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Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about being an FBI agent, training to be an FBI agent, or anything at all related to the FBI...

Recently I had a conversation at church with a friend who is a former-English-teacher-turned-FBI-agent.  We were discussing a David Baldacci novel i was reading at the time about the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team.  My friend recommended a book by FBI Special Agent Christopher Whitcomb entitled Cold Zero: Inside the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.  The next week at church, my friend showed up with a copy of the book for me, and yesterday I finally got around to starting it.

Now please realize, this book has absolutely nothing to do with teaching or education whatsoever.  I am not recommending it as a book for teachers to read - unless the teacher likes books about the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.  But believe it or not, I found a little Standards Based Learning nugget on page 37.  

The author is recounting how he became an FBI agent.  At this point in the book he has made it to the FBI Academy in Quantico where the best of the best are trained and held to the highest of standards.  In talking about the tests they had to take, the author says the following:

Somewhere in between, we found time to study for the exams that came with relentless frequency.  At least once a week our entire class huddled together, reviewing notes and making sure the less prepared among us would feel ready the next day.  As our letters stated, a score of 84 or lower in any course would result in a New Agent Review Board and disciplinary action.  If you failed to achieve 85 on a makeup exam or performed similarly on another exam, you were gone.

Did you notice what he said?  If you didn't earn a satisfactory score of 85 on a test, you were kicked out of the FBI Academy - BUT NOT RIGHT AWAY.  That's right - the world's top law enforcement agency - that only selects the best of the best of the best and that has the highest standards anywhere - GIVES STUDENTS TEST REDOS!

Often, when considering whether or not to allow students to redo work originally done poorly, teachers are concerned that by doing so they might not prepare young people for the real world.  Teachers struggle with the concept of students getting used to redos and not receiving them later on in life.  I appreciate the logic behind that.  But while I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions to this statement, the real world is full of second chances.

I'm sure for every example I came up with of people getting chances to redo things in the real world, someone could find another example where someone didn't get that chance.  And I'm sure the example I just shared from the FBI has its flaws and limitations.  But the bottom line is this: It is not true that people don't get redos in the real world.

Of course, it is also true that school isn't the real world - it's school.  We aren't supposed to be the same as the real world.  In some cases, we should be better than the real world.  After all, the real world has plenty of flaws.  In other cases, we are preparing for the real world that students will encounter eventually.  But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that if we give a student a redo or retake - ESPECIALLY IF BY DOING SO THE STUDENT LEARNS THE CONTENT - we are dong a poor job of preparing students.

After all, I'd say the FBI Academy is about as "real world" as you get, and even they allow - regardless of how limited - an opportunity for a test redo.

It's pretty common for a teacher to finish a lesson and still have a few minutes left until the class period ends  Here is an extremely easy and practical way to turn those remaining minutes into a meaningful AFL opportunity.  

Instead of allowing students to sit and talk quietly until the bell rings, these few minutes can be used as a chance for the teacher to assess his or her students so that the teacher and the students know how well content was mastered that day - and so that they can identify areas that need improvement.  The use of AFL flashcards is a simple way to do this.

You will need to create a set of flashcards for each desk in your room.  There will be 2 cards per desk.  Card 1 will have an A on the front and a B on the back.  Card 2 will have a C on the front and a D on the back.  You might want to make a pouch out of paper and tape it to the edge of the desk.  The 2 flashcards can go in this pouch so that the students always have them handy.

Have you ever finished a lesson by asking questions about the lesson only to have very limited response from students?  Perhaps a small handful of students are answering your questions or even asking additional questions, but many in the room have mentally "checked out" and are just waiting for the bell to ring.  It seems as though the following question, "Do you have any questions about what we learned?" in student-language means "Go ahead and pack up and start forgetting everything we did".  Your new flashcards should change this situation.  

Ask all students to pull out their flashcards.  Begin asking the entire class questions about the day's content.  You could even ask about content learned on previous days.  Ask easy question, hard questions, simple questions, and complex questions.  Ask the type of questions you expect them to know for a test.  They will answer by holding up the appropriate flashcard.  You will be able to see how the class as a whole is doing and also how each individual student is doing.  The students will gain a more useful review than they would have from the normal question/answer period at the end of class, and, therefore, will be better able to assess their own level of understanding.

You could use the cards to represent various types of answers.  For example:

• A,B,C,D could be multiple choice answers.  
• A could equal true, and B could equal false.  
• A could equal "I can answer that", and B could equal "I am unable to answer that".  
• A could mean "I completely understand that topic". B could mean "I sort of understand but am not ready to take a test on it", and C could mean "I do not understand the topic".    

This post is a follow-up to an earlier post. It will make the most sense if read in that context.

After reading over my recent post entitled What we WANT students to do v. What we TRAIN students to do, I began to hear in my mind (yes, I sometimes hear voices) questions that some people might have as a result of what I had to say.

The more I think about and experience AFL, the more I feel that I am challenging many of the norms of teaching. In fact, I often end up wishing I could go back to the classroom and do things differently. While I feel I was a very good classroom teacher, much of what I did and many of my practices were:

1. examples of what my favorite teachers had done, and/or

2. examples of the conventional wisdom of education.

Very few of my own teaching practices came about as a result of an overall educational philosophy. I am convinced that AFL is a sufficiently large and all-encompassing enough philosophy as to be worthy of being used by teachers to govern how they teach and create lessons.

As I learn more about AFL, therefore, I continue to find new challenges to the merit of the practices that many of my favorite teachers used and/or that are the conventional wisdom of teaching. Since I know I am not the only one out here whose practices developed from a combination of these 2 factors, I know that posts such as the one I recently made end up raising questions in the minds of many teachers. They are questions worth asking and worthy of answers. Here are some attempts to answer some of those theoretical questions:

1. You talk about internal v. external motivation, but isn't it human nature to be motivated by rewards? Are you saying we should completely change human nature and remove external motivations from our classrooms? Isn't that unrealistic?

I firmly believe that there is a role for external motivation in all aspects of life. As a believer in capitalism, I know that people are naturally motivated by their own good, and I have no problem with this. The Pilgrims learned a long time ago what happens when there is no incentive to work, and the same holds true today. The problem that I perceive lies in the overuse of rewards - in particular the overuse of grades as a reward. I would recommend reading Whale Done by Ken Blanchard. It compares the methods used by Shamu's Sea World trainers to family and business life - which parallel nicely with the classroom. Even when training animals to do tricks, multiple rewards are used. The trainers don't want Shamu to learn that fish are the only acceptable reward for a job well done. When grades are used as the sole or primary motivator in the classroom then the grade begins to become more important than the learning.

2. Are you saying we shouldn't give grades at all?

I am absolutely not saying that we should not give grades. What I am saying is that grades should not be used rewards - ex. do this and get a good grade. There's no reason to turn the whole world on its head by getting rid of grades. Perhaps there might be an idealistic benefit to it, but it's an unrealistic goal that doesn't seem worthy of my time. Grades are a part of schooling. They are not all bad. They should be used - PROPERLY.

3. So what's the proper way to use grades?

Grades should not be used as rewards. The way I see it, grades should be used for 3 main reasons:

1. To communicate how well a student is mastering content/skills so that the student can guide his or her learning.

2. To communicate how well students are mastering content/skills so that the teacher can guide his or her teaching.

3. To summatively communicate the students' final level of mastery.

When I first started teaching I did what my favorite teachers - and what the conventional wisdom of teaching - told me to do. I gave lots of grades so that no one assignment hurt my students.

Today, I would say that giving lots of grades is a good thing IF AND ONLY IF the grades are used for the first 2 reasons listed above. The problem with my grading was that all the grades went into the grade book. I rarely - if ever - used the feedback I received from the grades to guide my teaching. And I hardly ever attempted to train my students to view their grades as feedback that could help them guide their learning. These grades were simply used to average together and get a final grade.

The problem with that is that if I had been honest with myself I would have realized that many - if not most - of the grades in my grade book didn't reflect mastery. They were "practice" assignments or assignments whose outcome was negated by a later similar assignment. Therefore, there was no guarantee that the summative grade to which they averaged was representative of mastery.

This is why I am so thankful for AFL. It's much more than just another professional development effort that my school/system is undertaking. Instead, it is a philosophy that, when truly adopted, turns much of the conventional wisdom on its ear. It is a philosophy that, when applied to a classroom, will lead to teachers being more aware of student needs, students being more likely to take ownership of their progress, and grades that better reflect what they are meant to reflect - mastery.

I recently observed a wonderful Geometry class at my school taught by Helen Price.  There were quite a few techniques/strategies she used - from good use of direct questioning to giving students control of their learning to creating a positive culture - that would be worth sharing with others.  However, what really stood out to me was how well she incorporated AFL into the fabric of her planning.  It worked well.  As I watched her class I was reminded of the fact that AFL can't be an afterthought - unless the teacher just likes to add to his or her headaches...

Over the years I have had the privilege of working with many educators across the country helping them incorporate Assessment FOR Learning principles into their classrooms.  It's not uncommon for teachers to agree in theory with the idea that assessments should be used for feedback to guide learning.  It's not uncommon for teachers to agree in theory with the idea that students should continue to retake, redo, and rework assessments until they learn the material.  It is also not uncommon, though, for teachers to have difficulty making this theory work in reality.  It would be nice if learning could be the constant and time the variable, but the real-life constraints of time make implementation difficult.

Turning a philosophy into a classroom reality is not the easiest of tasks for all people.  Many - if not most - of us are very comfortable with what we know.  We tend to not think about life in terms of applying philosophies.  Rather, we look at problems and then plug in the solutions we've used before or seen used before.  While this method has some benefits - it's efficient, it's comfortable, it works if it works - it doesn't lead to the type of professional growth that occurs from getting outside our comfort zones.  We get better at doing what we already do, but what if we could be even better?

It's important, when we recognize theories that should work, for us to keep experimenting until we figure out how to make the theoretical a reality.  Specifically with the philosophy of AFL, I have noticed that when teachers have trouble incorporating it into their classroom it's because they have simply added AFL on top of what they already do instead of weaving it into the fabric of their instruction.

A perfect example of this is with the practice of retakes and redos.  Let's say a teacher teaches a unit of content the same as he or she always does and wraps things up with a traditional unit test.  If the teacher realizes at this point that students have not mastered the content at a satisfactory level, the teacher might feel pressure to turn the unit test into a formative or AFL experience by allowing students to take a retest.  While this is not an inherently bad idea, it often presents some problems for the teacher.  

Time isn't the variable at this point in most of our school systems.  In fact, time is a very limited constant.  So to allow a redo or a retake means more time on a unit of study already completed.  It means repeating things that some in the class have already learned. There just doesn't seem to be time to add this on top of what is already being done.  When handled this way, AFL becomes an additional burden on a teacher.  This should never be the case.

If a coach's players don't run a play right in practice, the coach has the players do it again.  In fact, the coach builds time into the practice session to allow players to run plays again and again and again.  It's assumed that the players won't do things right the first time.  If the coach "taught" the play for the 95% of practice and then tried to run it during the last 5% of the time, the coach might not have time run it again if the players didn't get it right.  This would lead to frustration.  The coach might say something like, "I did the best job I could teaching the plays, but the players didn't pay attention.  I don't have time to have them run the play again.  I need to move on to the next play."

This would be terrible coaching, and, quite frankly, when it occurs in the classroom it's terrible teaching.  Just as a coach builds in time for running plays over and over, a teacher must build in time to assess over and over.  

Back to Mrs. Price's Geometry class: I enjoyed watching Helen Price weave redos/retakes into the fabric of her class in a way that led to student engagement and student ownership of learning.  When I came into her class that day, the students were determining - based on feedback they had received from her - whether or not they were ready for a retake.  Those who felt they were - I love, by the way, how ownership of the learning process was given to the students - moved into another room with an instructional assistant to retake their quiz.  Those who weren't - a little less than half the class - stayed with Mrs. Price for an engaging and interactive review session.  The students who stayed behind had stayed for a purpose and this showed as they worked.  They were focused on what they knew they needed to know better to be ready to take the quiz again.

There are many things I could point out about Mrs. Price's lesson that day.  She incorporated technology well.  She did an excellent job pulling in all students.  She provided feedback that allowed students to make decisions.  She allowed students to learn by teaching each other under her guidance.  But what I was most excited about was seeing an example of how weaving AFL into the instructional plan from the beginning allows what could have been a headache in another classroom to be instead a great opportunity for moving down the path to mastery.

Don't try to add AFL to what you already do.  Instead, redesign and re-plan your practice sessions (lesson plans) so they incorporate redos and retakes of assessments from the very beginning.  

Ok - which would motivate you more... A chance to win a date with Angelina Jolie or a chance to win a date with Brad Pitt?

Weird question, right?  I was watching a TV discussion about Hollywood's "most beautiful couple", and for some strange reason, I saw an educational corollary buried beneath it.  

Here's the point: If you would be motivated by a chance to win a date with Angelina Jolie, then a chance to win a date with Brad Pitt probably wouldn't do much for you.  And if you'd do anything for a date with Brad Pitt, you probably don't care too much about a chance to go out with Angelina Jolie.  This got me thinking about external motivators and how they're often used - or misused - by educators.  

External motivators don't cause people to be motivated if they don't already care about the external motivator.  External motivators don't create new motivation - they just reinforce motivators already in place.

The purpose of this post is not to encourage or discourage the use of external motivation.  The purpose is to challenge educators to look at such motivators with a dose of reality - not all motivators will work for all students and not all are appropriate to use in all situations.

As I have worked with teachers around the country on the topic of assessment and grading, it is rather easy to help people reach a level of cognitive agreement with the concept of making sure that a grade assigned to a student represents mastery.  But many teachers struggle with the fear that if they assign grades based on mastery they will lose the "carrot and stick" of rewarding with points or assigning low grades and zeroes.  I don't pretend to have the answer to every hypothetical or potential grading and assessment situation - and I definitely don't believe there is a one size fits all solution that works in every class with every student.  But I do know the following to be true:

1. Students who routinely do not turn in work or make up missed assignments tend to not be motivated by the fear of the zero or the low grade - or they would have done the work in the first place.  I'm not suggesting that a zero or low grade couldn't be appropriate in certain situations, but we just shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that this external motivator was ever working with these students to begin with.  To tell a routine "zero-getter" that he'll receive a zero if he doesn't turn in his work would be like telling me I'll lose out on a date with Brad Pitt if I don't do my work.  BTW - I didn't mention this earlier but I would be much more motivated by a chance to win a date with Angelina Jolie!
2. Students who already care about their grades are the ones motivated by grades and earning points because they already care about those external motivators.  Over the years teachers have used grades as carrots and sticks with these students to encourage compliance.  However, these are the students who drive us crazy when they seem to only care about are earning points rather than learning content.  So using grades as the primary motivator to get these students to do work is a problem for another reason - it promotes the idea students have that points are more important than learning.
3. When grades are used as inappropriate carrots and sticks - v. appropriate - then grades become falsified.  Rather than communicate mastery, they begin to represent how hard a student worked or how much they worked instead of what they learned.  This is unacceptable - unless your goal is for the grade to represent effort more than or as much as mastery.

It's really hard to blame teachers for using grades as carrots and sticks.  After all, it's been done this way forever.  We are all products of an educational system that operates as though everyone is motivated by the same external factors and that trains students to only work for external motivators.  Our teachers did this - our universities taught us to teach this way - our school divisions' grading systems are usually set up this way - it's just the way it's always been.

But that doesn't mean it has to stay this way.

While it's fine to come up with carrots and sticks that work in your classroom with individual students it's not fine to:

1. Have a "bag of motivational tricks" so limited that we end up trying to use tricks we know won't work with certain students instead of searching for other ways to motivate, inspire, encourage, and successfully demand that students work.
2. Foster the misguided idea that collecting points is more important than learning.
3. Assign final grades that we know do not reflect content knowledge and skills gained as a result of our excellent teaching.

I really don't have specific answers to share - just some things to think about.  

If you think there might be a better way, then you can't keep doing what you've always done.  If you're wanna change, then you gotta change.  Don't expect to keep everything the same except for your allocation of points and then see a revolution in your classroom.  If you're looking for a place to begin, try exploring the concepts of Standards Based Learning.  I'd suggest taking a look at some of the resources on http://rickwormeli.net and following the Twitter Chat #SBLchat - Wednesdays at 9:00 pm EST.

I apologize if I've muddied the waters more than I've made them clearer, but sometimes answers aren't simple.  Asking questions, though, is essential.  Try asking yourself these:

1. Do I try to use grades and/or points to motivate?
2. Does it work the way I want it to?
3. Does it lead to falsified grades (grades that don't represent mastery)?
4. Would there be other external motivators I could use with my students besides grades and points?

If they don't want to hang out with Brad, see if they'd rather hang out with Angelina...

There are some exciting things going on in the Northeast these days with Standards Based Learning.  Here is a link to a phenomenal list of SBL resources from the state of Vermont.

http://vermontsbl.weebly.com/resources.html

Thanks to the following educators for putting this together:

Emily Rinkema: Teacher/Instructional Coach, CVUHS, Hinesburg

If you considering how to make (or if you should make) redos and retakes a part of your classroom, you really need to spend some time listening/reading Rick Wormeli's thoughts on the subject.  He has a knack for combining the philosophical and the practical.  Here are some of his thoughts copied from an article he wrote in Ed Leadership back in November 2011.  A link to the entire article is included at the end:

When it comes to deciding whether to allow a student to redo an assignment or assessment, consider the alternative—to let the student settle for work done poorly, ensuring that he or she doesn't learn the content. Is this really the life lesson we want to teach? Is it really academically better for the student to remain ignorant?

This practice is not acceptable. To be adequately prepared for college and career, students need to learn the content and skills that society identifies as important. Whether a student was initially irresponsible or responsible, moral or immoral, cognitively ready or not is irrelevant to the supreme goal: learning.

There are far more effective strategies for teaching responsibility than to simply label a student as immature and deny that student learning.

14 Practical Tips for Managing Redos in the Classroom

1. Ask students who redo assignments to submit the original attempt with the new one and to write a brief letter comparing the two. What is different, and what did they learn as a result of redoing the work?
2. Reserve the right to give alternative versions of the assessment if you think students will simply memorize a correct answer pattern or set of math answers. Don't be afraid to make the redone versions more demanding.
3. Announce to students and parents that redos are permitted at teacher discretion. This means that students and parents may not take the redo option for granted.
4. Require students to submit a plan of relearning and to provide evidence of that relearning before work can be redone. This includes creating a calendar in which students list day-by-day what they will do to prepare.
5. If a student doesn't follow through on the relearning steps he or she promises to do, ask the student to write a letter of apology to you and to his or her family for breaking the trust.
6. Require parents to sign the original, poorly done versions of assignments so they're aware that their children have required multiple attempts to achieve the standard. (If there is neglect or abuse in the home, of course, remove this requirement.)
7. After two or three redo attempts, consider shelving the push for mastery of this content for a few weeks. Either the student is not ready to reach the standard, or we're not creative enough to figure out how to teach him or her. Take a break and pursue this content in a later unit of study.
8. If the same student repeatedly asks for redos, something's wrong. The content is not developmentally appropriate, there are unseen issues at home, or perhaps there's an undiagnosed learning disability. Investigate.
9. Choose your battles. Push hard for students to redo anything associated with the most important curriculum standards and less so with work associated with less important standards.
10. Allow students who get Cs and Bs to redo work just as much as students who earn Ds and Fs. Why stand in the way of a student who wants to achieve excellence?
11. If report cards are coming up and there's no time to redo something to change the grade, report the lower grade and assure the student that he or she can learn the material the next marking period. If the student demonstrates improved mastery, submit a grade change report reflecting the new, more accurate grade.
12. For the sake of personal survival, you may choose not to allow any retakes or redos the last week of the marking period as you're closing down the grade book and doing report cards. For eight weeks, you're Mr. or Ms. Hopeful, but for that one week, it's OK to protect your sanity and personal life. You can allow students to learn the material and have their grade changed later.
13. Replace the previous grade or mark with the most recent one; don't average the two attempts together. The A that a student earns on his fifth attempt at mastery is just as legitimate as the Aearned by his classmate on the first attempt.
14. Unless an assessment is complex and interwoven, allow students to redo just the portions on which they performed poorly, not the entire assessment. (To assist with this, consider standards-based grading on your assessments; record the standards or outcomes being assessed at the top of the assessment and provide a separate score for each standard.) Separating standards in this way saves time for both the teacher and the students. Some redos can be a 10-minute interview at the teacher's desk while the rest of the class works on something else.

Source Article: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/nov11/vol69/num03/Redos-and-Retakes-Done-Right.aspx

A recent post on The Assessment Network titled Redos and Retakes? Sure. But don't forget to Loop! received a lot of attention via social media and led to quite a few productive discussions.  Without repeating all that was already shared in that post, the basic premise was this:

If we care about learning more than grading and if we want to communicate that to students, then we will need to understand that:

The power of assessment is greatly enhanced when Standards Based teaching and assessment practices - such as Looping - are interwoven into the daily instructional process.

This concept of Looping was juxtaposed with the common practice of allowing students to ask for Redos and Retakes. While Redos and Retakes were not directly discouraged, educators were encouraged to focus first on building reassessment into the very fabric of the learning process instead of waiting to reassess after students decide they don't like their grades.

The post and the concept of Looping generated quite a bit of feedback via social media.  A common response went something like this:

I really like the idea of Looping.  Could you share practical examples of what this might look like in a classroom?  

If you haven't read the original post yet, I would suggest doing so before moving on.  Once - or if - you have, then read below for very practical and applicable examples of Looping shared in her own words by Robin Tamagni, an Earth Science teacher at Salem High School in Salem, VA.

How do I loop in my class?

The first thing that I do is teach my Earth Science content to the best of my ability.  I try to explain and break down everything and have no assumptions that my students just ‘know what I’m talking about’.  Once I teach something, I make sure the very next day I go back and have my students practice it with one another, especially the vocabulary.  In Earth Science there is an abundance of new vocabulary that students have never heard of, so going back and practicing it every day with their partners is crucial for maintaining, establishing, and growing knowledge throughout the year.  I use partner quizzing of vocabulary words, flash cards, Quia.com and Kubbu for review games, and acronyms to help students remember the words.  This constant review and practice is Looping in its simplest form. 

Once we have taught and practiced the content, I assess my students.  Specifically, I like to use PowerSchool Assessment (formerly Interactive Achievement) so that instead of just finding an overall grade I can receive and give feedback in terms of mastery of specific content standards.  The data from the assessments shows me areas of strength and weakness for each individual student.  This is an example of what that data looks like for a student. 

Instead of just seeing a grade of 63%, PowerSchool Assessment provides me with more specific and standards-based feedback.  I learn that a student does better with the topic of Igneous Rocks, but struggles with Sedimentary and Metamorphic Rocks.  Therefore, I am able to focus on their problem areas so they can grow rather than waste their time and mine reteaching them everything about rocks.

As important as this standards-based data is for my decision making, it is even more important to get the data in the hands of my students so they can trained to let it guide their decision making. Training them to understand and interpret data is something I begin doing early in the school year and then am very consistent with all year long.  To help make the students' data meaningful, I give them what I call the "Weak Areas Sheet" (see example below or click link to download a Word file). 

On each student's Weak Areas Sheet I fill in the mastery feedback from PowerSchool Assessment into the blank for each assessed standard.  Now the students know exactly which specific topics they need to work on. 

On my classroom website, our school's other Earth Science Teacher, Wes Lester, and I have compiled a huge list of resources for practicing each specific standard.  (Visit Mrs. Tamagni's Study Center)  These practice activities include Quia "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" games, YouTube video clips to reteach a topic, Kubbu games to practice sorting vocabulary, Purpose Games to practice labeling features of the earth, practice quizzes, etc.  Each standard has a list of these types of activities that are specifically labeled for easy access. 

My typical lesson planning involves giving students opportunities each week go to my website and work on their weakest areas.  Generally this looks like students taking about 15 minutes in class to login, pick 3 games in each of their weakest areas, and practice.  I ask them to complete the review game and then show me their results when they have done so.  I may use this as a Do Now/Bell Ringer activity or as an Exit Ticket activity.  If I find that I have 10 unexpected extra minutes near the end of class having my students get our their Weak Areas Sheet and doing some Looping is a practical and meaningful way to "fill that time". 

Looping in this manner also works great for students who are accelerated.  First of all, this method of assessment lets me know who has actually mastered the standards rather than just who happens to have a high grade.  It is rare to find a student who has truly mastered ALL taught standards.  However, when I do find someone who has reached this level I can let the student go ahead and start practicing standards that will be taught in the future, or I can give that student an opportunity to serve others by coaching peers who are weak in standards they're strong in. 

As the school year progresses, my looping practices expand somewhat.  By mid-year I have worked hard to create an abundance of practice stations in my room.  Each station correlates to a specific content standard. By mid-year, my students definitely know where their weak area(s) is (are).  I strategically pair students up with one another (one weak, one strong) and have them travel around my classroom to all the different stations beginning at their weakest standards.  The stronger student is coached on how to act as a peer teacher and to make sure they take the opportunity to explain and help their partner through their weaker standards. While serving as a peer coach does not come naturally to all students, if I focus on developing great relationships with my students they become more willing to work at it as a way to help me.

Opportunities for Growth

A final key component of my looping strategy involves "never letting go of the past".  Each time students take a test in my class they will always have a retest on old standards at the same time.  For example, students will take their first test on our Rocks and Minerals standards in September.  Then in October, they will take a test again on Rocks and Minerals and a separate test on Plate Boundaries.  Then in December students will take another test on Rocks and Minerals and Plate Boundaries, but this time we'll add in Earth’s History. 

This method of looping means that each time a student takes a test they have an opportunity to demonstrate growth - as opposed to just demonstrating how well they have learned (or memorized) the current content.  Let’s say a student scores a 60% on the first Rock and Mineral Test in September.  A 60% does NOT reflect what they will know about Rocks and Minerals by April.  Students are encouraged to continuously get better and grow in each standard instead of just moving on and forgetting about it. 

In October when we test again on Rocks and Minerals along with Plate Boundaries students will have worked on their weaknesses in the category of Rocks and Minerals and will hopefully show some sort of growth within that standard.  If a student has demonstrated growth I will replace the old score with their new score since that new score is now a better reflection of what they actually know.  If a student has scored the same or lower I will add that score to the grade book and use it as communication for where they need additional growth and practice.  

The Looping strategies I have described are essential to getting kids to learn and master content.  There is definitely a lot of infrastructure that must be created before it can be done well.  However, the payout is worth the effort.  

Thoughts or questions?  Feel free to leave comments below.  You can also reach Robin at her profile page on this network or email her at rtamagni@salem.k12.va.us.  Similarly, Scott can be reached at his profile page on this network or reached via email at scotthabeeb@gmail.com.

• The teacher will have to guide/train students about how to use the rubric in this manner. Don’t expect magic the first time.
• This will work best if the teacher provides class time for the students to use their rubrics.
• The teacher might want to keep the rubrics in the classroom so that they do not get lost. Students might not take them home until the night before a large test/quiz/graded assignment.
• Be very explicit with your students about the purpose of the rubric. Don’t let this become just another "thing". This could be yet another worksheet provided by a teacher but not effectively used by students. Instead help your students view self-assessment as a core learning strategy and something that they can apply to future classes/learning. Help them view the rubric as a key to success.

Yes, I think formative assessment is important however it is not the only measure of a student's success. Unfortunately we are currently in an environment that places so much emphasis on formative and standardized testing. In my school, it seems as if the formal testing never ends. They are tested in September (a formative), October (SRI), January (formative), March (state test), April (SRI), and finally in May (formative) not to mention the unit test required by the district. The structure, lenght and environment that is created around these test are such that students become desensitised. In an effort to help make this over testing environment tolerable, I must come up with alternative ways of conducting my own assessments.

It has gotten to a point that the students moan when they are told that it's a testing day. Several pupils have even asked why there is so much testing. I candidly explained that testing won't go away and that even when you get older there are yet more test to come. (driver's test, SAT's, professional test, etc.) This explanation seemed to make it more palatable. In truth, I feel that these children are tested because of the demographics of the district and past performances. Neighboring counties within the same state don't administer nearly as many assessments.

Great teachers are constantly on a journey.  It's a journey toward professional growth, toward perfecting their craft, and toward better meeting the needs of students.  Salem High School Spanish teacher, Paola Brinkley, like so many Salem educators, exemplifies a teacher on this sort of journey.

For the past several years, Salem High School has been focusing on using assessment for the purposes of learning - rather than just for the purpose of grading.  This Assessment FOR Learning journey has led to many changes in our classrooms.  Teachers like Paola have been working to assess daily, to use feedback to guide their teaching, to train students to use feedback to guide their learning, and to grade in a way that allows practice to be used as practice (see Heart of AFL)  These efforts have helped teachers like Paola become more effective teacher and have led to students being more successful than ever.  

Those AFL steps have also led to a recognition of the importance of Standards Based Learning.  Standards Based Learning - or SBL - is a natural outgrowth of AFL.  AFL leads to teachers no longer assessing just to fill a grade book up with numbers to average together; however, teachers are still required to assign a grade to a student.  

Traditional grading relies on an average of all the assignments one does - the practice, the classwork, the homework, the tests, the quizzes, the projects - everything.  The AFL teacher is not satisfied with grading this way.  The AFL teacher realizes that it does not make sense to average formative practice with summative assessments.  The AFL teacher realizes that the most recent evidence of mastery matters much more than the the first attempts.  The traditional practice of averaging everything together just doesn't seem appropriate to the AFL teacher.

So if the AFL teacher isn't going to rely solely on the mathematical average of all assignments to determine a student's grade, what will the grade be based on?  This is where Standards Based Learning comes into the picture.  A student's grade in an AFL teacher's classroom should be based on how well a student is mastering the various standards that comprise the content of the course.

SBL has become the next phase of Salem High School's AFL journey, and Paola Brinkley is one of many teachers experimenting with how best to apply the theories of SBL to the realities of the classroom.  While there is no doubt that she and other SHS teachers will in time discover even better ways to use standards to lead to mastery learning and also to determine grades, the progress report below shows an excellent early attempt at grading in an SBL-manner.  Here's what she and other teachers in her department have done:

• SHS's World Language teachers have determined that the four key standards of learning a language are Culture, Speaking, Writing, and Grammar.
• PowerSchool, the grade book teachers in the City of Salem Schools are currently required to use , is set up to average grades together in a traditional non-AFL manner.
• While wise teachers have eschewed the use of category weights based on types of assignments in favor of a total points grading system, SHS World Language teachers like Mrs. Brinkley are discovering the value of using category weights when the categories represent course standards.
• Mrs. Brinkley has set her PowerSchool grade book up based on four category weights, one for each of the four key standards of World Languages.
• When a progress report, such as the one below, is printed for a student the student learns how he or she is doing based on standards, thus enabling the student to identify his or her strengths and to know where he or she needs to improve.

If a student asks how he or she is doing in a class, a numerical answer such as "84" isn't very helpful or descriptive enough.  How does one improve an 84?  Go find more points?  What does "84" tell someone about how to get better, about how to learn more, about how to take ownership of learning?  It doesn't.  "84" - or any other numerical answer - just puts an emphasis on accumulating points.  The AFL teacher wants the emphasis to instead be on learning.  Communication progress based on standards puts the emphasis right where it belongs.

So check out the progress report below from Paola's IB Spanish 1 class.  It happens to be my daughter, Kelsey's, progress report, by the way.  As a school administrator, I'm proud that teachers at our school like Mrs. Brinkley are journeying down this AFL/SBL path.  More importantly, though, as a parent, I truly appreciate this form of communication and find it beneficial as I try to encourage my daughter to do her best.

Notice that my daughter is progressing as she should in three of the four standards.  As a parent, I know that my daughter needs to work on Writing.  Her knowledge of Culture, her Grammar, and her Speaking are right where they need to be at this point in the school year.  Mrs. Brinkley's nice handwritten note is icing on the "excellent communication cake," but the reporting of standards is enough to help me guide my child.  

Is this the perfect way to incorporate SBL concepts into grading? I'm sure there are some SBL purists out there might find fault in the use of points at all.  Those "SBLians" might not like the fact that within the standards there is averaging going on.  Some might prefer the use of a 4,3,2,1,0 or A,B,C,D,F method instead of using numbers 0-100.  

What teachers like Paola have done, though, is creatively communicate based on standards within a grading system and with a grade book that is set up at the district level in a fairly traditional manner. They are helping our entire system - teachers, parents, and students - appreciate standards based reporting and move productively on our professional growth journey. Therefore, this is an excellent step - in fact, a leap - down the SBL road.  

Communication like this is helping to condition parents and students to look at progress not just as a grade but in terms of standards.  For example, if after receiving this progress report I were to ask Mrs. Brinkley about my daughter improving, rather than ask about how Kelsey could earn more points, it would be logical for me to ask how she can improve her writing.  Getting parents and students to think that way is a significant step to improving learning.

Thanks, Mrs Brinkley, for the wonderful communication, and thank you to all the great teachers at SHS who are bravely continuing their AFL journey!

Any thoughts? 

*Additional Note:

The progress report you see below is just that - a report of progress.  It is not a grade that is recorded in an historical record or averaged with some other grade to determine what goes on a report card.  It was given to the student on October 3; however, there won't be an officially recorded grade in the class until the end of January.  The teacher wasn't required to hand out this progress report, and it has no official bearing.  What it is is one way that a teacher is making sure that students and parents are aware of student progress.  It is a snapshot.  It is feedback.  It is given for the purpose of guidance so that students and the teacher together can make appropriate educational decisions moving forward.

I was speaking with a colleague the other day about the fact that some in our organization are still having a difficult time understanding and recognizing assessment for learning practices. Some continue to see assessment for learning as an elusive strategy or project that they have not yet figured out. In reality assessment for learning is nothing more than figuring out ways to regularly check the status of student learning and provide specific descriptive feedback and instruction that will lead to further learning and/or deeper understanding.

A recent post to this site borrowed a sports analogy from A Repair Kit for Grading, 15 Fixes for Broken Grades, by Ken O’Connor. I think expanding on this idea might bring some clarity to assessment for learning. The post explained that coaches design practice in order to prepare their team for the big game, the test. Throughout the week, coaches are continually monitoring practice, stopping the action regularly to provide specific feedback regarding the performance of the athletes compared to a clearly defined standard. At the highest level of sports, practices are even recorded and reviewed by both the coaches and the athletes so that both might see the errors and understand what needs to be done to correct them. Each practice is designed to meet the needs of the team and is based on observation and formative evaluation of the previous practice. The practices themselves are not graded; their sole purpose is to provide opportunities to prepare for the game.

The best teachers are coaches in the classroom, constantly monitoring the progression of learning and providing feedback that will lead each student further toward mastery of the standard. Formative assessment is the practice of formally and informally collecting information that informs both the teacher and the student about their progress. This information is used to provide feedback and to design lessons to ensure that every student is ready for the big game. One major difference from a more traditional approach is that practice opportunities are used more for providing feedback and less for determining grades.

As this site has grown, so has the number of sports and coaching analogies.  It seems that one way to communicate excellence in the classroom is to compare it to excellence on the field or court.  As sports-related posts/discussions/resources are added to The Assessment Network, links to them will be added to this blog, making it a one stop shop for all AFL-related sports references.

 Videos:

• Michael Jordan Nike Commercial - the importance of failure
• Allen Iverson - talking 'bout PRACTICE
• I Want to be the Starting Tailback... - preventing grading practices from messing up AFL
• Spurs Players Coach Themselves - example of differentiation resulting from meaningful assessment

Pictures

• Standards Based Feedback and All-Star Voting

Blogs:

• Fantasy Football and the Problem with Averaging
• Dean Smith, the Tarheels, and AFL in Action
• An AFL Lesson from Bayern Munich Football Club - keep drilling basic skills
• Good Teaching is a Lot Like Coaching a Mule - the importance of the basics
• Kevin Durant Teaches Us About AFL - using feedback to focus on improvement
• Of Batting Averages, Grading, and MVP Seasons - the problem with averaging
• Coaching in the Classroom - comparing good teaching to good coaching
• A Sports Analogy for Assessment - comparing formative assessment to practice and summative to games
• Why is Allen Iverson on Assessment FOR Learning? - explanation of Allen Iverson Practice video
• Assessment FOR Learning on the Football Field - success on the field happens for the same reasons as success in the classroom
• Applying AFL to a PE Class - comparing weight lifting and AFL

As the Standards Based movement has grown, allowing students to Redo assignments and Retake tests has become a rather common practice.  Blogs, articles, books, and workshops have focused on the importance of Redos and Retakes (R/R) and how to practically implement R/R at the classroom and school level.  Divisions, schools, and teachers have created policies that detail, rather specifically, the conditions through which students might R/R assignments.

The progression from Standards Based philosophies to the practice of R/R goes something like this:

1. Students learning content and skills is the mission, therefore, we can't be satisfied with students not learning.
2. Since all students do not learn at the same pace, when we become aware that students have not mastered specific content standards, we should give students additional opportunities to learn those standards.
3. Low scores/grades/marks/feedback commonly indicate that a student hasn't mastered content or skills.
4. When students have low scores/grades/marks/feedback, we should provide them R/R opportunities so they can improve the scores/grades/marks/feedback.
5. Improved scores/grades/marks/feedback indicate that students have learned the content and/or skills.

Based on what I have seen working with outstanding teachers in my own school (Salem High in Salem, VA) and from what I have learned as I have traveled around the country helping schools with their assessment needs, I would like to make the following recommendation:

Let's remember that R/R is not the ONLY way - and often not the best way - to implement Standards Based philosophies.

Let me clarify: I will not be suggesting in the paragraphs to come that R/R practices should stop, but that:

• We need to make sure R/R fall in their proper and appropriate context, and that
• Looping is a teaching and assessment practice that deserves strong consideration because it keeps the focus on learning better than most R/R practices do.

The phrase Standards Based Grading (SBG) is used quite commonly to refer to the use of Assessment FOR Learning practices based on standards.  However,  the phrase Standards Based LEARNING (SBL) is more instructionally-relevant to use since this keeps us focused on the goal and the mission of learning rather than on the significantly less important focus of grading.  

Regardless of your choice of terms - SBG or SBL - the most important aspect of the Standards Based movement is not any one specific practice but instead how educators think about assessment.  Teachers trying to grow in their use of assessment must focus first on the way they THINK about assessment rather than than on HOW they will assess or WHAT assessments they will use.  The Standards Based movement is not really about grading; it's about learning.  But the associated increase in learning is dependent on a change in thinking.  

• If a teacher thinks about learning primarily in terms of students demonstrating mastery of individual specific standards (as opposed to students increasing their overall aggregate "average" grade) then a teacher will communicate with students and parents in terms of individual specific standards mastery.  
• If a teacher communicates in terms of individual specific standards mastery, then students and parents are more likely to think about progress in terms of individual specific standards mastery, rather than increasing their overall aggregate average.
• If students and parents think about progress in terms of individual standards mastery, then they are more likely to communicate in those terms, as well.

The problem with typical R/R practices is that they have a tendency to cause all of us - educators, students, and parents - to think and communicate in terms of grades rather than learning.

It's natural for students and parents to be hyper-focused on grades, and it would be unrealistic to expect them to unilaterally take steps to shift that focus to learning.  The perceived benefits and consequences of grades are too immediate and too ingrained in our culture.  If learning is ever to take its rightful place in relation to grading, it will have to be the educators in the schools who set that tone.  Anything educators do that encourages or reinforces the focus to be on grades will run counter to what we want most - to have a culture that values learning about all else.

While the typical reason educators embrace R/R is a desire for students to learn, too often the reality is that R/R reinforces the students' focus on grades above all else.  If I'm a student and I find out I have a low score/mark/feedback, my natural inclination is to consider how that impacts my grade.  When a teacher or a school or a division creates a policy that gives me the "right" to retake an assignment, what I tend to hear is that I have the "right" to increase my grade.

The underlying problem with many R/R policies is that they are examples of what could be called "After-the-Fact" Standards Based assessment.  In other words, now that we've finished this unit/topic and you have scored at a level that you (or your parent) don't approve of, you can go back and fix your grade by R/R after-the-fact.  

If you're exploring incorporating Standards Based assessment practices into your classroom, starting with figuring out an R/R policy/procedure would be a mistake.  Begin by growing in your understanding of SBL philosophy so you will be able to THINK in a Standards Based manner and be prepared to apply SBL logistics to the myriad of situations that inevitably will arise.  

The power of assessment is greatly enhanced when, rather than after-the-fact, Standards Based teaching and assessment practices - such as Looping - are interwoven into the fabric of the learning process.

Here's what happens when a teacher gains a great understanding of SBL philosophy:

• A teacher who THINKS in terms of standards mastery will base instruction and communication on standards.  
• Then, because the teacher THINKS this way, communicates this way, and wants to ensure that students master standards, the teacher will routinely - probably daily - assess students to gauge the level of student learning.  
• This will cause individual standards to be assessed multiple times and, more than likely, through multiple measures.
• Because measuring progress towards individual standards mastery is important, the teacher will want to record these measurements in a manner that allows him/her to see how each student is progressing toward each standard - rather than simply averaging all work completed.

There will come a time when the teacher will move on to new content, however, the students' progress toward past standards will remain in front of that teacher and the students as a constant reminder that some students - maybe many students - have still not mastered standards at a satisfactory level.  This leaves the teacher with 1 of 3 options:

1. Don't worry about the standards not satisfactorily mastered.  
   This should be obviously unacceptable but needs to be included since it is a theoretical possibility.
2. Wait until the end of the year and then go back and review past standards.
   This often helps students "cram" for an end-of-course test but does little to move learning into long-term memory.
3. Throughout the year, continuously review previously taught concepts, content, and skills.

For the remainder of this post we will refer to this Option 3 as Looping.

The Looping concept - continuously reviewing previously taught concepts, content, and skills - is a teaching and assessment strategy with greater potential to increase student learning than R/R practices alone.  Here's why:

Looping focuses on learning while R/R tend to focus on grades.

Furthermore, Looping is teacher-driven, while R/R is often student (or even policy) driven.

As previously stated, R/R tend to happen after-the-fact once students (or parents) are unsatisfied with grades.  R/R policies in schools tend to focus on students having a right to something.  This often leads to unnecessary tension as students "exercise their rights."  However, even when tension does not occur, when R/R is the major standards based thinking is implemented, students tend to focus it primarily as a way to improve grades.

Looping, on the other hand, is all about learning.  Looping is not dependent on students (or parents) wanting, after-the-fact, to improve a grade.  Instead, Looping is teacher-driven and built into the teacher's normal planning.  It's organic, rather than after-the-fact.  It's based on the idea that repetition is essential to learning, so teachers who want students to learn will naturally keep looping back to topics that need reinforcement.  Looping doesn't require a teacher to constantly grade and re-grade assignments, a logistic that can often turn R/R into a burden.    

With Looping, the teacher controls:

• THE WHAT: 
  Looping occurs on topics that the teacher knows - based on assessment data - need to be re-addressed and re-assessed, 
• THE WHEN: 
  Looping occurs as frequently as the teacher's assessment data shows looping is needed,
• THE WHO:
  Looping makes sure that all students in a class - not just those who come and ask for R/R - are continuously enhancing their skills. and
• THE HOW:
  Looping can be happen through repeat lessons, additional practice, old questions being included on new tests, whole class activities, differentiated assignments, daily quizzes, etc.

Looping doesn't require a policy.  Looping just requires a teacher who:

• assesses regularly,
• knows how students are progressing toward standards mastery, and
• understands that humans learn through repetition and practice.

So does this mean that teachers should stop allowing students to R/R assignments?  Absolutely not.  Teachers should use their professional judgement to determine when R/R are most appropriate.  But R/R must be applied in a manner that supports the philosophy of SBL, rather than as one-size-fits-all approach.  

What I'm recommending is this.  As educators who value learning above grading, let's:

• First think in a Standards Based manner - let's think in terms of how to teach standards, assess based on standards, and organically and regularly Loop back to standards so students get maximum practice and repetition.
• Put into daily practice the seemingly obvious fact that the more times a student encounters content, practices, and is assessed, the more likely the student is to actually learn and remember.
• Make sure we don't allow the quest for grades to trump learning.
• Not create policies that tie teachers' hands - such as "thou shall give a retake whenever students request one" - but instead, let's encourage teachers to use their expertise to help students learn.
• Remember the purpose of Assessment FOR Learning - we assess so students will learn rather than assess to create grades.

Got any thoughts?

I think I'm finally, after 6 years of teaching, having an "ah-ha" moment that should really be an "oh, duh" moment! In working to use AFL more and more in my daily class activities, I have really been focusing on using technology to reinforce learning.

Yesterday in one of my Algebra I Part 2 classes, I had a student say, "Oh, this is totally making sense now." He wasn't using technology at the moment, but merely working out of a textbook while at one of my station activities. I loved it! Today in my Algebra I Part 1 class, I heard a girl say, "Oh, I'm getting it." She was using an online game to review solving multi-step inequalities. We had worked the two days prior on learning this material and today was a chance for me to watch each student individually work at their own pace to reinforce what had already be taught. It wasn't for a grade, but for me to see what I needed to do on Monday before their Tuesday test.

It isn't hard to use AFL - I bet you are already using it! And let me tell you how rewarding it is to see a student have that lightbulb moment after you have taught it and they are practicing their skill in your classroom. I rarely have a student say, "Oh, I'm getting it" or "Oh, this is totally making sense now" in the midst of my typical class lecture.

Use AFL and get the chance to watch your students have those "Ah-ha" moments!!!

A colleague of mine reminded me this morning of an AFL strategy that she observed me using a few weeks ago. I decided to share!

Students had a quiz and I wanted to make sure that they understood what they were to be assessed on. So at the beginning of the class, I wrote 5 problems on the board similar to those on their quiz. I explained that after they had successfully completed those five problems, I would give them their quiz. Each student was able to get their answers checked, get feedback, and then rework the problems until I was satisfied that they understoof the material. Then they took their quiz. It was an easy thing to do, but gave me lots of feedback about what the students knew and didn't know. It also gave them confidence in their abilities to complete the work.