Reassessment Fridays (SBG): A Love Story

“Every student did their own thing in class today.”
How often is that the summary of a mathematics class?  How about an art class? 


Today was the standard reassessment day for my AP Stat classes.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to let students reassess when I started Standards Based Grading.  I’ve come up with using every Friday as a reassessment day.



I let students pick 2 skills to reassess on.  They pick them Wednesday, I create reassessments Thursday, they take them on Friday.  The reassessors are given a mail merged document that is their assignment for that day’s reassessment.  Should they choose not to formally reassess in class, they always have the option to do a project on their own to show their mastery of any of the skills they have learned.  This has been a system that works for the students that want to reassess, but it works even better for those not reassessing.


Today about a third of each class was reassessing.  So what do the other students in class do?  They play.  They learn.  They collaborate:

1. One student began conducting simulations to simulate random clicks in Minesweeper.  Two others quickly became interested and a Minesweeper collaborative was born.
2. About 10 different students were editing 10 different pages of the class wiki to make it an online textbook.  
3. They were gathering data for different projects they hope to complete later in the year
1. a project where they wish to determine the proportion of teachers at school that have tattoos
2. simulating hands for various different card games
3. the true proportion of dives by a diver that are “ripped”

I look forward to my “Reassessment Fridays” because of the classroom vibe.  I’ll provide a few ideas for what can be worked on, then they get started doing things that they want to do.  Today’s ideas: Conduct a simulation, finish an old project, start a new project, edit the class wiki, create models of data collected this week.  I’m immediately working on making this the classroom activity for every day, not just Friday.  


My favorite part about it is that I am providing them time to be as smart as they want to be in class.  I’m not tricking them into learning with some gimmick.  I’m not having them finish a worksheet for points.  I’m not asking 26 of them to answer the same question.

Dares for the 21st Century Teacher

I dare ya to...
...teach math without using "x" and "y"
...throw out all of your worksheets
...let students decide what's important to learn in history class
...teach English without assignments of "write a paper"
...(for high school teachers) do activities that you get from Elementary school teachers
...make your students say more than you do during a class period
...let your students design the science experiment
...never give a student the correct answer
...design an activity where every student generates a unique product
...let your kids use their cell phones to learn
...teach Geometry(high school) using Euclid's "The Elements"
...let your students pick what they want to read
...not assign homework
...have students research a topic strictly through Twitter
...involve creative writing in every topic of your course
...let kids decide if they need a desk or not
...never teach the same lesson twice
...teach phys ed. using nothing but multimedia

Other suggestions?

Dictionary of the Advocate for Inability

1.  “Try” - What I say I’m doing when I can’t do something, and am unwilling to put in any more work or step out of my comfort zone.  Productive people don’t try, they do.  

2.  “Can’t” - The first time I tried to do something I was not successful, so I have moved this skill to the “Can’t do” pile.  This is much easier than doing things to become successful.  Also, by saying I “can’t” I am actively recruiting someone to do it for me.

3.  “He/She Doesn’t Teach” -I believe my instructor is soley responsible for my success.  Since I am not being successful, then my instructor must not be doing their job.  I hear this sentiment from many former students regarding college professors.  A few former students have shown amazing resilience in being able to design their own learning.  These students often become valuable resources for their fellow college classmates.

4.  “Do you give extra credit?” - I am looking for a shortcut to success.

5.  “I don’t get it” - Can you sit right next to me and do it for me?  This way, it looks as if I’ve sought individualized attention from the instructor, when it hasn’t been a learning experience for me at all.  Also a technique used to solicit sympathy from an instructor for a student not holding up their end of the deal as a learner.  See #3.



Our learners have become accustomed to being passive, and assuming that as long as you trade some time, you’ll get a nice grade.  Our learners need to become ACTIVE, and I daresay teachers should become more passive.  Make them start “doing”.

Real Quick Thought on Standards Based Grading

I can hear my phone ringing off the hook and my Outlook email notifications flooding in from parents.

"Why does my student have a B?  a C?  an F?  They're a straight A student."

Parents and community members alike want teachers to do things the right way and the best way...as long as their students get A's.  Now that my grading system is an honest reflection of what's been learned, I'm grading in what is a non-inflated, best-practice grading system.  I have a premonition that parents are going to be irate about this.  Can anyone speak from experience?

Now off to draft a template for a response letter that begins with "Your student's grade may change at any time, for better or for worse..."

Ideas from November 10 Interaction with Elementary School Teachers

Had an excellent meeting on Wednesday 11/10 with more elementary school teachers.  I love working with these people on technology integration.  I think it’s because they are so tech-starved and under-equipped that they NEED technology.  What happens in my class when there’s a great need?  The students turn into sponges.  They start every conversation with, “I need some ideas” and not, “Can you show me how to put a link on my Schoolwires page?”(last Schoolwires bash I promise*).  We have moved our elementary teachers forward in technology integration more in the past 2 months than high school teachers have budged in 3 years.  I’m extremely proud of us and those elementary school teachers for the work we’ve put in.

So the ideas that have fallen out of Wednesday’s meetings...
1.  Comic Life - kids create comic books and use photographs of themselves to build their own digital story.  Without futzing around in movie maker, iMovie, or some other Web 2.0 tool that is blocked.  I rarely see a need to purchase software (save Fathom) but can see potential here. 

2.  Google Earth - I want to find pre-created maps for every possible subject area that uses Google Earth.  Then we’ll compile them all into one location, let students/teachers use them once, then never let them use them again.  You want them?  Make them!  What better way to learn ancient history than to create a map about what you think is important.  Not just a concept map...a real one!

3.  Grade Level Sharing - A common place (wiki) for every grade level to share ideas, links, resources, etc.  I'm thinking that when something good comes up (blogging a Heritage project, podcasts/movies of students reading, games created in SMART notebook) we can add it to the appropriate grade level.  Now, if we could just get people to actually go to the Tech Tools Wiki...wait, not yet, I need to have the Diigo feeds show links more recent than August.

4.  Networked Learning - There's no reason to isolate students, be it individually or by classrooms.  Every kid in Grade 6 should share learning experiences with every other kid.  To a further extent, it should be shared to all other grades above and below.  More to come on this subject as I explore and completely ramp up this idea in the future...like an online AP Stat textbook being created from my Class Wiki.  If every Stat student had a hand in organizing, adding, and filtering information found on an endless homepage we could make a sweet textbook.

Smartboards are something that comes up frequently in my elementary school interactions.  Every teacher wants one,  no teacher needs one.  Your students need it, so let them use it.

*This week

The "Achievement Gap"

I'm curious as to what educators would define as "Achievement".  One of our building goals is in line with increasing student achievement.  Just what is achievement?

We can define student achievement as making sure that we have less students failing this year than we've had before.  Also, we can look at the number of students that have earned straight A's and compare it with last year.  These would all potentially show increased levels of student achievement, thus, our building has met its goal, and we can proceed with business as usual.  If I go into my Gradebook tomorrow and change all the C's to A's, I have generated an amazing level of student achievement.

Schools becoming all about achievement undermines them as institutions of learning.  Is this a result of the demand placed on schools (by stakeholders) for some type of result that justifies the increased contribution of resources?  By demanding accountability and results, we aren't demanding higher levels of thinking and learning.

I'm in a school for at least 7.5 hours each day, approximately 180 days a year.  I NEVER hear a discussion about learning.

Challenge to Myself to Start the School Year

The greatest outcomes that I achieve in my room are realized through challenging myself in an oftentimes extreme way.  Past challenges include...

1.  Never lecturing
2.  Stop using paper
3.  Move your desk to the back/middle of the room

What these have all done is forced me to think in a different way.  They are a risk, and while most educators are risk averse, I will take every risk that I feel can benefit my students, my classroom, or my teaching style.

So I'm beginning this year with a challenge that hopefully improves a cooperative learning environment that I have maintained for the past 5 years.  I want to turn up the volume on generating a small-scale crowdsourcing classroom. 

I'm going to challenge myself to allow my students to sit wherever they wish...every day.  I'm doing this because I want to create more opportunities where I facilitate creation of different student groups many times within one classroom. 

Ideally I will accomplish this by having my students walk in, sit wherever you like, in 5 minutes you'll be grouping with people that are learning what you are learning.  When that activity is done, you'll be in another group/partnership with a student you've NEVER worked with before.  Let's hope this model creates an environment where every student is comfortable having a conversation and learning with every other student in the class. 

Classroom management enthusiasts(is there such a thing?) are cringing now telling me that I won't be able to maintain order in my classroom.  Good, I don't like order.  Neither do high school students.  I guess students  will need to be working on some pretty engaging activities that keep their interest in order to keep those management enthusiasts at bay.

Yours in organizing chaos for the sake of cooperative learning.

P.S. I've already thought of another challenge I want to embark on...not referring to students in my classroom as "my students".