Grading Practices and Student Engagement

By Kristen Gierman 

As teachers, we are constantly reflecting.  But as the semester winds down, we devote a particular attention to grades.  That’s not to say we do not notice the successes and less than of our students throughout the semester, but we are more in tune with the trends within the grading system as the semester nears its end.

This year I noticed a striking oddity when it came to my particular gradebook for World History.  The lowest category across all of my classes was reading.  Now that’s not to say that my students cannot read, dislike reading, or just avoid it altogether.  But perhaps there was a flaw in the way we were assessing it OR in the strategies students were using to be successful.

Put simply, the reading of our World History sophomores is elevated compared to that of the Human Geography freshmen.  While most would argue that this would seem or should be a natural progression in a school setting, what I mean by this is that the stakes are raised tremendously.  As a member of both the Human Geography and World History teams the past three years, I have noticed that students generally succeed or find reading in Human Geography “easy” because the curriculum is about the world that they live in and in doing so help create.  For instance, analyzing the impact the media has on stereotypes is a normal process because the students live it, feel it, and perhaps have strong opinions on the matter.  World History, on the other hand, asks students to take a trip to the past, analyze verbiage from a different time, and find interest in the unfamiliar.  Comparatively speaking, for a student the task of reading becomes more complex or daunting than ever.  


As a result, I have made it a personal goal to incorporate more document-based work in the classroom this semester.  I am doing so in the hopes that students experience growth in their reading skills and confidence.  Furthermore, it will also require that they become engaged in historical inquiry.  The usage of documents forces students to ask questions, collect evidence, and produce claims about the past.  The difficulty with document-based work is that it can be extremely complex and time consuming.  The benefit, as I have already seen, is that the students have become more engaged in the process and their learning has become more authentic as we continue to practice this skill regularly.  

Assessment as an Accurate Reflection of Grades

By Mark Heintz

I missed a few weeks of school due to the birth of my second son.  Meanwhile at school, the students continued their work on their understanding of the Classical Era in history.  Before my leave of absence, the students worked on thesis statements, short answer, and document work.  I had a good understanding on progress towards those skills.  Once I was away, their in class work and homework was geared towards content knowledge and mastery of the objectives of the Classical Era.

Here is a sample of one of the objective:

There is a lot of information about Buddhism in the classical era.  There are books written on just one aspect of the faith in the early years.  However, for the sake of this class, I codified the essentials.

For years, I have debated the best way to assess.  I worry about the validity of the test in its ability to assess a students knowledge of the core objectives.  I worry if it is too easy or too difficult.  But I have to make a decision.  For this assessment, its purpose was to test low level content knowledge.  Its targets were extremely clear.  In its design, I limited the use of academic vocabulary in the question stems.  I also limited the skills involved in the assessment, such as change over time, comparative, cause/effect, and periodization.  I wanted to test their content knowledge and that is what I tested.  Here are two sample questions:

The results were great! Prior to the summative assessment, the students took benchmark tests that assessed their understanding of the content knowledge.  From the student performance on the formative assessments, I thought they would do well.  In the end, the students felt the assessment to be fair and assessed what they were asked.

In the future, I wish to keep this type of assessment and add more essays and stimulus based assessments to test their skills.  I also would like to find a better way to communicate which standards they faltered on.  Also, I need to find a better way to put the score in the grade book.  Do I put the three big standards in the grade book? Do I put each objective in the grade book?   These are things that still need to be addressed.

Adjusting Math Standards from ACT to SAT

By: Rachel Barry

For the past seven years, our math department has not used a textbook, but instead has written and edited our own digital course materials.  This includes all assessments (both formative and summative), practice worksheets, and supplemental materials.  If you are interested, you can learn more about this system in this previous blog post.  The important piece to note here, is that this system was developed using the ACT College Readiness Standards.  These have been adapted over the years, but the original pillars of our curriculum were based on the following:

• Basic Operations and Applications
• Probability, Statistics, and Data Analysis
• Numbers: Concepts and Properties
• Expressions, Equations, and Inequalities
• Graphical Representations
• Properties of Plane Figures
• Measurement 
• Functions

In developing each course Scope & Sequence, we looked vertically through the four-years of a student's math career and took an integrated approach to the CRS skills.  Traditionally students learn vertically through the pillars (i.e.: traditional Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and Trigonometry courses).  Instead, we decided to approach the content at the students' cognitive ability across the chart horizontally in a more integrated approach to build students critical thinking skills.  This has worked well for our students, and we see a significant change in students' retention of skills and global understanding of mathematics.  

Then came the state decision to move from the ACT to SAT.  

A bunch of questions and concerns became topics of discussion among out department.  Do we make a huge change from the standards we were teaching to prepare for the ACT to the standards that will prepare them from the SAT?  If we had solid math curricula already, should we make adjustments?  What should we do to best prepare the students who have been provided curricula based on the ACT but now will be taking the SAT?  Believe me, the list of questions didn't stop here.  

Ultimately, as whole department, these were the decisions that were made:

• Include Free Response portions to all Unit Exams 
• The SAT has both Multiple Choice and Free Response components.
• Include Non-Calculator portions in the curricula
• The SAT has both Calculator and Non-Calculator tests.
• Integrate more critical thinking and problem solving questions into the curricula

Our regular junior team, took all of these department agreements and have been implementing them this year.  We also decided to work with the regular freshman and regular sophomore teams to realign our skills.  Therefore, our junior course is slightly more aligned to a traditional Algebra II course.  This decision was made because the SAT has a stronger Algebra II component, while the ACT had more of a balance between Algebra and Geometry.

To look at the changes to our Scope and Sequence of skills, you can take a look at our full lists here: 

Skills 15-16 and Skills 16-17

The biggest content additions were:

- A basic arithmetic component (add/subtract/multiply/divide integers, decimals, and fractions without a calculator)

- A graphing unit (linear and quadratic functions both with and without a calculator)

Things taken out of our curriculum were:

- Surface area and volume (formulas are now provided on the SAT)

- Probability, weighted averages, and sequences/series (these are now made extension skills for students who need a challenge)

- Logarithms and complex numbers (these are also now extension skills)