If They're Succeeding Why Do I Feel Bad?

Tomorrow morning is quarter grading period time.   All information must be posted by 8:30 am so it can go out to parents, and interested students.  I always find myself waiting until the last night to enter in those final grades, reluctant to finalize the process we've attempted in the last 9 weeks with a grade.  My rationale?  In the end, most of your grade will be represented by that little 'dash' that forms the spaces between the moment you were born and the moment you moved on beyond this life.

I hate grading. Honestly, I don't let kids go on until they show me competence in an area.  They must, for example, be able to show me mastery of vectors in more than one way, explaining the concept using scaling of golf courses, personal discussion, and Google forms.   And they must do a great deal of personal reflection on their tasks, which I grade for understanding.  The projects are the main part of the grade, and the assessments at the end are to make certain that they have been successful.  If they have not been successful, I pull them out, and reteach, and let them retake the test.. That means that I pull them out DURING my class, usually, and then work one-on-one with them.  And then I give them the score they earn on the retest.  Then I give them an alternative way to make up the project work, which includes setting up the lab, for example, at home and then bringing in their data, or their edible race car, or whatever it is.

So if I fast-forward to the end of the semester, I have kids who 'normally' get Cs and Ds but who have worked hard for me and have scored As and Bs.  And if they retested and 'got it', so what if I don't have low scores? But when I post grades, that nagging self-doubt of argument works like this:

"Is learning about trying to weed out the As from the lower levels, or is it about checking to see for their understandings?  Am I giving out As because I believe in their competence?  What does an A mean, anyway?"


The content I teach kids is deep and focused on the essential concepts found in the Iowa Core.   The ideas I want my kids to have are based first in relevancy, grounded in project-based learning, and evidenced through daily work, collaboration, and honest dialogue.  It should be designed to help kids to think about their thinking as well as helping them to succeed.

If what I am doing is right, most kids SHOULD be succeeding at an A level, at least in a definition where A translates from competency.  I should be reveling in the idea that my kids know what is expected, I work with them to get it, and I check for their understanding.  But not many people do it this way. Perhaps that bothers me most of all.

And that question haunts me:   Am I doing it right?

Plan B: The Google Form

My students' needs are evolving, and one of the things that I have found is this:  not all of my kids appreciate uploading assignments through Moodle   Honestly, many of them would rather have a tooth pulled, and so I have gone to Plan B:  the Google Form.  They can cut and paste their work and quickly enter things in.  I can take a look at the form and easily see the problems, the answers, and the misconceptions.   This seems to me to be a win-win, as I have created a mini-database of questions and answers without entering a plethora of data responses.

As I reflected on this in my physics classes, I began a new experiment.   A requirement of my class is now a Google account.   Assignments, graphs, and logger pro data forms are uploaded and shared with me for assignment credit.   My biggest challenge is simply sorting the data into the right folder in my documents.

This process does not allow the deep, rich discussion present in an online forum, but it does have advantages.  For example, I am able to share the entire data set with my students and have in-class discussion that is focused solely on the data reported, or the metacognition that students share with me.

In this example, I have the following form:

Here are some of the comments to be shared with my kids as we prepare for group discussion in my face-to-face or reflective time (perhaps this could be used as a backchannel prompt?):

What kind of a discussion would this lead to in your classroom?

Self-Differentiation Project on Stellar Evolution

My students often self-differentiate, adapting their skill sets and their interests to share their knowledge.   This is a one day project that my upper level astronomy students completed on stellar life cycles.  They were given three options for showing me their understandings, and many ideas resulted.

One thing I noticed was that these kids need some copyright attribution work.  Pictures, and music, are subject to copyright, a fact which many of them seem to have missed.  So while I am comfortable with the work, I see a chance to improve my craft, and that of my students.



Toon Doo

carnahan

The Stellar Evolution of Sonny by carnahan | Make your own at www.toondoo.com

Shared Google Docs https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddmzdjgh_30hhnthkdd

PowerPoint 

VREP Blender Movie 

Creative Writing


How do you differentiate in your classroom without a lot of stress?   I'm thrilled to see ideas AND hear about teaching kids responsible copyright use.