome octō, and sweet sēdecim)? Would I go specific, with concrete activities? Or, would I go broad and global, starting with principles and ideas?

I highly recommend that you do this just as an exercise during a planning period this week, making a quick list of your core practices. Doing so required me to sort out a few things in the process, and helped organize and align my practices to certain principles. Of course, terms and definitions can get tricky, here. I just saw that Reed Riggs and Diane Neubauer refer to “instructional activities (IA),” which covers a lot of what goes on in the classroom. It’s a good term. I’m using “practices” in a similar way to refer to many different methods, strategies, techniques, and activities that all fall under a CCLT approach, as well as general “teacher stuff” I find to be core as well.

Another reason for this post is that I’ve seen the “CI umbrella” graphic shared before, but that doesn’t quite fit with my understanding of things. Rather than practices falling under a CI umbrella, I envision CI instead as the result of practices under the umbrella of CCLT. I also consider such an approach a defense against incomprehensibility—the first obstacle that needs to be removed—and I thought a more aggressive graphic of a “CI shield” might best represent that.

Here’s the first line of core practice defense:

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Trust & Hope: We Can’t Tell Who’s Reading, But We Can SEE Who Isn’t (via Google Docs)

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As many of us discussed, this remote year has been the time to put faith into the input hypothesis, by just providing input, and not demanding much more than reading from students during a pandemic. Of course, remote learning has been 100% homework, and there’s no way to know what students do at home, much less monitor and support it. So in addition to trusting the input hypothesis—that input would be sufficient for language acquisition expectations within a K-12 context—there was a hope that students were reading. Trust & Hope. Well, today I discovered that my hopes didn’t really pan out, although I cannot say I’m surprised. There’s a pandemic. Full stop. By chance, I clicked on the “trend” arrow that I’ve somehow ignored for a while, and found that it’s quite handy…

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Separating Grading From Assessing & Quizzing In 6 Steps

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The concept is simple: you establish criteria students must meet in order to get an A in the class, but keep traditional assessments out of it, completely.

Keanu: “Whoa.”

Sure, you can still give quizzes if you want. You can even score them and provide feedback, too. Truth is, none of that is necessary to set expectations for class, and for students to meet those expectations. Here’s the process…

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Fairness: COVID-19 Grading Solution

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Recently, I was reminded of a particular conversation I observed many different teachers having last spring. It went something like this:

“How fair is it to the students who did the work if everyone gets an A?”

There’s a lot to unpack there. First of all, it assumes “the work” was reasonable for all students to complete, at home. Let us not forget that any graded remote work was essentially a 100% Homework grading category—something no K-12 teacher in their right mind would ever consider. So, fairness…

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Grammar-Translation: Not Really A Method & Resisting It Now More Than Ever

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**Updated 7.26.2020 with this Cicero quote**

“Hence, if someone does not have a natural faculty of memory, this practice cannot be used to unearth one…”
– Cicero (de Oratore 3.560), trans. James May in How To Win An Argument, 2016

OK fine, the grammar-translation (GT) method has been used for a few hundred years. It’s still the dominant practice for teaching Latin, and widely known. However, what is there to the method, really? I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, but it turns out the method is quite simple. GT actually consists of presenting students with textbook grammar rules they apply to words in order to understand the target language. As a method, then, teachers present rules, but what is GT—really—for the student?

Memorizing.

I posit that the entirety of GT can be reduced to memorizing. This makes it less a method, and more just a process. Students listen to or read about textbook grammar rules, and then recall and apply those rules in order to derive meaning. To be clear, this is a fairly complex way to arrive at step zero—establishing meaning. With GT, students not only must do this for themselves, such as consulting dictionaries and grammar notes, which accounts for a lot of “the work,” but the conscious process requires a decent amount of cognitive demand. Actual interpretive communication, on the other hand, either listening or reading, is an implicit, unconscious process, and effortless. In order to effortlessly apply textbook grammar rules while also recalling word meanings, though, a very good, if not uncanny memory, is required. Memory, then, is both paramount to student success with the GT method, as well as something we have no control over…

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Too Much, Too Little, and Too Late

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One of my favorite topics in teaching is grading and the ridiculous amount of time teachers spend doing it.

Not only does the topic address issues with providing corrective feedback and scoring itself (re: grading during planning time, or setting aside a grading day during one’s free time), but the topic also addresses issues with designing a quiz or test, as well as establishing its criteria. Given those factors alone, it’s amazing teachers can do anything other than creating quizzes, administering them during quiz day class time, and then grading them in planning time or at home. It’s too much. So, all this is being done while language teachers *could* otherwise be focused on what students actually need their teachers to do…creating or adapting more input!

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Rejoinders: Teacher vs. Students

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This year, I’ve begun each quarter by sharing new (or “new”) expectations. These are simple reminders of rules and routines expressed in a slightly different way to keep management tight. For example, Q2 featured “less English, more Latin” to address increased chatter from students becoming more comfortable. This week, I introduced Q3 with “mostly Latin, almost no English.” However, I still don’t require or expect students to speak Latin (i.e. forced output). Here’s how that works…

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