Time Hacks for Teachers - A - Always Coaching

Back when I played basketball, I loved game nights. There was always an air of excitement, a sense of comradery, and, for me, the hope I wouldn't do anything too embarrassing (if  I even got in the game - hey, I usually did). Coach Patterson would always give us some pep talk - "they put their pants on the same as you..." - before the game.

I want you to imagine for just a moment, Coach telling us, "You guys have practiced hard this week. I know you can beat this team. Good luck, and come talk to me after the game." Come talk to me after the game - what?

Maybe we would have still played our hearts out. Maybe Kyle or Keith would have led us to victory without the coach guiding us. Maybe not.

Can you imagine, the score is tied, ten seconds on the clock, we have the ball. Kyle calls a time out. We huddle up at the bench, and someone says, "Coach, what should we do?"

Then Coach Patterson crosses his arms over his dark blue sweater vest and says, "I can't help. This is the game."

That would be totally crazy, but let's take a similar situation in the classroom. I don't know how many times I told a student, "I can't help. This is a test." For many teachers, it doesn't sound crazy in this setting.

But I always hated saying to kids. Sometimes it would be a student like Josh, who would, for the first time the whole unit, actually be interested in knowing something (Perhaps it was the first time the whole unit held anything of value to him, but that's a different conversation.). Finally, Josh was receptive to my teaching, and I gave the standard teacher mantra - I can't help. This is a test.

Totally crazy!

I remember one test day, three students came up with very similar questions, and I told them I couldn't help. After the third student sat back down, looking defeated, a voice in my mind (yes, they're real) asked, "Why can't you help?" And, I answered it!

By the end of that conversation with myself (totally crazy???), I had come to the realization there was no rule saying I couldn't help students on test days. Tweet this Sure, if it is a State-mandated standardized test, but this was just me assessing a student in my classroom, and I'd missed a teachable moment.

What a doof! Three kids were struggling with the material it was MY job to teach, and I said, "No." On top of that, I had to give up time to tutor or reteach the material after the test, and then give a retest. And I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME FOR ALL THAT!

If I'm honest, no matter how masterfully I present that information a second time, those three students will not be as engaged as they might have been when it mattered to them. I decided my standard teacher reply was merely a bad teaching practice, and Mark Barnes (@markbarnes19) said, "Bad practice adds up to disengaged students, who hate you and your class." (via www.brilliantorinsane.com)

After that day, I began to relish those pleas for help on test day. It's even been reported that I've stopped the whole test to reteach some point kids seem to be missing. Coaches are always coaching, on practice days and game days. Release your inner coach, even on game test day.

In the next post, I'm going to show you my greatest time-saving grading hack. It will pull together the ideas of constantly assessing, oral responses and always coaching. It's the one thing that truly turned grading into something I enjoyed. Don't miss it.

Let me pass the ball to you
Have you been guilty of saying, "I can't help. This is a test."? Have you tried anything else< and if so, how did it work?

Time Hacks for Teachers - O - Oral responses give immediate feedback

One of the main reasons we feel overwhelmed by grading is because teachers are good people. Good people want to do good things, and for students, getting quality feedback quickly is a good thing. Alice Keeler, of www.alicekeeler.com says, "Research shows that feedback has a large impact on learning. Grades...not so much." (@alicekeeler) Because we know this, we teachers take home stacks of papers to grade, to give that feedback our students.

When Coach Patterson saw me do something wrong out on the basketball court, he didn't wait to give me a written progress report. He would blow the whistle, stopping the whole practice. We would discuss the problem and then we would try it again. Immediate!

This idea of immediate feedback goes hand-in-hand with constantly assessing, which I talked about in my last post. I began to walk around my classes more and more asking questions - tough questions, and then giving lots and lots of feedback. If a student got the question right, or even part of the question right, I would have them repeat it to the rest of the group. If they got the question wrong, we would talk about it.

Basically, I spent less and less time up in front lecturing, and more time in mini-lecture/discussions. Students seem to be much more motivated to learn when they are in the midst of being assessed. When I was standing beside them asking a tough question, their group was looking at them, and at that one moment in time, they really wanted to know the right answer. What a glorious thing to see in the classroom! Since there were few lecture, that meant no more time spent putting together PowerPoint slides and interactive note sheets - things typically done outside of class time.

One of the best things about the immediate feedback that comes with oral responses is you can ask more questions. How many times have you been grading a students answer, and you just aren't sure if they have it or not. It's like their answer is almost there, and if you could just ask them to clarify something you would know for sure that they truly understand. Unfortunately, since you are grading the paper in your living room at 8:30 pm, there's no way to ask (Actually, it's very fortunate that you can't ask them at 8:30 pm in your living room, but you know what I mean.).

Because our goal is to determine if students have mastery of the standards, I would just turn the standards into questions. Take this standard from a high school environmental science class:

• 5a. Describe factors affecting population growth of all organisms, including humans. Relate these to factors affecting growth rates and carrying capacity of the environment.

I might type up a couple of question from this standard. 

1. What are some of the major factors affecting population growth of all organism. (Do you see how creative I was with that?) Once they tell me what they are, I can ask for an explanation of them. Okay, that one was pretty basic, but it keeps getting harder as you ask more.
2. How might differences in shelter from one ecosystem to another impact the growth rate and carrying capacity of schooling animals? (What???) 

And, since I gave myself permission to go ahead and assign points for mastery, even if it wasn't time for the big test, I was able to reduce my grading. By the time you've asked these kinds of questions to kids over and over, and you've given immediate feedback over and over, many of them will have already shown you they have mastery of the content before the final or summative assessment. So by the time you need to grade the test, you don't have too much to grade (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

For Kaylan, I only have to grade questions dealing with standard 1c and 1d. Jared has shown master on several things as well, so I only have to grade questions dealing with 1b and 1c. Obviously, I'm going to have to craft my test or assessment in such a way as to make this division easier.

I liked to divide questions for each standard into sections. I would put a line between them, so it was easier for me to see where one section ended and the other started (see Figure 2). So for Kaylan, I would know I could skip the first two sections and only grade sections three and four. Then I was finished grading her test. For my own sanity, I just had the students fill in the whole test (Probably that was just lazy on my part, but I figured it was just review for them.).

So, by giving large amounts of oral feedback, I didn't feel the need to grade everything the students were doing (Just FYI, I didn't always tell them I wasn't grading it, and would often take up work. Sometimes I would grade one or two questions that showed mastery, because I was always assessing.). Because I was constantly assessing, I had less to grade on the summative assessment, and by doing less lecturing, there was less time spent prepping (sometimes). 

Tweet Because I was constantly assessing, I had less to grade.

But with these two changes, I also found myself doing something else that helped students. Unfortunately, you have to wait until the next post to find out what it was. I'll give you a hint: it starts with an "A".

Let me pass the ball to you:

What are some time-saving things you've learned to do in the classroom?

Here's one last time-saving tip, subscribe to get the next post without even looking for it.

Time Hacks for Teachers - C - Constantly assessing

When I first started to change my grading style, I wasn't thinking about coaching. But now, when I look back, I see some similarities (and they make great analogies). Anyway, that's where the coaching angle came from.

Today's post is a little long, so let's look at the "C" in COACH. Back when I played high school basketball (way, way back), Coach Patterson didn't say, "Okay guys, remember, this Friday is our big ball-handling assessment. You need to study." We might have run some layup drills on Monday, passing drills on Tuesday, and scrimmaged on Wednesday, but he was always assessing.

As teachers, it's easy to say we constantly assess also, but we do it slightly different. And those differences are what really changed my grading. We start with standards, and from those standards, we determine what it will take for students to show mastery. Then we create our summative  assessment.

Once we've done that, we work out our lesson plans, and it's in those plans, where formative assessments are formulated. The formative assessments serve as markers to help us determine how students are progressing toward mastery.

Often, our final or summative test (quiz, project, etc.) is the real determination of whether students "have it" or not. If your classroom runs like this, then your grade book may look quite a bit like mine used to (see Figure 1), with columns for daily work, homework, quizzes, and of course the summative assessment. My grade book was the first thing I changed.

Figure 1

Since I was really only interested in mastery, there was no need to grade anything that didn't show mastery. Because of this I restructured my grade book (see Figure 2). Now my columns represented standards.

Figure 2

A copy of that grade sheet was on a clipboard that I always carried around the room (okay, almost always). As i talked with students, let's say Kaylan shows me she has mastery of Standard 1b on Tuesday. In the old days, I would have walked away thinking, "Wow, Kaylan's going to ace the test Friday."

But if I'm constantly assessing, why do I have to wait until Friday's big test to give Kaylan credit for showing mastery? Instead, I can give it to her on Tuesday. Now, say questions 6-10 on the summative assessment cover standard 1b. That's five questions I don't have to grade come Friday (WooHoo!!). In fact, if I truly assess all along the way, by the time I get to the final test, my grade book might look like Figure 3, but probably with numbers instead of thumbs-up.

Figure 3

It might sound a little confusing right now, but hang with me. I promise it's not. In fact, grading (assessing) went from my least favorite part of teaching, to one of my favorites.

Let me pass the ball to you:
Some districts or schools have already moved to standards-based grading. If you have, what differences have you seen in your time usage?

Time Hacks for Teachers - Grading Like a C.O.A.C.H.

Introduction

When I first started out in teaching (ages ago), I was determined to be the best teacher I could be. It didn't take long to realize it was going to be harder than I thought. Creating meaningful assessments, and lessons and units and...and it wasn't long until I was out of time. And that didn't even include grading.

I have to admit, I became a procrasti-grader. Grading was, to me, the most boring, horrible, terrible part of teaching. Interacting with students and creative planning I was great at. Marking errors on assessments, not so much.

Work that I took up began to pile up, which like rainy days and Mondays, always got me down. But...I wanted to be the best teacher, and my students needed feedback, so I would take home stacks of papers to grade. I graded on weekends. I graded during basketball games - not if I was playing. I graded all the time...until I'd had enough.

You may not know this about me, but I'm sarcastic. I've even been called a smart a...a smart something. And in a fit of desperation and defiance, I stopped grading papers one day. Instead, I typed up a bill for overtime hours.

My administrators were sitting at a table in the lunchroom, and I handed it to them. The seriously scrutinized it. Then they all laughed.

I laughed too, but down deep it was depressing. No one seemed to care that my job was becoming my life. No one offered any hope.

Dragging myself back to my classroom, I sat at my desk contemplating a career change. I still liked kids, and creative planning rocked, but grading had become my arch nemesis. Like the superhero I am, I decided I could either fight back or be defeated.

I fought back. Superman could bend steel beams, but I was learning to bend my self-imposed grading rules. The Flash was fast, but I learned to grade even faster. By the time I stepped out of the classroom (2 1/2 years ago, I became a media specialist), I never took grading home.

In my new position, I have been surveying teachers, and keep hearing words I used to say, "I don't have enough time." Because of that, I'm going to share with you some of my greatest grading hacks.
You may not be able to just take them and use them like I did, but my hope is that they will spark ideas to help you become a grading superhero too.

Don't forget to subscribe to get all the grading hacks. (And yes, I will explain why I call it 'Grading Like a C.O.A.C.H.)

C - Constantly Assessing