Effective Communication in the Gradebook - Part 2 (Science)

By Quinn Loch

Seventh post in a series from our staff-led Institute Day.  This is part II of a two-part blog post, with the first post reflecting on the math component, while this second post focuses on the science component.

Rachel Barry (Math) and Quinn Loch (Science) presented this session, which focused on these two questions:
     1.  How can I show formative feedback in the gradebook?
     2.  How can I communicate progress in the gradebook?

SCIENCE

One of my biggest struggles has been how to record and report progress to students efficiently in the gradebook. I want to have formative feedback that doesn't "hurt" their grade and I also want to show student progress - all without cluttering up the gradebook with countless grades and having to need two separate gradebooks. Below are my current working solutions to these hurdles.

Question: How can I include formative data in the gradebook?

My solution: A "zero-weight" category allows me to communicate understanding during the learning process without penalizing the student. I call this category the "in-progress" category. This is where I post standard-based scores on what I call "progress quizzes." These progress quizzes are closely aligned to our learning targets and act as checkpoints along the way to our summative.

Snapshot of a progress quiz that gets scored 0-4.

Sample Learning Targets

Question: How can I show progress in the gradebook?

My solution: Entering multiple scores within one standard. I report feedback to students from a standards based scale of 0-4. If a student demonstrates an understanding level of "1" and then later demonstrates an understanding of "3", then I'll enter it as 3.1 in the gradebook.

Using decimals to enter multiple scores for the same standard

Question: How can I get students to use this information to close gaps and how can I hold them accountable for their learning?

My solution: Pre-Test Reflections. Here in an example of one that I use in class.

Pre-Test Reflection. Students do not take the summative if they have a 0 on any standard.

I try to do this reflection a couple days before a test so students have time to dedicate practice to, or remediate on, the specific things that they may be struggling with. I have yet to get the question "What should I study?" this year.

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.

So just now I was thinking... about implementing standards based grading. Woo!

by jessica maciejewski

Midway through our "EG Lead Learners Team" meeting today, my brain was afire with big-picture ideas. Now I'm the kind of person who is critical of ideas (my own included), but once I'm excited and have done basic research about something, I want to run with it. Give it a "trial by fire," persay, and see how it goes, reworking along the way.

So this summer I had the privilege of attending the Pearson Assessment Training Conference in Portland, Oregon, on grading practices. While I am skeptical about Pearson's actual interest in improving education versus making cash monies and maintaining ranking as a top institute merely for the value added to their brand, based on my own experiences with standardized tests and trainings as well as the awesome John Oliver's exposé in regards to standardized testing (holy crap this sentence is already "wordy"),



I left the conference with an educator crush on Myron Dueck and feeling intrigued by a 4- or 6-point grading scale based on below basic, basic, proficient, and mastery levels.

After viewing a bunch of different teachers' grade books (one from 1946, then the rest modern & online), I didn't see any I thought were effectively communicating student progress or fairly assigning grades. Then I looked at my own. I didn't like that one either (though I did like it a lot more than the others at least?). So I set some goals for my 2nd quarter:

(AND THEN THE WORLD): 

Soooooo my current grades are feast or famine. Which is maybe encouraging(?) because if a kid turned stuff in (at ALL), they're at a B. If s/he didn't... it's F City. Ugh, it feels intimate to share this:



Now, by the end of the term, that "grades are real!" hustle will kick in and I'll get more essays and etc. But is that fair? Am I doing this right? If a kid has not turned in aaaaaanything, I can't assess them, so it's listed as missing (which counts as a zero). They can make this up whenever. The sooner the better. Yep, made phone calls home. Yep, conferences with kids. Yep, referred them to the tutoring center. If I didn't do the Missing/0 thing, that kid would think they were passing and then ::SURPRISE, YOU FAILED!:: would happen the last week of the quarter. :/ Should they be passing at all if they have done zero work? E1 FD is Essay 1 First Draft, then E1 R is the revised version. Vocab is mastery oriented (vocabulary.com), self-paced, and falls under reading skills as does IR (independent reading). The grammar tests are self-paced. SAT is multiplied by zero and is not a score, just a baseline "fyi" for kids from our first SAT Writing in class test.

So here are my big idea steps/goals for Q2:

• break down skills based on the Illinois grades 9-12 ELA Common Core (<that was ridiculously tedious to actually get to)
• create descriptors of each level of ability in each skill
• redesign rubrics based on skills
• update gradebook for quarter 2 with all skills; include related assignments in comments section (Haiku Learning seems like it would be a fantastic standards based grading system, though I just discovered it and have never used it)

Ooookay. Sounds like I have enough for right now. I'm not even sure I can do this for Writing/Grammar, Reading/Vocab, and Speaking by next term. Ideas and *constructive* feedback welcome!

Want to know more about Habits of Work? Check out my post: HoW & Character

Self-Assessment and Science Skill Tracking

written by Quinn Loch

A few days ago, Kim Miklusak provoked some great conversations in the Collab Lab about how we have students self-assess and how we can get students to better understand their current skill set. You can read her previous blog post about cognitive bias and how people can incorrectly evaluate themselves when it comes to knowledge or skills.

Mark Heintz recently shared his approach with self-assessment and skills tracking using Schoology's many features. The goal is to have students assess themselves and allow them to compare their assessment to the teacher's assessment. This can help close the cognitive bias gap that students often have and it can give students a better understanding of what skills they might need more attention on, even if they didn't realize it.

I have this same goal when it comes to self-assessment of science skills, however I plan to implement this strategy on paper throughout the year. In biology, we typically have a lab for each unit that gives a chance to provide formative feedback, and we have lab practicals that act as a more formal summative assessment of lab skills that we have been developing. To help track progress, I drafted a skills tracker that I will have my students will use.

Students will assess themselves only on the skills that we have been developing with a rubric that helps guide them. This rubric will be attached to the lab that they turn in.

After a student submits their lab, I will use the same rubric with a different color pen so students can see their assessment next to mine along with any comments I may have left. This information will then be logged in their tracker. By the time a lab practical comes around, students will have feedback from previous labs and can help focus their energy and attention on certain skills that they maybe didn't realize they struggled with.

I'm hoping that these tools will guide students into a better understanding of their own learning and progress. Along with getting a better sense of where they stand, it should also help students target the specific skills that they need to continue to develop.

Instructional Goals vs. Learning Targets

By Kim Miklusak

In our last Lead Learners meeting we spent time analyzing the differences between instructional objectives vs. learning targets.  Specifically one of the documents we were reviewing was this one: Knowing Your Learning Target. 

I remember being told in my first year of teaching: always put your objective on your board.  So I would put something like "Complete questions at end of passage" or something similarly vague, but it felt like an objective because we completed it at the end of the period, and the students knew what task we had to accomplish.  But that's just it, it was a task with no connection to why students were doing it.  They wouldn't have been able to articulate the relevance of the task and maybe at times I couldn't as well!

However, as I've taught for longer and worked more on revising various courses, I understand better now why I sequence units together and what my skills and summative goals are for each unit, each lesson, each task (I'm not there yet, obviously, but it's a clear path I'm on). 

This has brought up a few questions:
1.  Do each of us on our PLTs understand clearly why we do each unit, each assessment, each task?
2.  Do I communicate clearly enough to students why we are doing our lessons each day?  Do I spend the right amount of time reviewing the objective?  Would students be able to articulate it and connect it to the broader instructional objective for the unit?
3.  If I were to word the objective in a way that focused on instructional objectives and used academic language, would students understand it?  Would student-friendly language lose the instructional focus?
4.  If I have multiple tasks in one day, do I only write the objective that I am assessing immediately as opposed to the ultimate one that we will be assessing in a few days?  For example my students were writing an argumentative practice paragraph on a specific text we had just covered.  What I wanted to see was the evidence they selected from the text, but they demonstrated that skill through a paragraph, which prepares them for a full essay they will be writing next week.  Does my objective focus on "evidence selection" or is it "comprehension of a text" or is it "preparing skills to create an argumentative essay later"?  I realize any of these is valid, but my ultimate goal for them to demonstrate these skills is the essay; these other skills are mini-lessons assessed on the way.

More on this later in the year as we continue to work in EGLLT, to revise our courses, and to continue to talk on our teams.

SBG Grade Reporting in Biology

Written by Quinn Loch

The biology team has been transitioning to standards based grading over the past year. You can read more about the practice and the philosophy behind SBG here. Our goal was to align our assessments (both formative and summative) to our learning targets so it was clear to both us and to students what their current level of understanding was for a specific learning target.

Standards based grading can provide meaningful feedback for a specific skill or standard.

Our transition is still a work in progress and needs fine tuning, but I feel that it has increased transparency in the grade book. I can say to a student that they have a "C" in class not because of arbitrary points earned on quizzes or homework, but because they have not met basic understanding of specific learning targets.

The struggle with this system so far has been how to effectively communicate progress to students. My students check their grades on Infinite Campus regularly, but I wanted to provide a more accurate representation of their learning progression. Here is what that looks like:

What my custom SBG progress report looks like.

To create these grade reports, I use a google sheet add on called "Autocrat." It takes information from a spreadsheet and inputs it into a template. From there, a PDF or Google doc is created and can be emailed to the specific student. With a little set-up, all of this becomes automated with a single click! It is a little extra work on my end, but I have found that the clarity helps my students understand what specifically they need to improve.

To Read or Not to Read? Can Shakespeare fit in a Standards-Based English Curriculum?

By Kristen Guth

Recently I have been involved in a lot of conversations about Standards-Based Grading and what that looks like in an English class. These meaningful conversations have also forced me to ask myself a lot of difficult questions. If I am working to implement SBG, does that imply that I should only be teaching skills and not the content? Is the text we are selecting an appropriate vehicle for helping students access, learn, and master the skills? Can the average, non-AP student practice and demonstrate mastery of reading skills while reading Shakespeare?

In having these conversations with colleagues and friends, I have discovered that many schools have removed Shakespeare from their English courses, at least at the regular level. This realization makes me incredibly sad for those students and those teachers. Not only will those students be missing out on the cultural relevancy of Shakespeare’s works, but they are also missing an amazing opportunity to see that reading skills are the necessary key to unlocking and appreciating the true meaning of a text.

We are currently reading Macbeth in my Sophomore World Literature & Composition classes, and I believe that it has been an amazing text to use for a skills-based curriculum. Because the text is difficult and the comprehension does not come easy, students are forced to closely analyze the language, literary devices, word choice, themes, etc. in order to have any real understanding of the play. 

One of my colleagues, Matt Snow, shared with me an entirely skills-based scene analysis activity that he uses at the honors level. Students are required to read for conflict, sequence of events, cause and effect, key quotes, literary terms, symbols, themes, inferences, and predictions. The first time I showed it to my regular students, they were pretty scared. Even though we had practiced all of these skills with other texts, they thought there was no way they could possibly be successful when the same practice was applied to such a difficult text. I am not going to lie, it was not easy for them. I had to do a lot of facilitating and guiding the first time through, but I have gradually been able to pull away and put all of the responsibility on the kids. They really had to work together with their groups and grind through some of the tougher questions, but it was amazing to watch. By repeating this practice with several parts of the play, their mastery of the skills has grown in conjunction with their mastery of the content.

I have rarely seen students as proud of their work as they were with this skills-based activity, and it provided me with some really clear formative feedback on their reading skills. More importantly, it gave my students such a great sense of accomplishment knowing that they could use their reading skills to tackle the subtleties, nuances, and deeper meanings of a text that they could not even begin to comprehend on the first read. There is a reason that Shakespeare has been read in English classes for so long, and I think his plays definitely still have a place in a Standards-Based Grading curriculum. 

Student Samples: 

       

 









For an additional blog post about teaching Shakespeare through graphic novels, check out this post!

Standards-Based Grading takeaways

By The DTC Team,

Today the DTC instructional team attended the second in a series of in-person workshops focusing on Standards-based grading as presented by Lee Ann Jung and Thomas Guskey and hosted by IL ASCD and District 214.

This is a brief summary of some of the topics covered:

• Inclusive Grading:

• We explored the differences between accommodations and modifications for assessments.  While many can be sorted into either category, ultimately the questions to ask are what are your standards and and what are you truly assessing?

• If something that you’re not measuring impacts what you do measure, you no longer have a valid measurement of student learning.

• The students who need the most feedback about their learning are frequently the ones who receive the least: Artificially inflating grading demotivates students. 

• Modifications should not be permanent--they may change at any point. 

• Can you say that a grade is based on modified expectations? Office of Civil Rights: Response Here.

• Standards and scales:

• Limit the number of standards students are expected to master.  When determining what to assess, consider what is necessary, fundamental and urgent?

• Adding a number does not necessarily make a goal measurable. For example, 80% does not necessarily equal mastery. Instead consider a skill along the lines of "student can identify all site words within 2 seconds each."

•  Intervention planning should be targeted, consistent, regular, and shared by multiple parties who are invested in the student's life.

•  Teams should identify skills, determining the setting(s), and describe how they will be measured.

More information and resources can be found at standardsbasedgrading.org.

A(P) World without a textbook

By Mark Heintz

Let me preface this blog post by stating that I had one of my most successful years in my AP World History course as measured by pass rate and the number of students who took the exam.  Despite that success rate, some things nagged at me.  I assigned a lot of work. Most of it was very targeted, I could tell if the students completed it, and it prompted them with feedback to help them move forward in the learning process. However, it was a lot of work, and I don't feel that a student should spend that much time outside of class.  So, every time I asked my students how much time they spent on the course, their responses wounded me.

Here is what I wrote about the textbook last spring: The book our district adopted is a challenge.  To be fair, I was on the textbook adoption committee and approved the book. But, I digress.  First, the book is at a college reading level.  Second, the book assumes the students have a great deal of background knowledge.  The book is great for students who know a lot of history, but almost all of my students are taking their first world history course. The students spend a lot of time outside of class trying to decode the text book.  No matter what pre-reading strategies are done in the classroom, it is still very difficult for my students to comprehend the material.

Last year, my attempt to help students centered around creating materials to help them with understanding the textbook, but I didn't feel good about that. Why was I doing all of this creation and instruction around reading a textbook? I would rather have spent time on primary sources or targeted feedback.  This year, I took a hard look at the AP World course guide. 

Furthering the issue, this year my students have a lower average on their Plan reading score and Plan composite scores by over one point compared to last year. So, the book is a major challenge and often pushes kids to believe they cannot achieve. First quarter has been a struggle. To say the least, the first two unit exams did not go well at all. 

In response to those poor test scores, I broke down each objective for the students.  It was very tedious, but incredibly rewarding. I found I taught too many things and neglected others.  But, more importantly, I now know what exactly I want the students to know. In a class that is meant to cover the entire history of the world in one year, it is easier when you know what you want your students to know. 

It is not easy to decipher what the College Board is looking for. Here is what the College Board provides.

I broke it down by the following:

I then have the students complete objective checks in class from time to time to see if they need more instruction on the topic. Here is what that quiz looks like:

I got the idea from the science department. They have been doing some fantastic work with breaking down what they want their students to know.  I give the students the objectives and as we go through the lessons, we fill out the answers. Then they just simply have to repeat. The problem with the course is that there is a lot of information to digest. So, it is a cumulative effect. The best part is, the students have a self-reflection built right into the objective check. Do you know it or do you not know it? The kids then know which objective they need to go back and study for the next check. 

I posted earlier about Schoology checklists and how to leverage them. I created 10-20 questions for each objective. So, the one above really has two objectives, and I created 14 questions for the Byzantine and 12 questions for the Sui, Tang and Song.  These quizzes serve as their homework. The quizzes provide instant feedback and a short reading that can redirect them to the correct answer.  

I have ditched the textbook as the core homework. I do use it as a resource from time to time in class, and it is always available to students if they want to read it.  My students are now reading more primary sources. I still employ pre-reading strategies to have the students access the primary sources. My students are writing more than they ever have before.  They are writing their understandings of the content. They are analyzing prompts more frequently.  They are doing the work.  

The big question is, does it work? I have given three summative unit exams with 50 questions each this year: River Valleys, Classical, and Post-Classical.  The average on the River Valley test was 31/50.  The average on the Classical test was 32.89.  After which I made all of the changes described above.  The success...the class average on the Post-Classical test was 40.6.  My students are doing less and getting more out of it. 

SBG Skill Rubrics

Written by Quinn Loch

A couple of years ago, the science department decided on a list of  “ins-and-outs”, or skills that we wanted each student to develop before they left a specific year in school. A significant amount of these ins-and-outs related to the scientific method and experimental design – crucial skills that students needed to development in lab based classes.

Based on the common skills (hypothesis writing, identifying variables, data organization, procedure and conclusion writing) we came up with the lab matrix.

A snippet of the lab matrix.

This matrix provides a nice framework for students to organize their experiments coherently. It also provides an opportunity to drive instruction towards a specific skill development. For example, the focus for our freshman is hypothesis writing, graph construction, and identifying variables. When designing our labs, as a team we can decide how much scaffolding to provide based on the skills we want to focus on.

This Summer, myself and the biology team designed a rubric to help assess a students progress on specific parts of the experimental design.

Part of the experimental design SBG rubric. 

Instead of grading an entire lab with arbitrary amounts of points throughout, I can provide specific and targeted feedback on skills within experimental design. For example, on the pH lab that my freshman are working on, I will be providing feedback only on their variables, graph, and analysis

This rubric can also be used to help peer-assess as students become more familiar with it throughout the course of the year. The goal is to, by the end of the year, have student progress on all of these skills so they enter sophomore year with a solid foundation that they can build on.

Confessions of a SBG hold-out

by Kirsten Fletcher

I'll admit, I have been slow to shift to Standards-Based Grades. I admire the Spanish team at my school that has already adopted Standards-Based Grades at all levels.  I'm still not completely there, but I'm inching my way toward Standards-Based Grading. Previously, my French gradebook was divided into categories: Homework, Quizzes, Participation. Homework weighted equally with Quizzes because I wanted to reward kids with a good work ethic.

I still haven't eliminated my homework category altogether, because I find having it in the gradebook is a visual cue to students that I'm paying attention and that the work is valuable. However, it is now the smallest part of my weighted grade. I added categories: Speaking assessments, Written assessments, and Interpretive communication (listening and reading) to my gradebook. In the short time that I've been grading this way, I've already discovered several advantages.

1. The categories force me to make time for assessing the skills that really matter (reading, writing, listening, speaking) instead of always focusing on grammar and vocabulary. While the latter are important building blocks for language, they are not the skills that students will ultimately be judged on in life or on the AP test. They need to be able to apply their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar to interpret texts, write letters, and speak to others.

2. Organizing my gradebook this way communicates to students their strengths and weaknesses. For example, they can look and see that their writing meets expectations whereas their speaking needs work.

3. The categories are useful for parent communication. At parent-teacher conferences, I felt it was so much more informative to give parents insight into their child's specific skills than simply telling them whether or not their child was completing homework. We actually discussed evidence of learning as opposed to habits of work.

At this point, I am still converting standards-based assessments to letter grades and reserving a small part of the overall grade for homework completion. I am lucky to work in a school where my colleagues continue to discuss our grading and assessment policies to move toward the goal of measuring all students against the same set of standards.

Developing Mastery in Mathematics

By: Rachel Barry

History of SBL at EGHS
Throughout the past six years, the math department at Elk Grove High School has been working towards a standards-based learning and grading model.  We have rid our classrooms of textbooks and created our own curricula based on Robert Marzano's 4-tiered scale.  You can read more about our curricula in an older blog post here.  

We knew that along with creating our standards-based instruction, course materials, and assessments, we also needed to develop an appropriate standards based grading policy.  Through meetings among PLT leaders as well as with the entire department, we developed a grading system that would effectively translate a grade on our 4-leveled curricula to a percentage grade, the method our district asks us to report grades.  This grading policy can be read about on this prior blog post.  

Through reading and attending conferences, I am continuously learning more about effective standards-based grading practices.  This causes me to question my practices as well as those we have developed in our PLTs.  Are students receiving all of the feedback that they need to be successful in my class?  Are students held accountable for mastery of standards in order to be successful in both current and future classes?  Are students motivated to learn more than the required content to "pass" my class?  My PLT members and I continuously have conversations regarding various classroom practices that we hope will address some of these questions.  One of these main questions that kept resonating with us is the accountability factor of critical math skills.  

Determining the Mastery Skills
A few years ago, PLT leaders met separately within the regular and honors levels to create a list of five "In's and Out's".  The "In's" are the five skills that we expect students to come into a course having already mastered, and the five "Out's" are the skills that we want to ensure our students have mastered upon leaving our class.  In the past, we PLT leaders used these to drive instructional practices of skills that we would continue to spiral throughout the year.  We didn't feel this was holding students accountable enough for these skills, so we added a cumulative review section of 5 questions to the end of each unit test.  Students weren't always showing consistency of material they had previously mastered, so we felt we needed something stronger within our curriculum to ensure student mastery of these "Out's".

So this year, my regular junior level Math 474 course is using these "Out's" in what we are calling our Mastery Skills.  Students will be accountable for mastering each of these five skills before exiting our course.  They will be expected to reach a level of 2 on each of the skills.  In percentage equivalency, they have to obtain an 75%.  We are expressing to students the importance of learning these skills for future math courses.  Students can reassess on this topic as many times as necessary.  

Here is our Math 474 course's Mastery Skills:

Our goal with these Mastery Skills is to emphasize learning with our students.  Many times students are caught up in a grade.  Some students have a strong skill set in other mathematic skills that they wouldn't necessarily need to reassess on a poor skill.  Other students are complacent with meeting a minimum requirement to pass the class.  We hope that this method helps to promote the importance of these skills and build an emphasis on reassessment with our students.

In a future post, I will follow up with how our Mastery Skills are working in Math 474!

Understanding by Design, Feedback and Empathy

by Katie Winstead

What does Understanding by Design, Feedback, and Empathy have to do with each other? Well, they are three core principles that Grant Wiggins believes in and Jay McTighe talked about in his blog post, "Three Lessons for Teachers from Grant Wiggins."

Lesson #1 is to always keep the end in mind. This goes back to discussing Understanding by Design - which is not just backwards design, but really focuses on having specific goals that have appropriate assessments and instruction. This really ties in well with our discussions on Standards Based Grading and Assessment for Learning. Making sure students know the goals are and how to achieve mastery is a huge part of helping them keep the end in mind, as well.

Lesson #2 is that feedback is key to successful learning and performance. If students know what the goals are and how to achieve mastery, the next thing they need to know is where they are at and how to move forward. This is why feedback is vital in the process of learning. McTighe also points out that teachers need to receive feedback (or formative assessement information) in order to know where to guide students. This could even be quick things like exit slips, polls, or a thumbs up/thumbs down activity to gauge learning.

Lesson #3 is to have empathy for your students. I feel that this is one of the most important things to consider, and actually what all of our actions stem from. If we can understand that our students are novices, and realize how we felt when we were a novice at something, it is easier to have empathy for students and create a learning environment that supports them. Some school districts in Illinois are having new staff members shadow a student for a day (after a teacher tried it and Wiggins wrote about it here). When you realize what students go through sitting in classes all day and listening, it makes engagement a lot more important in designing lessons.

     

Members of EGLLT discussing the article during Monday's meeting.

If you thought about a workshop, conference or meeting you have attended - what would you have done differently to make it more engaging?

I thought about this recently and decided that the meetings and conferences I enjoy are the ones that have specific goals. I know what I'm going to learn, the different parts we are going through, and can follow along the path with the presenter/organizer. I also know exactly how to assess if I've learned what I need to, or that I have accomplished specific goals set out for the meeting (Lesson #1). I realized that I like to know how I'm doing and if I'm not on the right track, how to get back where I need to be. It's so frustrating to have someone look at your work and say, "You kind of got it - you're almost there," and then just walk away (Lesson #2). All of this helps me realize that this is exactly what my students are going through and what they need to be successful (Lesson #3).

We will miss you, Grant Wiggins, and appreciate all the wisdom you have left behind.