#sbar rejected

Exploded Model T 

We have a nice discussion started in the comments of my last post about #sbar (standard based assessment) in elective classes. In that post I think I had some difficulty articulating my problems with sbar in my classroom. Most of the comments came from a point of assuming that there needs to be specific standards for my class. I do not share that assumption.  I come from a more open perspective of giving students varied learning opportunities and they learn what they choose to learn.  I think I found an example to explain this that makes sense (at least to me).

This weekend my family went to Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. This is a huge building full of the history and culture of technology in America. It has tons of vehicles, planes, and trains in it along with farm equipment. The amount of history and science in that place is overwhelming.

Now I know how schools sometimes "do" fieldtrips with a scavenger hunt of items to find and write about or some other assignment. That is not how my family does museums. We came to the museum with no pre-determined agenda  about what we would learn.  My family explored the various parts of the museum, looked at the exhibits, and interacted when possible. Interactive items were my kids favorite parts by far, no matter how simple it was. We talked about the exhibits and asked each other questions. I never assessed my children's learning. I just let them experience it. I (lead learner) did steer them toward things I thought were interesting or important and they steered me to the things they wanted to see.

Lin generating electricity

When the day was over I knew they had learned many things because we experienced them together. I felt no desire to give them an A, B+, or C-. They did not earn a 3, 4, or 5 either. The real purpose of grading of any kind is ranking students. Even sbar is ranking students against a list of norms for their age/grade level.

I feel the same way about my applied technology class. My goals for students are for them to problem-solve, think critically, and work collaboratively. These things are difficult to assess objectively. I want students to experience challenges in my classroom and feel free to attack them without worrying about failing attempts. Educators often talk about a "sandbox" space in schools where students can experiment and play. That is how I would ideally describe my classroom. Students, in my humble opinion, get enough standards in their other classes. I give them a freer environment to explore and experiment.

Again I think sbar is a good tool for core classrooms where meeting specific standards is required. But my classroom focuses on doing and experimenting and I believe a failed attempt at solving a problem can be just as important part of learning as success. Grades are not really necessary for any of us to learn.

I am not an assessment

As my regular readers know, I am teaching a 6th grade math class for the first time this year along with my regular technology classes. The biggest change for me is the scripted curriculum and standardized tests. I have a ton of academic freedom in my technology classes compared to most teachers, but my math students have the state standardized tests in the fall, quarterly district assessments, and district standardized tests for each unit we teach.

I am attempting standards based grading practices and some of my students are failing and make very little effort to do anything about it. I started the year off with the goal of helping every one of my students succeed in math and learn to like the subject. Utopian I know but I believe in No Child Left Behind-the concept not the ridiculous law. Well, reality has set in and I find myself stressed about the results-assessments, evaluations, whatever.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/76578669@N00/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauliogeordio/ / CC BY 2.0

Some of my students love math and some hate it. Probably the same kids felt the same way at the start of the year. Lots of my students are successful and some are still grade levels behind in their skills and concepts.

I also find myself discouraged by the direction of education in this country. No, I am not about bashing public schools and United States education. I am discouraged by the political obsession of over-assessment of students and now the move to over-assess teachers with merit pay based on student achievement or just fire a whole school.

It really bothers me when a student performs poorly on a test or assignment (read anything). (yes, I was the student who wanted extra credit if I had an A- and actually read all (most) of the assigned readings in college) I think I take it personal sometimes.I truly want every student to earn an A in my class and enjoy it.

But the stress I feel this year is more personal. Since it is my first year teaching math I feel like if any of my students fail, my administration will see me as not a good math teacher. I truly want to be a great teacher for my students and want every one of them to be ready for 7th grade and be successful in the future, but deep down inside is also this ugliness about their failure making me look bad. It really is about my own insecurities and measuring my value based on results, assessment, pass/fail, whatever.

As is often the case, church put these feeling in perspective this morning. Rob preached (podcast will be here in a few days) about the obscure Bible story of David spilling water that his men had  risked their lives to bring him (II Samuel 23:13-17). David "wasted" the water by dumping it on the ground as an offering to God. David recognized that the water was sacred because of the sacrifice made by his men to obtain it. How did these guys feel watching David refuse to drink this water and instead dump it on the ground. It is easy to feel that efforts are wasted if we only look at the "results."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauliogeordio/ / CC BY 2.0

We are not the sum total of our accomplishments. My value is not a reflection of my ability or lack of ability to inspire every child to be successful. Teachers and students can not be measured by test scores or other formal assessment. Teachers sacrifice for their students daily in hundreds of ways. That is how I would measure how good a teacher is: how do they sacrifice daily for their students.

We can not control the results.
We can not make our students learn anything.
We love. We care. We support.
We teach. We learn with.
We sacrifice daily.
Teaching is sacred.

Politicians, administrators, parents, success, failure, assessments, whatever.

I am a Teacher. I am sacred through my sacrifice.

Iranian Revolution re-mixed

How soon we forget about last year's news. This remix by DJ Spooky AKA That Subliminal Kid AKA Paul Miller tells the story of the Iranian Election and Revolution. Enjoy!



I don't know about you but almost all of my students like hip hop.Why not make this a history project for students to create their own re-mixed video of an era of history? How about a re-mix of a science or math concept or formula with great beats and pics to go with it. I think it would make a great summative assessment instead of a test.

Here is more about DJ Spooky's latest work The Secret Song and how he meshes hip hop, history, and videos for powerful messages. Thanks to Wesley Fryer for pointing me to DJ Spooky's work.

Warning: The grade you have received may not reflect your actual level of learning in this class.

As some of you know this is my first year teaching math. I am currently teaching one section of 6th grade math. The rest of my assignment is 6th, 7th, and 8th grade technology which I have taught for six years. This new math class is the source of my focus on grades and grading. In my district we have standards-based report cards and in math we have district tests for our required assessments. For this post I will focus on my technology class and assessment (I will save math for the next post).

My Technology class flies under the radar. We have standards that reflect what the class was like five years ago but not what it is today. I and my fellow middle school technology teachers use project-based learning and computers to challenge kids with fun and relevant learning. I truly have more freedom than almost any other teacher in my district to teach whatever I want however I want. I am accountable to my principals who are happy to see children "doing" creative things. We build pop bottle rockets, balsa towers, hot air balloons, pneumatic devices, and egg drop vehicles. We use Lego Robotics and some math software games. Starting last year students blogged and use Google Docs. This year we are using programs such as Google Sketchup, Pivot, and Scratch.

I grade of course in Technology because I have to but my grades are either a rubric of checklists or once in a while based on reaching certain levels. So many of my grades reflect effort of students to complete the projects rather than measure learning. I am ok with that I guess.

For example some excellent students attempted some unique balsa tower designs (the picture is one of them) that totally failed when tested. By the way, most of the class voted their towers to be the strongest before we broke them. They did not receive an A but I would argue that they learned and taught the rest of the class more about good design that anyone else. Why, because they took a creative risk and tried something the rest of the class was unwilling to do. We do not have time or $ for materials to have students build multiple towers to improve their designs which would be the best way to show their level of learning.

Even more difficult for me was when my students made their own Pivots, Sketchup, and Scratch program. We created rubrics together as a class and then I made a grading form in Google that the students embedded on their blogs.

How does one grade creativity? What makes my opinion more valid than anyone else's?

Therefore I was just going to count the students' assessments of each other. This did not work out as planned as too many of them did not grade each others' projects because some were completed late and some did not take the rating seriously. Basically I question the whole point of this grading as a waste of my time.

My ideal system would be to share these tools and projects with students and have them complete them as creatively as possible to the best of their ability. Their "reward" would be the learning that they experienced as a class. Would they all learn the same things or even the same amount? No, just like now they would learn based on the amount of thought and effort they put into their work. If they slacked off then they would learn less; if they worked hard then they would learn more.

I really don't know how I can accurately measure their actual learning anyway. Grading feels like a game to me and some of the greatest projects like this and this happened for no grade or extra credit. I fail to see how the "grades" that I assign to them contribute to their learning experience and oftentimes do not adequately reflect their actual learning. I also know that grades do not motivate my at risk kids at all, and they motivate the "top" students just to perform for me not to actually learn.

The ultimate thing that matters to me is that students are challenged, given a chance to be creative, and explore in a hands-on way math, science, and technology. The rewards are internal for the students who give their best. Those who just go through the motions miss out no matter what their report card says.

Next post I will explain the conflict I feel comparing this class and grading to my math class.

The Purpose of Grades

I have been thinking about grades and grading for some time now. An excellent post of questions by Glenn Kenyon got me thinking as did the last #edchat on twitter about assessment. I think every one of Glenn's questions could be an independent post.

I would like to do a series of posts on the various aspects of grades and grading. I would like to approach the subject from an optimistic viewpoint that educators actually can change the purpose and meaning of grades if they so choose. I think articulating an "ideal" scenario helps give us a vision on where to go.

Before I spout off on grades I would like to hear from you. What do you think about grades and grading? Specifically what is their purpose in schools and education? Do grades mean the same thing to teachers, students, and parents? Are they a "necessary evil?" Let me have it!

Master Learning

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chocolategirl64/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

I took a big step in my math class this weekend and started moving toward master learning. We had a geometry test on Friday and had mixed results: a few A's and B's, many C's, and a few D's and E's. I am a bit of a perfectionist and I woke up early Saturday, not able to sleep from the students that failed. So I e-mailed the parents and started a new policy: re-takes for tests.

The rationale behind this is simple for me. I believe in mastery learning. My job is to teach the 6th grade mathematics standards. I really don't care when students learn them. Some of my students "get" it the first day and some of them may not "get" it until after the first test. Why should I punish them because it takes them longer. For a more formal and detailed argument for this approach check out the blogs of Matt Townsley and Becky Goerend who have influenced me a lot on this topic.

So my new policy looks like this (although I still consider it a work in progress): homework will be graded based upon completion, but I am not going to tell students this. I think that will encourage them to give their best effort but not punish them for "mistakes" while learning. Any student who does not do well on a test based upon their self-assessment can re-take a different version of the test after completing further review work and tutoring with me.

This creates more effort for me-new assignments and test have to be created and I will have to find time to re-teach students outside of class, but that is my job and I will make the extra effort to help my students learn.

Will the students make the extra effort to schedule time with me and do extra work? We will see.

Better "homework" practice

I was just venting Friday about how when I teach a new concept in my math class the majority of the students do not seem to be listening very well. When I have them start working on their own problems, too many of them need me to re-teach to them. I enjoy doing this but I find that I run out of class time before I can help them all. So my first solution is to pair them up and have a few of my students that "get" concepts quickly help those that tend to struggle.

Then I found a great resource to help on twitter. That Quiz is a math site (and some geography, science, and vocabulary in English, Spanish, German, and French too) that I learned about from @karlyb. It covers many of our math topics and is designed for teachers to make and give quizzes. My purpose will be a bit different. First of all I can have students select specific problems related to our current unit. But what I like about the site is it immediately gives feedback on whether they got a problem right or wrong. This will serve the same purpose as giving students the answers to their homework ahead of time as recommended by Matt Townsley. The problem I have with just giving them the answers ahead of time is that this unit (area, perimeter, volume, surface area) is so easy that it is really just memorize the formula and plug and chug.

Therefore I can have students practice on this site and they can self-assess the areas that they understand and those where they need help. I think I will be using this site as a review tool from now on. Then I can spend my time helping re-teach the concepts that they tell me they need help on.

Standardization Kills Real Learning

I have not written about my math class much yet because I have been frustrated. My goal was to use the textbook as little as possible and to use authentic learning sources. The reality is that my scope, sequence, standards, and assessments are all mapped out for me with little wiggle room.

My first unit was on factors, multiples, and prime factorization. The more I think about these topics I find them to be quite abstract and separated from the "real world." The best real world example I could come up with was matching up hot dogs, ten in a package, with buns, 8 in a package, for multiples (Thanks to Becky Goerend for that tip on Twitter) to which another teacher responded, "I just let the extra buns rot in the frig."

This kind of example and others like it in the textbook just feel like the contrived story problems that drive students nuts. No one actually takes the time to figure out the right number of hot dogs and buns because nobody wants to buy 40 of them unless they are having a pretty big party!

I could have used multiples today when we bought candy for my son to bring as birthday treats for his class to make sure each student got the same amount. Instead we bought enough for each kid to have one package and we will eat the leftovers :) This is where math becomes too abstract and irrelevant to students because the questions that are asked in the book would never be worried about in the real world.

Although I do not have to use the textbook, each of our ten unit assessments (read tests) are already created for me by the district. I am required to use these tests. So on top of preparing (read teach to the test) students to take the MEAP next week (Michigan's assessment for NCLB) I feel that I have to teach to the test for every unit. I can not make an alternative assessment such as creating a mathcast or some other portfolio type project.

The push in this country to standardize everything in education to guarantee that each student receive an identical education is a fallacy and just plain ridiculous. It is time for the pendulum to swing back to professional teaching that is creative and individualized. We need to trust teachers to teach the right content at the right time for each student instead of trying to teach everybody as if they are in the same place at the same time. We need to start treating students as humans who are naturally curious, intelligent, and motivated by authentic learning experiences instead of as lab rats.

I am tired of hearing about how we are behind all of these other nations based on some test. The United States is still the creative center of the world. Last time I check the elite of the world stil come to our universities. This will eventually change if we continue down this overkill of standards and cookie cutter assessments that kill curiosity and creativity in our kids.

Math History and Pre-tests

On Friday I had my students write their "math history" and then take a pre-test on factors and multiples. I know this is probably not revolutionary to many of you, but it was new for me and I am very happy with the results.

First I had my students tell me their "math history." I got the idea from Glenn Kenyon's blog. I just had them write one paragraph of how they did in math class in elementary school and how they feel about math as a subject. They were very honest about their past performance and grades. Many really like math and say that they are good at it. A few others have struggled and not surprisingly do not like math very much. None of them sounded like they have given up though, and were hopeful that they could be successful this year.

The pre-test was simply 7 questions covering the basic topics of our unit: prime and composite numbers, factors, multiples, LCM, GCF, and prime factorization. We did not review anything ahead of time so it was cold turkey. I could now compare my students self-assessment of their math abilities with their knowledge on our first unit. Most of their abilities matched what they said about themselves.

I also found out the overall strengths and weaknesses of the class. They did best on primes, composites, and factors. Some did not know multiples and only one student got the correct LCM of 4 and 5 being 20.

Based on their self-assessment and pre-test I know now where to spend my focus in this unit. Furthermore I have a good starting point of their math abilities whereas beforehand I had no clue of their level. I am now able to divide them into pairs for this week by their abilities.

I highly recommend both of these strategies to start a new class or new unit.

Students say using technology to cheat is not cheating

E-school News reports today:

A new poll conducted by the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media suggests that students are using cell phones and the Internet to cheat on school exams. What's surprising, however, is not just the alarming number of students who say they cheat, but also the number of students who think it's OK to do so.

According to the poll, more than a third of teens with cell phones (35 percent) admit to cheating at least once with them, and two-thirds of all teens (65 percent) say others in their school cheat with them.

Of the teens who admit to cheating with their cell phones, 26 percent say they store information on their phone to look at during a test, 25 percent text friends about answers during a test, 17 percent take pictures of the test to send to friends, and 20 percent search the Internet for answers during tests using their phones. Also, nearly half (48 percent) of teens with cell phones call or text their friends to warn them about pop quizzes.

First of all, where are the teachers in the classroom administering the tests? I think cheating is not that easy if teachers are paying attention while they administer tests. Surely you would notice if they have out an electronic device. Some readers are quick to blame the technology and say "why are phones in school" and that they should be banned. Cheating has been around for ages before we had cell phones. Don't blame phones for students behavior. Cell phones have a very useful place in the classroom as mini-computers that can be used for research.Reading a text message is not that much different than reading a note. Teachers watching for phones out during a test is no different than watching to see if they have a "cheat sheet" on a piece of paper.


More importantly teachers should re-evaluate their tests. If tests are really at high-level thinking requiring analysis, evaluation, synthesis, and application then they should be "cheat-proof." It is much easier to cheat on multiple choice or fill in the blank than on a test that actually requires thinking, interpreting, and students writing their own opinion. I agree with Alan November who said that tests should be open Internet. But it requires a new way of thinking for teachers and students. This open test would actually be more difficult because it would require higher level thinking rather than just rote memorization. Students would have access to all of the "facts" on the Internet, but then would have to use them to answer a more difficult level of questioning.

I personally lean toward no traditional tests, but use projects, blogs, and other forms of writing to assess student learning. For example after my students build and launch hot air balloons made of tissue paper, they must write a letter to Leon Gambetta explaining to him how to escape from a siege of Paris (1870). In the letter they must explain how to build a hot air balloon and why they fly. My 8th grade students write evaluations of all of their projects on their blog explaining their experiences for each project. Of course if it was up to me I would eliminate grades all together but that is another discussion.

Finally also disturbing to me is that students do not view this as cheating. Morals are in decline in our country and many students will do whatever it takes to get ahead just to get a good grade. I often ask ethical questions as "opening" writing assignments to students and many of them see little wrong with cheating, stealing, or lying if they think that they will not get caught. Many students admit they would take a stolen ipod from a friend or lie to get out of trouble and see nothing wrong with it. Therefore we need to teach students why cheating is wrong on top of monitoring them from doing it.

In summary, authentic learning experiences with authentic assessments with open resources makes cheating impossible. So what do you think?