MeTA musings

I'm participating in Bill Ferriter's "Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap" digital conversation and wanted to take a minute and explain why I'm spending some of my time this week participating in it with the idea that you might decide to as well.

First, I believe teachers should model lifelong learning, just as we expect our students to do outside the classroom.  This is ultimately the reason I blog and tweet, but spending some time conversing about a specific topic (professional learning communities and systematic interventions) for a defined amount of time (three days) keeps me focused on an area I would like to learn more about.

Second, in my new role next year, I will be charged with leading our district's professional development and overall vision in the area of teaching and learning.  I've long been an advocate for increased collaboration opportunities for educators.  It is time to put my money where my mouth is, learn even more about professional learning communities so that I can hopefully put theory into practice this fall.  Our district's leadership team has already decided that collaborative learning teams will be our main focus for next year, so it just makes sense to talk with experts Rick and Becky DuFour in this digital format when I have the opportunity to do so.

Third, I need to add a disclaimer that I am being compensated in a very small way to be a part of the conversation, but I would still be participating for free.  Collaboration is THAT important in education.  I'm looking forward to helping my district become more results-oriented.  Any single educator moving forward alone will only be as successful as his/her time and efforts permit.  I can attest from my own experience that I can't do it all by myself.

"Professional learning communities create a systematic process of interventions to ensure students receive additional time and support for learning when they experience difficulty.  The intervention process is timely and students are directed rather than invited to utilize the systems of time and support." Learning by Doing, p. 71

From a standards-based grading perspective, David Cox is constantly pestering me with questions like the one he left on Shawn Cornally's recent post,

"The two major weaknesses I see with SBG are in diagnosing and prescribing what a student must do between assessments and making the reassessments “optional” by having them done outside of class....but in order for other teachers in my district to jump on board, we are going to have to find a way for this to work “in class.”Question is: How?"

He, too, is right.  It is incredibly difficult for individual educators to remediate ALL of our students, even after standards-based grading helps us identify and report their exact weaknesses.

So...what are you waiting for?  Join me May 19-21 over at Bill Ferriter's Voicethread conversation.

Most teachers I know (including myself for the first 4 years in the profession) take off a half point for missing labels and/or incorrect negative signs.  Why is this tradition ingrained in our heads?

My guess: Our teachers did it to us, so we do it to our students, too.  Dan Lortie calls this the "apprenticeship of observation."  In a nutshell, Lortie suggests that we teach in ways we were taught in school.  This is why standards-based grading is so difficult for the majority of secondary teachers to comprehend and adapt for themselves.  Points were (and continue to be...except for the innovative folks listed here) the classroom currency of choice in the overwhelming majority of U.S. public school classrooms.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Uh...our traditional grading systems are broken. 

Take this test question as an example.

This student incorrectly answered question #4.  Are the negative signs a big deal?  If the question was worth 5 points, is a half point deduction reasonable?
A closer look at the problem indicates the student reflected the points over the line y = 0 rather than x = 0.  Most likely the student either misread the problem or does not know the difference between these two lines.  My observations tells me the latter is the more likely of the two for this particular student.  The negative sign here do not show a careless error, but instead indicates a misconception.  Does the student know he/she has this misconception or was it just one of those negative sign errors Mr. Townsley takes a half point off for...because he always does that?

Traditional system: Student takes the half point hit.

Standards-based grading: Teacher is forced to analyze what the student might have done wrong rather than blindly taking off points.  Student's score reflects the level of understanding, not a token value based on pre-determined deductions for labels and negative signs.  In this case, negative signs matter.  The student is made aware of this through feedback and the learning target score.

Have you switched to standards-based grading yet?  
Why not?

In my statistics class, I didn't grade homework during the last chapter of the semester.  I had a few critical conversations with students about my philosophy on points, learning and homework.  Most of them knew it was coming. 

Later on, I asked them to journal about it.   The responses were generally in support of not grading homework.  I was delighted to read that so many of them "got it."  The picture below is one of the many responses that reassured me the message was being communicated clearly.

Many said that they were still going to do the homework so that they would later be successful on a quiz or test.  I incorporated a few mini formative assessments (quizzes) to provide written feedback and ensure that students were not all falling behind.

Yet another student said,

"I thought that it was OK.  I did all my homework but I think that if you understand it fine then you should only have to do 1 or 2 problems especially when its this long of problems.  I will still do my homework but it would be nice to get some credit for doing it."

For additional commentary and background on this subject, you may want to consider reading a few of my previous posts:

• "I just don't get it..."(why grading formative assessments doesn't make sense)
• "Getting past grading homework" (it's easier than you think)

I'm in the process of moving to standards-based grading in this course now, too.  More on that later. 

Kate Nowak blogged about it first.  Evan Abbey asked for this post.  Here goes nothing.

I teach Geometry therefore I also teach proofs, specifically two-column proofs about congruent triangles.  It's a Geometry student's nightmare.  Ask a Geometry alumnus what they didn't like about Geometry, chances are it's proofs.

Aside from showing the "girls are evil" proof, it used to be one of my least favorite topics to teach.  Honestly, who cares if two triangles are congruent?  Furthermore, who cares to prove two triangles are congruent "given" some sort of figure marked up with congruent sides and overlapping angles?  Yeah, yeah, we need to expose our students to this type of recipe-like logical reasoning.  Yeah, yeah, we should be exposing our students to mathematical proof in the unlikely event one or two go on to become math majors.  For the super-majority of my students, Geometry is the first and last time they'll see congruent triangles as well as two-column proofs.  It's up to me to make it a little bit interesting.

Here's how it all shook down a few months ago:
Me: Let's say I tell Tommy to go home and cut out a triangle with three sides: 3 cm, 4 cm and 5 cm.  He's really good with his protractor, ruler and scissors and won't mess up the triangle.  I give the same instructions to Sandy - go home and cut out a triangle with three sides: 3 cm, 4 cm and 5 cm.  Sandy is also really good with her protractor, ruler and scissors.  Would they come back tomorrow with the exact same triangle?

Student A: No way!  They will definitely be different.  Just because they have the same sides doesn't mean the two triangles will be exactly the same. 


Student B: Yes!  The same three sides means it will be the same exact triangle.

Me: Interesting thoughts.  Who thinks Student A is right?  Who thinks Student B is right?  How about this scenario:  If I tell Randy to cut out a triangle with three angles...40 degrees, 45 degrees and 95 degrees and Leslie to do so as well, will both of these students come back tomorrow with the same triangle?


Student A: No way!  They will be different, just like Tommy and Sandy's triangles.

Student B: Yes!  There's only one way to draw a triangle with those angle measures.

Student C: Yes!  I've done it before, Mr. Townsley.

Me: Wow.  Who thinks Randy's triangle will be the same as Leslie's triangle?  Of those of you that voted yes, how many of you also think Tommy and Sandy's triangles will be the same?  How many of you think that there's a difference between these two pairs of triangles?

...and the conversation continues until a student finally says, "let's try it out!!"
-----------------------------------------------
Over the next class period, pairs of students cut out 12-15 triangles and test some conjectures I propose.  Are two triangles with congruent and corresponding angles always going to be congruent?  What about two triangles with congruent and corresponding sides?  What about a combination of angles and sides?

Will many of my students (and yours) ever think about triangle congruence theorems and/or two-column proofs again outside the math classroom?  Probably not.  In my earlier years of teaching, I used to motivate this kind of lesson with some sort of artificial "real-world" problem.  I'm starting to learn that its often more engaging and meaningful to address the math for what it is rather than pretending it is immediately applicable to adolescents' lives.   Pure mathematicians:  can/should a high school math teacher get away with this type of rationale or am I providing a disservice to my students?

I'm amazed at the number of edu-bloggers who are giving standards-based grading a try in their classrooms.  I talked with a colleague in the parking lot one day and now he's blogging about it, too. 

I get emails and comments from readers asking for advice as I'm sure many of you do, too.

Newsflash:  I did not invent standards-based grading or a common sense approach to feedback.  I read about it somewhere else just like some of you have read about it here on MeTA Musings.  

I'm also amazed at the amount of credibility I apparently have built up locally here in Iowa regarding the Iowa Core's "assessment for learning" characteristic of effective instruction.  I've been asked to speak at several neighboring school district's professional development days, a state conference and at a local workshop following UCLA's Margaret Heritage.  I'm not trying to brag here, I promise. 

You, too, can become an "expert."  Here's a simple three-step process to gaining credibility from your local and virtual peers.

1. Put theory into practice using a common sense approach and a bit of risk taking in your classroom.
2. Write about it in an electronic medium.  Let your audience decide if its worth anything.  If it is, they'll share it with their virtual and face-to-face colleagues.  
3. Repeat cycle.

When readers come-a-commenting, respond in an honest and transparent fashion.

Along the way, you're bound to do plenty of self-reflection.  That's a good thing.  Your students will surely benefit.

That's it. You're up.