Retakes and Revisions

Retakes and revisions are an essential component of competency-based education. In a traditional school, if a student does not demonstrate mastery of every standard, they often still move on to the next level because scores are averaged or because you can pass with a D. However, in a competency-based system, students do not advance to the next level without demonstrating proficiency. Therefore, without frequent, consistent, and structured opportunities for retakes and revisions, students (and teachers) would be set up to “fail” whenever a first attempt does not meet rigorous expectations. 

In a school where we expect all students to reach mastery, revision is not a “nice-to-have” strategy—it is essential to the learning process. 

At the classroom level, an effective revision process includes the following steps:

• Analyzing student work (based on clear criteria for success aligned to the standard or performance indicator) to identify gaps in understanding

• Providing instruction to address gaps

• Identifying or creating a task to reassess the target area (often a different task than the original one)

• Assessing the revision

• Repeating this process until the learner reaches proficiency

• Updating the grade for that target standard, performance indicator, or competency

• Celebrating growth

When revisions and retakes include all of these steps, they offer students the opportunity to confront misconceptions, gain new insights, and deepen existing understandings. They also allow students to reflect on the quality of their work, practice metacognition, and ultimately develop a confident scholar identity—the kind of self-efficacy that comes from having evidence that they truly can learn and achieve at high levels.

Read Coach Elis Kanner’s MBLC Newsletter article on Retakes and Revisions.

Read Coach Kate Gardoqui’s MBLC Newsletter on how Del Lago Academy enables students to try again.

Retakes and Revisions Planning Tool (coming soon!)