Day 3: What Would School Be Like If There Were No Grades?

Quote of the Day: “Benjamin Bloom, in his study of top-ranked young performers in several fields, found this motivation in some of them from their early years: ‘For most of the mathematicians, the joy of discovering a new way of solving a problem was more important than a high test score, receiving a good grade, or getting the teacher’s approval for their work.” - Geoff Colvin

Question of the Day: From yesterday: What is STEM?
From Today: What would school be like if there were no grades? Why grade homework?

Lesson Sequence:

1. Which One Doesn't Belong? As part of proving what one didn't belong among 9, 16, 25, and 43 we discussed what a prime number is and what the square root of each number was. This proved pivotal when we moved to the discussion about grading and incentives. 
2. Quote of the day, question of the day, star students
3. Sticky Talk. Technically the term for this protocol is Chalk Talk, but because we were using sticky notes I changed the name. This was where the lesson got interesting, so more on this below.
4. Passed out the syllabus. Depending on how much time remained after the Chalk Talk, I gave all the students a highlighter and told them to read it as a group, but only to highlight three things on the syllabus (individuals within a group could highlight different things). I have always found that there is too much information in my syllabus, but I also have a hard time cutting out information. By forcing the students to choose three things I am letting them pick out what is most important. 
5. If time, discussed the group work from Day 1. 

The first thing I had the students do with the sticky talk was divide the class in half to answer one of two questions silently at their desks on a sticky note:

1. What would school be like if there were no grades? Or...
2. Why is homework graded?

Next, students got up and put their sticky notes on the board or a piece of large chart paper which were at opposite ends of the classroom. For five minutes they read through the ideas of others. Again it is important to note that this was done silently. Students struggled with this because they are hormonal thirteen year olds and because they wanted to talk about the topic. I also chose to participate by asking questions and probing students thinking (although none of my questions or thoughts are in the responses below). Students had the opportunity to write their own questions and connect ideas to one another. After five minutes, students switched sides of the room and looked at the answers and questions their classmates had of the other question. Again, they had the opportunity to ask questions and I left extra sticky notes in case a new thought popped into their heads. 

Here was some of the dialogue about what school would be like if there were no grades. These first two pictures was the most common theme I saw.

     

I like how a student wrote the comment in the marker instead of me. Here were some of the other ideas that cropped up about having no grades in school:

 

Here were some responses to the question about why homework is graded starting with my favorite. 

Yes. I want you working 100% of the time. No sleeping. No texting. No dating. No snacks. No collecting $200. Just homework baby. Here were some more thoughts:

Regrets: The students did not have much room to read responses. By the fifth time of the day that I was doing this, I called students up by their groups of four instead of having twelve at a time. I think I could either have the question in two different parts of the room or just simply make the viewing space wider. That would curtail some of the mischief and foolery that was taking place when we were supposed to be silent.

In talking with my eighth grade math colleague, we both were finding ourselves asking the students what is the purpose of school in follow up discussions or even within the protocol. Students responded in huge numbers that there would be no purpose to school without grades and no sense in doing homework if it was not graded. Yet when we asked what the purpose of school was, students responded by saying it was to learn. Learning is what grades are ultimately supposed to measure. If I were to really zoom in on why the students would be in such an uproar in a school with no grades, what it really comes down to is their desire for feedback. And on that point I can't really argue - that is at the core of what grades are and why we have schools. How our brains are trained to interpret feedback versus grades - especially at the student level is where the traditional education system has lost its meaning.

Glass Half-Full: The rationale behind this entire lesson was that my colleague and I are going away from counting homework as part of the grading process. Originally we thought students would sell themselves on such an idea. And then as we got closer to this day we saw all of the potential resistance that this decision could bring as well.

The research is out there. And there's a lot of it with many contradictions. And there are many opinions too. See the sticky notes above. Not pictured are the parents and caretakers of the people who wrote on the sticky note. Ultimately for us as the teachers it was a matter of weighing grading homework versus not grading homework. The cons of grading homework were too great. It puts stress on families. It strips kids of play and opportunities to do extracurricular activities. It puts students from disadvantaged backgrounds at an even further disadvantage. As the educational consultant Rick Wormeli would have you know, it makes grades less informative since homework is typically graded on subjective measures like effort and completeness and not the standards. It encourages students (even against all warnings) to copy each other, which when founded leads to negative emotions for all stakeholders and when unfounded leads to inaccurate formative assessments. Homework gives kids more of a negative outlook on school. And for the students that would not do homework if it was not graded, they probably were not going to put a whole lot of sweat into it anyway since they were not intrinsically motivated. Not grading homework will save just a little time for the teachers in terms of putting it in the grade book - time that can be spent in the trenches on helping students get better at math. That is the job of a math teacher after all.

Inevitably we are going to run into problems with this system, but after doing this protocal I am more convinced we are taking the correct path. We are still going to give homework in a 2-4-2 format (see Steve Leinwand: Thoughts on Revising How We Assign and Review Homework), so we can still benefit from the positive outcomes that the students listed above. Students that do homework with good intentions will know what to work on, enhance their short term memory, and be more prepared for the test. The adults will become more concerned with the standard than the grade, will have a more accurate formative assessment, and maybe will lose that reputation for wanting to possess the soul of the student 100% of the time.

I wrote way more than I ever intended. Time for a weekend.

Day 2: Baseline Exam

Quote of the Day:

Question of the Day:

Lesson Sequence:

1. I had the students find their seats which were in rows (yesterday they were in groups)
2. Agenda books to write down what supplies we need for class
3. Quote, Star Student, Question of the Day
4. Pass out the materials for the Benchmark
5. Illustrative Mathematics problems about what fractions will be repeating and what will be terminating decimals 

Regrets: The baseline was pulled from all eighth grade standards using released items from the past couple of MCAS tests. As a result the students performance was awful across the board. One of the primary goals of this test though is to show growth and to verify that we will be teaching concepts that the students have not yet learned. Clearly that is the case in this instance.

Glass Half-Full: I had one conversation with a student who was concerned that he did not know virtually any question. In his words it was the worst he had felt about anything he was tested on in the last two years. I asked him why he came to school and he quickly replied to learn. I then said, good this test is the best thing that has happened to you in the last two years because you will be learning this information.

Link of the Day: This Ontario educator has some realistic viewpoints that seem like common sense, but in reality I've heard arguments like this my whole career. Problems such as finding the volume of a triangular prism are not things that 99% of us encounter everyday. Nor is it fair to expect every student to know how many players are in a starting lineup in basketball. I'm glad that America is not alone in the quest toward common sense in education.

Day 1: What Does Good Group Work Look Like?

Quote of the Day: “I’ve noticed an interesting thing. When some star players are interviewed after a game, they say we. They are part of the team and think of themselves that way. When others are interviewed, they say say I and they refer to their teammates as something apart from themselves - as people who are privileged to participate in their greatness.” - Carol Dweck

Question of the Day: What does good group work look and sound like?

Lesson Sequence: Full credit to this lesson really goes to Sara VanDerWerf (definitely worth a follow on Twitter). Here was Sara's original post about what good group work looks and sounds like, which has had some great tweaks put in by other teachers. Here's what I did:

1. I introduced myself. It was the first day of school after all.
2. Discussed the importance of me saying less in order for us to learn more. 
3. Read the quote of the day.
4. Read the question of the day. 
5. Told students to all take out a pencil.
6. Told students to number themselves from 1 to 4. For groups that had three people, I was kind of disappointed because the pattern was harder to find. If possible keep groups in only 2 or 4. That could mean the teacher participates in odd number classes. 
7. I passed out the sheets that are numbered from 1 to 100 (see the linked post above) face down. 
8. I explained the rules for the 1 to 100 sheets. I always stopped in my directions and asked so when we get to number five who will circle that? 
9. The students had three minutes to circle numbers. The engagement could be summed up by many photos that I took. 

1. They discussed their strategy for a couple minutes and I collected and threw out their sheets from round 1. As I took their sheets I made sure they knew what number they had to beat in Round 2. I then passed out the sheets for Round 2 as well as a set of crayons.
2. I instructed students that Round 2 would be the same as Round 1 except now they would be using colored pencils and got each group focused on beating their record from the previous round. 
3. After Round 2, students again discussed strategies and I asked them to look at their sheets as part of this strategy. If groups correctly followed the directions, the pattern could not be missed. Although they did not use the word quadrant so I had to make them swallow that. 
4. We did one more round and students set their records across all classes. 
5. Students wrote an exit ticket that answered our question of the day.  

As the students were circling numbers, I took pictures the first round and then wrote down what I heard in the second round verbatim. The students really enjoyed hearing their exact phrases after the round. 

Regrets: Initially I had students write one thing that demonstrated what good group work looked or sounded like. That led to one word answers. My last two classes I asked for three after I consulted my colleauge about this during lunch. While I still only ended up with three words in some cases, I could also call it a 200% increase. 

Glass Half-Full: This is the first time I have not gone over the procedures and rules in my room on the first day of school. It's also my first day ever teaching eighth grade. I felt as though I needed to change up from the norm because the kids would be bored out of their minds from procedures and protocols all day. In sixth grade they need that sort of thing because the building is brand new, but in eighth grade I thought it was a little harder to do that. 

Despite my "dangerous plunge" we still invested in the future of the classroom and kept the students engaged. We have established norms for group work. The words I kept reading again and again on exit tickets were everyone, help, and teamwork. I also got deeper thoughts such as "Nobody is left out." "No one saying negative things to each other." "Using new ideas learned from our past mistakes."