Let's Talk About Assessment and Grading

 What does an A really mean to a student?  Does a C tell us anything about what they have and have not learned about a particular topic?  Is putting 65% D on top of a student’s paper going to tell them that they learned part of what they needed to, or is it just going to make them feel like they haven’t learned enough?  Sometimes, the way we grade and inform students of their learning is not actually helping them develop a learner’s mindset.  Today, I wanted to focus on a different way of grading that I found useful in my elementary classroom, and I hope you’ll find it useful as well.

Every student is different, and every student learns at a different pace.  They also have different abilities to take what they do know about a topic and transfer that knowledge to a new topic.  That is why my assessment of a student’s knowledge of a topic was never saved until the end of a unit.  When we got about a week to a week and a half out from when we would normally take a unit assessment, I would give my students something called a “skills check.”  I never announced when the skills check would be, because I wanted to see what they knew up to that point without any additional studying.  I also made it very clear that I would not be taking the skills check for an actual grade.  The skills check was focused on the standards that were taught for that unit, and contained usually 2-4 questions per standard, depending on how big of a priority and focus each standard was.  Here was the part my students loved: if they got all 2-4 questions correct for a particular standard, they did not have to take an actual “test” over that standard.  Really, why should they?  They have proven to me that they understand the concept and have mastered the standard. 

When they got their skills checks back, they did not receive a percentage or fraction correct on the top of their paper.  Instead, they were told which standards they needed to continue working on and which they already passed.  I put the standards into easy “I can” statements so that they clearly understood what they were still working on learning.  Then, over the course of the next week-week and a half, the students were able to work on those skills that they really needed to work on.  On our class website, I would put online practice activities and games clearly labeled with the standard they addressed.  During the day, I would be able to use students who had already mastered a standard to help “tutor” students who had not mastered it.  I also had practice worksheets and application activities laid out by standard for students to work on.  Instead of being told “study for the test,” which doesn’t tell them how or what to study, my students were instead told “look at what you need help with and use these resources to help you learn.”  At the end of the unit, when we would normally take our unit test, my students would get 4-5 question “mini tests” only on the standards they did not master on the skills check.  This meant everybody had a different amount of “mini tests,” but they were only focused on what the students really needed at that point.  

Here is what my gradebook looked like:

Look at some of the students who got 7/16 on their skills check.  I could have simply written on their test 7/16, 44%, F.  But that makes it seem like they don’t know anything about what we learned.  The first three students who you see that scored a 7/16 had already mastered 3 of the standards out of a possible 7. Now, instead of feeling like they had failed and there was no point in continuing to try, my students could say “I’m already really good at these particular things, and here are the things I’m still learning.”  My students’ confidence levels really started to rise as a result of this new way of assessing their learning.  They understood their strengths and areas of growth.  I also found that my students were better prepared, overall, for their actual tests, because they knew what to practice and study, instead of working on a ton of problems they already knew how to do.  It was slightly more work for me, having to break questions down by standard and create practice materials for each standard, but it led to far greater success and learning in my classroom.

Have you tried something similar in your classroom?  Is this something you would like to try implementing?  I would love to hear your thoughts on this different assessment system.