SBG to SBL

http://www.lnap.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/change.jpg

If nothing, this journey has been about reflection.

...which is a good thing...

Flip the hour glass back over, rewind the clock or just take the crystal off of the face of your Timex and push the hands back. Any of those images work for me, to look back at where this past two plus years have taken me in my quest to find a more appropriate tool for communicating learning to students.

In the fall of 2013, the science department was on board standards based grading. In a community of five teachers, this was my doing. I don't say that with pride or arrogance, it just was. The previous year (2012), it was me. I was alone in the movement away from traditional grading practices.

Department members looked on and wondered. It was a passage. We have always been a strong department and worked well together, but I know they were pretty much like, "What the heck are you doing?" and "This is not my idea, but it will impact all of us!"

It did impact all. Resources were made available, conversations were long and eventually by the end of 2012-2013, as a department the move had begun to SBG.

Grades are communication, not compensation. That is the point, the "stay on message" idea that keeps coming back and must be stated, and stated and restated.

Initially, my grade book was filled with every assessment taken. I do mean every, you could scroll for days across the spreadsheet. It was TMI! Then conferences came and conversations came with parents about why 3 out of 4 was not a bad thing. The change for this year came to only putting summative assessments in the grade book. (This idea came from @garnet_hillman.)  Parents only want to see what impacts little Ignatius's grade. That was a good move and simplified communication via gradebook. We use iCampus and the way I torture it, is to have 2 scores: one a SBG score (1-4) and then a percentage score that can be converted into a grade.

Formative Assessments are still the bread and butter of the biology classroom. I've taken forms from Bob Kuhn (@APBIORoswell) and Carolyn Durley (@c_durley) for students to control. The form has the Minnesota Science Standards and then I've taken the standard apart into smaller "I Can" statements. Those are what we really are measuring. Students then record their own progress through the I Can's and reflect on what they need to work on.

Change. Those are two examples from the past year that will make communication more effective.

As a department, we've decided to start using standards based learning, rather than grading. Students in our school come to the island of SBL when walking to the science department. They have been indoctrinated to think points, rather than learning.

We are going to focus on the learning part of what we do. Students remain shocked when hearing me say, "I don't care about the grade, I care about the learning." Hopefully, this will reinforce this message.

Change will be a constant on this journey, no question about that!