Getting Started and Welcome!

Welcome to the #TTOGTLLP blog space where we will be sharing our collective journey through the 2017-2018 school year as we explore feedback-based assessment (i.e. no grades) in our classrooms.

We are a group of 4 secondary teachers in the PDSB exploring how gradeless classrooms can impact learning and how to make it a manageable classroom practice for teachers. We are located in different schools around the board (one of us is an instructional coach, three are classroom teachers - 1 of whom is a department head) and teach different subjects (Math, Geography, English and Business).

We will be sharing our journey via this blog over the course of the year so that others can benefit from our time and efforts and hopefully together we can make a difference in education.

Here are some resources to consider if you are interested in the topic but not sure where to start:

A blog entry about using a feedback strategy from Mark Barnes' Assessment 3.0: http://teachinginspirations.blogspot.ca/2016/07/se2r-comments-in-grade-9-science.html
The above mentioned book
Myron Dueck's Grading Smarter Not Harder (does not get into gradeless but can give a good start to changing assessment practices)
Cameron and Gregory's Rethinking Letter Grades (can get you thinking about changing your practices, backward design, assigning grades - definitely can be inspiring for a gradeless model)

You will find 3 of us on Twitter an we would love to connect!

Heather - @MsHLye

Susan - @SusanCampo

Christine - @ChrisHillinPeel

Comments

Reflections on my first year in a "gradeless" or feedback-focussed classroom

We have now had two weeks of school and the rhythm is returning. Clubs and teams are up and running and classes are even going on their first field trips. It’s amazing how quickly everyone gets into the swing of things. However, I have been taking it pretty slowly in my classes. This is partially because all the “official documents” that I need to give the students are still not complete and partially because I don’t want to overwhelm students with the whole gradeless, feedback-focused, place-based and inquiry-based program all at once. I ran my grade 9, Issues in Canadian Geography, classes as gradeless last year. Essentially, the whole course was inquiry-based and we used five overarching learning goals that followed the inquiry cycle and that were organized into a learning map. Students completed guided and then open inquiries based on the curriculum. I consulted with students as they moved through the inquiry cycle and gave verbal and some written feedback (usually through Google F...

When giving feedback, relationships matter, but so does what you say and how you say it

"However, the thing that really matters in feedback is the relationship between the student and the teacher. Every teacher knows that the same feedback given to two similar students can make one try harder and the second give up. When teachers know their students well, they know when to push and when to back off. Moreover, if students don’t believe their teachers know what they’re talking about or don’t have the students’ best interests at heart, they won’t invest the time to process and put to work the feedback teachers give them. Ultimately, when you know your students and your students trust you, you can ignore all the “rules” of feedback. Without that relationship, all the research in the world won’t matter." ~from “Is the Feedback You’re Giving Students Helping or Hindering?” by Dylan Wiliam This quote from Dylan Wiliam is resonating strongly with me today. As a team we spent today mostly looking at student self-assessment. We visited Jonathan So ’s grade 6 classroo...

Final evaluations: square peg in a round hole?

One of the best aspects of the TLLP is the ability of our team members to have release time to discuss our classroom experiences, to visit other schools and classrooms and to plan for what we will do in our classrooms. During today’s meeting, we all had a level of frustration around final evaluations. Every secondary school in the board has been helping teachers to revise and update their final evaluations so that they more closely meet our vision for empowering modern learners with “informative and purposeful assessment.” This has been a rewarding but also difficult process where all aspects of our final evaluations have to be examined, compared to a set of success criteria, and then revised to be more equitable, engaging and purposeful. This revision process is not where I had frustration, however. It is the breakdown of marks between term work (70%) and final evaluations (30%). It’s hard to articulate the reasons why this doesn’t fit a feedback-focused class. It’s like a square pe...

Throwing Out Grades to Enhance Learning: Feedback-focused assessment

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