Assessment
What goes in the gradebook is what ultimately receives the most focus in a course. Inspired by the Teaching for Artistic Behavior philosophy and the Open Classroom (Ian Sands and Melissa Purtee), I treat my students like artists, asking them to work through the creative process on several different projects within the quarter, learning independently and developing their own ideas into a realized art project. In conversation, observations, and the work submitted, I look for evidence that they are practicing the Studio Habits of Mind (Develop Craft, Engage & Persist, Envision, Express, Observe, Stretch & Explore, Understanding Art, Reflect. Credit to Harvard Project Zero and Lois Hetland).
rubrics
I have significantly adapted these rubrics from the Art of Ed, and I continue to refine them. I use these rubrics as a reference for entry tasks, formative assessments, goals setting, conferences with students, summative grading.
When I introduce students to these habits for the first time, I found it helpful to have them interact with them by drawing and matching. Here is the document I used for that mini-lesson.
COMMENT BANK
When I give students feedback on their work, I make personal comments, wonderings, and suggestions, but also follow with a comment from the rubric about the evidence I am using to update their grade for each habit. The document below has rephrased the rubric language into comment language, with the grade, and sometimes with suggestions about how to reach the next level. You can dump these into the Google Classroom comment bank, or simply copy and paste from this document.
STANDARDS BASED GRADING IN SKYWARD
How do you get Skyward to cooperate with standards based grading? Here's how I do it.
I usually have just one "assignment" for each habit for the duration of the course, and as I gather evidence of student's status on the rubrics I update their status.
I also add assignments where I simply check off when items are completed, so they do get dinged if they just don't turn things in, but I primarily focus our attention on developing artist habits.
Collecting Evidence
Collecting evidence of growth from students can be done simply with this form