Category Archives: assessment

The Ongoing Grading Conundrum

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I used to be the King of Grading. Self-anointed, I walked
around school with a huge stack of essays under my arm and a red pen behind my
ear. Many nights I’d head out to Peets after putting my kids to bed, and grind
through essays until the workers started mopping the floor to close. Then I’d
come home, still jacked up on caffeine and grade a few more, quitting when the
words started blurring. Life was a constant tally of the paper load. A passable
day would be ten, a fair day fifteen, and there were a few epic bender weekend
days where I could touch forty.
I burned through red pens in those days and left the essays
bleeding with feedback. I considered myself a master at articulating personal
writing advice that would make each student more aware of her writing self. I
was part judge, part coach, part machine. It became my mission to give students
feedback that would present a clear path towards improvement.  
Before each class began, I returned the work I had graded
face down on the desks. The anxiety in the room was thick, as students entered
and began flipping over the papers. But instead of diving into my feedback and
considering my carefully articulated suggestions, most students just looked at
the grade on top and put the essay away. Often, they would ask the nearest
classmate what she had gotten to affirm their own place in the class hierarchy.
It made me wonder how many of my comments were read, let alone applied to
future writing assignments.
My feedback in those days started to feel like a
justification of the grade more than anything else. I learned early on that many
Carondelet parents really care about
their daughters’ grades. Those parents had a strong voice, and I needed a
well-mounted defense before the attack came. While I would sometimes force my
students to read my comments, or write metacognitive responses to my feedback,
most of that time I had spent gouging away at their essays had merely been for
the possibility (and hope) that something would happen afterwards.
Grading and assessment has always felt like one of the holes in my teaching. I’m sure that’s why I overcompensated for so many
years by pouring feedback onto every piece of writing. I have used many
different rubrics in many different ways, but I still feel like this last piece
of my students’ writing process is lacking. One challenge is having so many
students, and knowing that they need to write often to really grow. We all know
that feedback is best when immediate, but how can we orchestrate that with 150
students? Staggering major assignments can only buy so much time. Is carefully
crafted feedback that comes back two weeks later better than cursory feedback
given two days later? My gut tells me that the value of any feedback diminishes with each passing day.
So here I find myself, rocketing into another school year,
still searching for the magic bullet that will resolve my issues with assessing
writing. Despite my best intentions, once the essays start coming in, I usually
settle for whatever works to keep the paper flow from bogging down. I still don’t
know if rubrics are best, or wholistic grading is best, or conferencing is best.
I suspect that a paper saturated with red ink is overwhelming, but how much
feedback should I give to really direct my students? Does every piece of work
that students turn in deserve credit that impacts the grade, or should a grade
be truly an assessment of student skills and mastery? What about portfolios?
And how do I take something as complex as a piece of writing and use some hocus-pocus translation to quantify it with a number? Eighty-seven or eighty-eight?
Seventy-two or seventy-three? Can someone get a hundred? Why sixty?
As with many aspects of teaching, I’m left with more
questions than answers. And that’s with twenty years of experience. But I
remind myself that this is what also draws me to the field of education. It is
such an ever-changing puzzle, and correct answers are slippery and transform
with time. If you’re not able to face constant ambiguity, this profession can
make you crazy. Fortunately, I kind of like puzzles.
I started this blog intending to declare that this is the
year I face the assessment question head on. I’m working as part of a team of
English 2 teachers who are recreating our curriculum. My team members often
don’t let me settle for what is going to be easiest, which is something I
really value. Tiz has given me two books on grading that are slowly moving
upward on my stack of next books to read. But the papers still keep coming in,
and I need to keep churning them back out. I think the best I can commit to is
wandering out blindly in this direction and see where the journey leads me. Hopefully
my thinking is transformed when I get to the other side. If you have any
epiphanies or struggles, please share – I know there are better ways; I just
don’t know what they look like yet.

How Do You Know They Know?

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How do you know they know? How do you know when students really understand, not just memorize, but really understand whatever it might be you are teaching? Which assessment tools might a teacher use to really find the answer to these questions?

This question really hit me last week. My students watched a wonderful video, “The Vietnam War: Part 1” by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Better than any other resource, it describes just how the United States became involved in the war in Vietnam, beginning with Woodrow Wilson and ending with the Diem regime. While students were taking prolific notes I paused the video often, explained the history, and answered questions. Looking through the student notes I could see they took all the right notes about all the important points. They had this. They knew exactly how years of turning points inevitably sucked the United States into the war.

Just to make sure the students really knew the sequence and importance of the events I had each student team construct a timeline listing the important events with paragraphs explaining each event. This is where the reality check began. The notes, while clear to me, were not so clear to the students. “If we saved Ho Chi Minh’s life, why did we turn against him.” Why did we sides with the French?” “Why were there no free elections.”

These questions were the beginning of a treasure hunt through our reading material and search engines. Little by little I watched the teams reconstruct the meaning of their notes. It was a tedious process, two class periods, but we got there. Understanding began to emerge as students compared notes, did more research and explained to each other.

It is not enough to take notes, a multiple-choice or short answer quiz. Students must have the opportunity to reconstruct the knowledge for themselves. It can  be a timeline, an essay, a presentation, a discussion or a debate, anything that elicits deep understanding of the subject. This takes time, lots of time. There is no fast way to reach that level of understanding that truly allows students to make it their own.

Using Final Exams to Predict AP Exam Results

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Trying to keep AP students on track to do well on the AP exam
can be a daunting task. In the six years that I have been teaching AP Calculus,
I am constantly trying to figure out the optimum amount of guidance versus
independence to use with the students. Some students will do well no matter how
much I push them in class to prepare but others will, for whatever reason,
choose to minimize preparing for their AP Calculus exam so they can focus on
other things. One thing I chose to do differently this year was the 2nd
semester final exam.

AP Calculus students like to try to convince me to not give
them a final exam for the 2nd semester because they feel so busy
preparing for all of their AP exams. One year, I gave in and did not have a 2nd
semester final. However, when that year produced the highest percentage of
scores of “1” earned by my students on the AP exam, I recognized that there was
a correlation to the final exam and preparation for the AP exam. My first change
was to schedule the final exam to coincide with the last block period before AP
testing began. This helped somewhat. My most recent change was to the format of
the final exam itself. My 2nd semester Calculus final exam had not
been cumulative and was also completely multiple choice. This year, though, I
completely revamped my final exam to be cumulative for the entire course and I
based it on an actual unpublished AP exam. In order to get student buy-in I had
to promise to curve the final exam just like they do the actual AP test. I used
the scoring rubrics assigned by the College Board for the FRQ’s and used the
College Board’s point spreads to assign scores from 5 to 1 for each of my
students. I then crunched the data and correlated the scores to percentages to
enter into Powerschool as the final exam grade.
When the AP scores were published in July, I was anxious to
see how well I predicted the students’ scores. In over half of my students
(54%), the final exam score predicted the actual AP score. 31% scored one point
lower than predicted, 13% scored one point higher than predicted and only 1
student scored 2 points lower than predicted by the final exam. I am pleased
with my accuracy but at the same time I wonder why I was still wrong about
almost half of them. Here are my thoughts:
  1.  I only gave them the “Calculator allowed” questions in order to keep the length of test appropriate to the amount of time in a block period. Some students are better at answering questions using their calculator than they are when they don’t have access to one.
  2. Maybe I didn’t adhere to the grading rubric for the FRQ as stringently as I ought to have done.
  3. Maybe learning their “predicted” score had a psychological effect on how the students continued to prepare for the exam.

1.      I am now trying to explore the possible meanings of my 3rd
point. I think that there were a handful of students who were predicted to not
pass with a score of 2 who then took the attitude of “I’m so close. Maybe if I
work a little harder I can get a passing grade on the AP exam” and were then
able to improve their score. I also wonder though if some of the students who were
predicted a 3 on the exam then became overconfident and felt that they had
already prepared enough and then ultimately failed to pass the AP exam. This
year I plan to use the same exam format and will be extra careful on how I
grade the FRQ’s. Most importantly, though, I plan to very carefully help frame
their predicted outcome to motivate the students who need a little more work to
pass the exam and to warn other students of the dangers of complacency,
particularly if they barely earned a 3 on their final exam.

The Carrot Wins!

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The Carrot Wins!

What do high school students and Israeli Air Force pilots have in common? Both groups achieve learning goals better and faster when praised for achievement rather than criticized for failure. If you want your students to learn deeply and be fully engaged, throw out the sticks and bring out the carrots. This is the conclusion of world renowned Nobel Prize winner and expert statistician, Daniel Kahneman. His most recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that praise is much more effective impetus for learning than criticism.

The first response of many teachers have to this revelation is, “How can this be? Praise is nice, but I get best results when I push students; when I make them keep at it until they get it right.” Or maybe, “She got a D+ on the last assignment. She brought up the next one to a B-. That first low grade made her work harder.” These short term results may be true in some cases. They are memorable because they reinforce our belief that the stick works. But how many students just gave up? How many continued to get D+’s? And did this negative reinforcement help the students become more engaged in the learning process? Hundreds of experiments conducted by Daniel Kahneman provide statistical evidence that the long term results of negative feedback does not reinforce engaged long term learning. Praise for achievement always comes out on top.

It is time to look at our teaching to see how well we are employing the carrots. How are we using formative and summative assessment? Are assessments being used to praise progress or are they being used to criticize shortcomings? Think of video games. Failure to meet a goal simply means that you need to keep trying. Success is met with bells and whistles, a feeling of accomplishment, and it opens doors to more difficult challenges ahead. Moving forward is not motivated through fear of failure, but through the desire to succeed. The stick is replaced with the carrot. Learning must be seen as worthwhile, interesting, and even fun. This is the challenge. Instead of forcing students to learn, we must entice them to want to learn.

More to read:

For a lighter version of Thinking, Fast and Slow read The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis.


About the relationship of emotions to learning: “Emotions Are the Rudder That Steers Thinking”

Blogging to learn and assess

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Inspired by our own faculty blog and wanting to try something new with my unit on Jane Eyre this year, I decided to have me students blog about Charlotte Bronte’s novel as they read it.  With support and guidance from Christina Ditzel, my sophomore students launched their own “Jane Eyre” blogs last semester.

My hope was that their blogs – shared with a group of three other students – would be a way for them to engage with the challenging book and make personal connections to the story. I also saw the blog as a substitute to the traditional reading quiz, which can historically be experienced and perceived by students as a stress-inducing “game” to win.

The blogs were successful in many ways. They gave students a platform and audience for their writing, they encouraged students to be reflective and by nature forced students to process what they read, they allowed students to be creative, and they equipped students with some useful digital media skills.

Even though, unfortunately, these blogs were still viewed by some as a chore, most were grateful for the opportunity to show their understanding of the book in their own words and in a new way. They also ultimately found the blogs less stressful than traditional reading quizzes. I will definitely be having by students blog more in the future.

As we move toward a more innovative and progressive curriculum, I feel called to continue to closely look at all of my assessments. Yes, there will always be a place in the classroom for quick, formative, low-stakes assessments. But if they require any significant amount of time, it seems to me that they must be more than just “assessments;” they should be treated as rich learning experiences in and of themselves. Journeys of knowledge, not just products of knowledge. My assessments still need a lot of work.

I also feel called to deepen my engagement with students on their learning journeys. Too often I pay them the longest visit only once they’ve reached the final destination of submitting their work.

The other day, the English education leader Carol Jago tweeted: “The Latin root for assessment is assidere, to sit beside. It’s the best seat in the house for any teacher.” I know that my sophomore bloggers, especially my reluctant and struggling writers, might have had better learning experiences had I made more time to sit beside them.
….
If you want to learn more about my pedagogical rationale and the expectations I established for their writing, you can read about it here in a piece I wrote for the February issue of California English.

Inverse Trigonometric Functions War

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The ability to evaluate inverse trigonometric functions correctly is a fundamental and critical skill that a student needs for Calculus. For whatever reason, many Precalculus students struggle to master this skill and many who do master it do not retain it by the time they take Calculus. I decided to step outside the box and have my students play a game that would force them to make more sense of the range of answers that can be found when evaluating inverse trig functions.
I had read on some math blogs about teachers using the card game War to help students evaluate logarithmic functions and so I thought I could make this work for my situation. War is a card game in which each player gets half of the deck of cards. For each turn, the players each flip a card. The player with the higher valued card wins both cards. The player with the most cards at the end wins the game. I adapted the game with homemade cards that had all the inverse trigonometric functions that use angles found on the unit circle. I prepared a visual aid that diagramed the allowed range of answers for the six functions. I divided the students into groups of three: two players and a referee. I explained the rules and then let them play.

It was slow at first while they got used to the rules and got comfortable with evaluating the functions. I circulated the room, checking in with students and responding to questions. It was very apparent to me just how many students really didn’t understand what they were doing. Group by group, I responded to their questions. As soon as one in the group understood, I would leave that person to explain to the others. Slowly but surely, they started to “get” it.

While I doubt that anyone would claim that this was a particularly fun game, I had many students tell me on their way out how much this helped them gain confidence with these functions. While I was circulating around the room I also witnessed many “aha” moments where students for the first time seemed to grasp the purpose of evaluating these functions. I’m not sure how I will be able to assess how well this extra day and extra activity really served to improve their understanding and retention of the subject, but subjectively I conclude that this was definitely time well spent.

8 fold path

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As my senior World Religion students have begun to discover different ways of seeing the world I asked them to put the principals of the Buddhist 8-fold path into their own worldview.  They were assigned to explain the 8-fold path in images from their own life.  

In Buddhism, the 8-fold path is the practical instructions to help individual Buddhists understand the suffering in the world and to aid them in reaching nirvana/enlightenment.  In lieu of a traditional essay or test I challenged my students to adapt the 8-fold path in their own view through photos, drawings and other images.  For many of my students this was the first time that they had been assigned a photo essay.  I was not sure what to expect and I knew it could be an assignment that the students would not take seriously, or that they would not see the value.  It is always a small risk to assign a new project or style of assessment.  I worry what the students feedback will be and if they will actually understand the point of the assignment.  In this case, I wanted them to understand that religious principles can be universal, and by thinking about the Buddhist 8-fold path and adapting the ideas in one’s own words and in one’s own life that the concepts would stick.  I was pleased to discover that this happened.  My students came to understand that spiritual ideas can transcend specific religions. My classes told me that they loved looking through their own photo archives and discussing their viewpoints with their friends and family.  Many searched for pictures from their childhood and they went on many emotional journeys.  A few students commented that they really appreciated the push to sort through pictures and memories as they prepare for what is next. All of these were unintended results and incredibly encouraging to continue to try something different in assessments.  
Most students chose to submit their project digitally.  I had given them the option of creating a visual as well.  The photo above is one of my favorite student creations.  

Franken-drawing! Sketching Cause & Effect

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I thought I’d write a quick update on how I have applied Martin Cisneros’ ideas about sketching to learn to a recent lesson.

About a week ago, I asked my Classics of Horror class to create a visual map of the consequences of Victor’s fateful decision to play God. Ultimately, my goals were three-fold. I wanted to (1) assess how well students understood how elements of the plot related to each other, (2) deepen and challenge their thinking about an element of the plot that they might not have thought deeply about, and (3) prepare students for a class discussion on the topic.

I let students decide if they wanted to use a digital sketchpad or paper and pen. Half chose digital, half chose paper and pen. After 10 minutes of mapping, I asked some students to share their maps with the class as a discussion springboard. The digital sketches were inherently easier to share than the paper maps due to the bold, colorful lines. These digital maps were easy to scale up and to project. They were more audience-friendly.

Here are two students’ map:

From my students’ maps and how they talked about them, I learned that students had thought a lot about how Victor’s decision to create the monster affected his family but had not thought about the effect the decision had on Victor himself and his best friend Henry Clerval. In this sense, the maps were effective in allowing me to quickly assess student understanding. When I brought up the omissions I noticed, the class addressed the Victor/Clerval consequences in an ensuing discussion that (hopefully) closed a gap in their thinking.

Students seemed to enjoy mapping though it was hard for the perfectionist-types to be ok with a quick, imperfect sketch. Like any well-crafted “pre-writing” exercise, the drawing helped prepare students for discussion. I believe that mapping helped me achieve all three things that I hoped it would – assessment, engagement with novel, and discussion prep.

At the end of this unit, I will collect some data on students’ perception of this activity and another sketch activity I have planned. For now, I’m left wondering about a few things. Did students really learn more from drawing this map than they would have from writing about consequences? Sketching is fun and something different in English class, but has Cisneros overstated the benefits? How can I better measure the impact of this teaching method on student learning? 

Giving An Assignment Without Specific Requirements Can Produce Amazing Results

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At Carondelet the message I was clearly given was that within the Charism of the CSJ, they had a profound love of God and a love of dear neighbor without distinction. I believe that I’ve seen this embodied by the senior class that I teach, and I wanted to introduce it to my Freshman class.

Each individual student in my Freshman classes were asked to “show” the profound love of God and love of dear neighbor without distinction. I told them that there were now boundaries to how they could show me this. They could use any form of media or any medium that spoke to them. They could use technology, but it wasn’t required. Essentially they were permitted use their gifts to best create an assignment that was individual to themselves, and enlightened the class on how to think outside the box.

I know that this could sound like an assignment without enough direction and that the students would need more information in order to succeed. I am happy to say that these young ladies did the exact opposite. Not every project was outstanding, but the outstanding assignments went so far beyond my imagination, that I wouldn’t have done this differently if I had to do it again.

Four examples I would like to share show the creativeness of the young ladies and very different ways that they achieved the goal of the assignment. The examples that you can see below include a young lady that texted her friends messages of affirmation, The assignment written out in different languages, a video showing concrete ways this assignment can be lived out, and lastly an original composition that was performed in front of the class.