Ideas for Next Year

It seems that every year around this time I start waking up in the night with ideas for things I want to change about next year.  I guess the time is here because this is the second time in two weeks that I’ve woken up with an urge to “Go write this down so you don’t forget it by the morning!”  This is good because it helps keep my teaching fresh all the way to the end of the year because I’m flooded with new ideas.  This is bad because it impacts my sleep.

I’m thinking about one major change in my English 8 class, and this is primarily in the way I assess my students.  I have never felt like the regular “each assignment is worth X points” and “you lose X percentage if assignments are late” is the best way to assess, even if the assignments are designed to assess skills. That way of measuring student growth puts so much in the hands of the teacher and so little in the hands of the student.  What happens when a kid doesn’t learn the intended skill of the assignment, or (gasp!) the child learns that skill through an experience in another class or through an unintended experience in mine?  Shouldn’t they have the opportunity to make the connection that they have learned something important?  Reflection and self-evaluation are key for kids to make sense of their own learning, but they are sometimes left on the back burner.  I do a good job of asking students to reflect on their writing process, but I don’t do enough daily and weekly reflection.

 I haven’t had enough experience in teaching to really consider assessment and shaking up the entire process until now.  Coincidentally, we are interviewing principal candidates right now, and the one who we spoke with yesterday mentioned that he thinks teachers start really developing in terms of assessment during years 5-7, which is where I am.

What I’d like to do next year is really move toward portfolio-based assessment in a way I never have before.  This is my basic idea for a grade breakdown:

1. 70% (or so) of their grade comes from their portfolio.  This is how I would structure portfolios (on paper or online):
1.  As the year begins, I’ll share all the objectives I have for them throughout the year.  I plan to use the Iowa Core standards next year as a test run to see how it works in the classroom as I serve on our district literacy committee for implementation.  (Our curriculum in English is so inconsistent in my district I don’t think this will be a problem.)  I think I’ll divide the goals into quarters as well so they are manageable both for students and me.
2. I will share the intended skill objectives for each assignment, and assignments will have due dates like they always have.
3. For each skill in the curriculum (which will correspond with separate grades in the grade book), I imagine that kids can demonstrate “competency” or “excellent” or something like that.  I think that competency would earn them 8.5/10 points or similar to “B” range, and excellent would earn them 10/10.  I’m not sure I like the idea of offering different levels of “meeting the skill” but I can picture work in my head right now that meets the lowest skill objective and work that surpasses it.  I think there should be a difference though I still want the emphasis to be on mastery and learning.
4. Every 2-3 weeks, students will look at the work they’ve completed and write reflections justifying how the assignments in their portfolio justify that they’ve met the goals.
5. Students can demonstrate that they’re meeting the skill objectives at any point throughout the quarter.  Then the question becomes—what do kids do when/if they show mastery of all the skills early?  But that is something to hash out another time.

2. The remaining 30% of the grade would come from “Responsible/Desirable Student Behaviors” or some similarly phrased term.  This is where I can communicate with students and parents how the kids are demonstrating responsibility and good work habits.  I envision the grade book to have between 5 and 10 categories each quarter, the largest of which comes from turning in work on time.  This category would start out with full points (so every kid actually starts with an “A”) and is a bank from which I deduct points for late and missing assignments.  There would be some formula for this that I will determine at a later date.  Other categories I’ve been thinking about are collaborating in groups, organizing materials, taking notes at opportune times, and taking risks that value learning over grades. I’d like to look at research this summer that helps me figure out what the most important things in this category are, and by second quarter, I’d like to have students defining a couple of these categories for themselves based on what they know they need to work on.  It would be awesome to reward growth in these categories rather than have all work in this area be punitive and tacked on to other skill-based work. 

Some real strengths I see in this system are the information it gives kids and parents about their learning and the way it puts some of the “behind the scenes” parts of teaching out on the table.  I think having to share with kids why they are doing what they’re doing on a daily basis will help me make sure I’m using time wisely and connecting all of our work back to the overarching goals.

I see problems in the system as well, and the largest is time.  This system will take time to implement and time for kids to reflect on their learning and how what they’ve done demonstrates that they’ve learned something.  I believe it will be time well-spent, but I know there will be times in the school year that I don’t want to give the time necessary. 

Teacher friends/parents/interested parties—what do you think?  What would you have liked/disliked about this type of assessment as a student?