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?