Assessment

Thoughts on Assessment

I have been moving towards grade-less classes over the past several years. At the moment, there is a Ministry of Education requirement that all 10-12 courses have a number mark/letter grade assigned, but there is no requirement that students receive grades on assignments and quizzes (see below for a description of quality assessment from the Ministry of Education).

Students in my classes will have an opportunity to take part in conversations about What does an A Look Like? and will be given a written list of requirements to achieve a final grade that reflects growth in mathematical thinking and the course content, that is emerging, developing, proficient or mastered.

Throughout the semester, students will receive feedback (written & verbal) on their progress on the learning standards of the course (content & curriculuar competencies) in place of marks. There have been studies (Butler, 1987, 1988) that have shown that students who receive a mark and a written comment, will only look at the mark (Boaler, "Aligning Assessment with Brain Science"). My hope is that students will become more interested in my comments about how they are doing.

I will be assessing students using the following:

assignments
group quizzes
learning logs
group work
conversations
reflections
tests
final assessment

My goal this school year is to improve the documentation of student learning, and to involve students in documenting their thinking.

Things that have influenced my philosophy in regards to assessement:

Quality Assessment, from the Ministry of Education website

is fair, transparent, meaningful and responsive to all learners
focuses on all three components of the curriculum model – knowing, doing, understanding
provides ongoing descriptive feedback to students
is ongoing, timely, specific, and embedded in day to day instruction
provides varied and multiple opportunities for learners to demonstrate their learning
involves students in their learning
promotes development of student self-assessment and goal setting for next steps in learning
allows for a collection of student work to be gathered over time to provide a full profile of the learner and learning
communicates clearly to the learner and parents where the student is, what they are working towards and the ways that learning can be supported

Learning is enhanced when students see their strengths, understand what they need to work on, and are able to set personal goals.

Averaged scores say very little about actual learning: any number of students can earn a B for many different combinations of learning.
Assessment must be a conversation, a narrative that enhances students’ understanding of what they know, what they can do, and what needs further work.

from Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School by Starr Sackstein

“Good grades are a reward for compliance but don’t have much to do with learning. Meanwhile, students whose grades don’t measure up often see themselves as failures and give up trying to learn.”

from Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink

From Alfie Kohn’s “The Case Against Grades:”

Grades tend to diminish students’ interest in what they’re learning.
Grades create a preference for the easiest possible task.
Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking.
The more students are led to focus on how well they are doing, the less engaged they tend to be with what they are doing.

Kohn (2011) The Case Against Grades-1.pdf

Reflections from students in my spring 2017 Calculus class:

I liked the marking style. I got to focus on my learning instead of stressing on my marks.

I liked:

being able to correct assignments and quizzes
not having to worry about my grade so much and being able to focus just on understanding and what we were doing and learning

I think that the board work was a very good way to teach the concepts, and how the class was based around learning the concepts instead of marks.

The lack of letter grades and numbers helped relieve some stress.

Especially with math, a class should be about learning and not a grade. A teacher should not give a test for a grade and then never give the students an opportunity to actually learn from their mistakes.

I really enjoyed this class because I feel I learned more than if we had a test every two weeks.

Aligning-Assessment-with-Brain-Science-no-ppt.pdf

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