Throwing Out Grades to Enhance Learning: Feedback-focused assessment

This post was originally posted on my personal blog here . Going "gradeless" (using feedback-focused assessment) has brought about some great things with students, but often leads to more question than answers about my assessment practices. If you are reading this and have any ideas or suggestions I would love to hear from you! Overarching Learning Goals & Learning Maps I have started my year in grade 10 math with a set of learning goals and an incomplete learning map. I went into this process with an understanding that these documents will always be working documents. Changes will be needed depending on the group of students and changing needs of the course/society/etc. I am only 6 weeks into the semester and already envisioning the need for changes just based on pedagogy and assessment policy. Some of the reasons for this will be become more evidence in the topic below. My learning map only has descriptors for level 3, which is partly by design. 1) I...

So, it's been a crazy few weeks since my last post and now it's time to just sit down with a hot chocolate and type... I'll start with the highlights which include completing some course specific PD, meeting Starr Sackstein, and having some epiphanies about my own practice. Then I'll end with some next steps for myself (got to model what I preach, right?). Within my department, there were concerns that we were not ready to deal with grade 9 gradeless. I wanted to do it justice - I figured that my two years of dabbling with gradeless was some background compared to my colleagues who may be dealing with gradeless for the first time. I approached my principal (Jim Kardash) and he was extremely generous in giving us three full days of release - two of which were with the Board's Instructional Coordinator (Kristen Clark). As a course group, we first conferred to create common assessment practices and assignments. That one day was a whirlwind of productive collaborati...

This post was initially published here . In the second full week of school I put a lot of focus on starting to develop student's skills in self- and peer-assessment. Without these skills the idea of developing an environment that creates more autonomous learners likely would not happen (and the burden of giving descriptive feedback would fall entirely on me - and I also have a goal to get more sleep this year). Here is the gist of the steps I attempted to take last week: 1. Give students questions to use when reflecting on their work (such as "Have I written my solution so that someone else can follow it?"). I put these on the board and uploaded a photo of them to our Google Site for student's to reference. 2. Introduce the model I am using for descriptive feedback (Acknowledge what you are doing well; Describe what your next step should be; Determine how/when you are going to work on your next step). I also put this on the board and uploaded a photo to our Si...

. There was a lot of press regarding the Gradeless Transition at Mayfield Secondary School. Unfortunately, the press missed the point . The focus of many articles and interviews was "negotiated grades", but that is only a small part of the whole thing. The main idea is student motivation and learning - students will learn in a way that is fair, because it is interesting or because they need to know, not for a grade. Grades are the "carrot" and the "stick". We have raised children to fear punishment and crave rewards, but that is not what we should be doing. The lessons we teach are often gone the next day - students have no reason to remember and don't. If students learn because they are interested or find things to be useful, they will retain and use this new knowledge. There have been countless studies that looked at motivation. Students who receive marks aren't motivated to improve. Pair a mark with a comment and they don't improve. ...

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...

This blog was initially published on my personal blog here . What, Why and Where I am finally embarking on my vision of a "gradeless" classroom. What does that mean? It means that my students will receive feedback that is feedback-based. Learning becomes about learning. Grades take a step back and are determine for reporting periods. Why am I going here? I am giving the ownership of learning back to my students. For too long I have been the owner of the learning. It was believed that the teacher "gave" marks and students always wanted to know what they needed to "do" to get an 80. The shift is simple - I give feedback based on set criteria that students need to work toward and they reflect on their learning and act on a next step to meet those criteria.  Where am I now? In the past 2-3 years I have done some work with creating overarching learning goals and reformatting evaluations (i.e. taking marks off of quizzes, using one-point rubrics...

So... I'm back in the classroom and the whirlwind of planning, and integrating gradeless has begun. The first day of school was something new where the principal invited parents to come to school for the morning. There was a 10 minute time slot per period so that the parents could meet the teacher. I was quite nervous about this as I knew there would be a million and one questions about going gradeless. Thankfully, I had prepared a parent letter with some of the details of this process and felt armed enough to tackle any question thrown my way. I was completely surprised by the number of parents that attended! My classroom was almost full. And...the parents did not come with pitchforks, and were (if I wasn't deluding myself) somewhat happy that gradeless was here. Perhaps the ideas of essentially having me as a one on one tutor with their child or that there would be immediate feedback through meaningful conversations with their child put them at ease, but I was relieved that...