Assessment-October

     Assessment is a hot topic in my learning community. It comes up quiet often during our common planning or in between classes when we have a few minutes to chat. We talk about the meaning of grades and how can we get our students to understand that an A means you've gone above and beyond whereas a C just means you understand the material and have met the requirements. We've also talked about the purpose of the grades we're giving and why we are giving a specific assignment.
     One of the things we have talked about is standards based grading. Many of us feel that standards based grading is the way to go. Many skills build upon previous skills and if a student doesn't have the basics, it makes the later skills harder to learn. It goes to the "not yet" grading discussed in the article. Students can keep working on mastery of a standard until they are successful. We've adopted this in our math class in a way. Students are given a checklist of the standards for the unit (tasks they need to complete) and they work through at their own pace. If they are struggling, there are resources to visit or they can ask myself or Mr. Trout for help. Students keep working until they are successful with the material. When it comes time for a quiz, they can retake the quiz until they feel they are successful.
     Standards based assessment is what we use in special education when creating goals and looking at progress. We look at specific areas where a student is struggling and write a goal. We then keep data on that particular skill until a student is successful or "mastered" the skill. We then proceed to look at other areas where the student is struggling and the process repeats itself.