Learning Portfolios and SBG

In my first three years of teaching I have done a gradual move towards giving better feedback and more active learning experiences. At the same time, I’m getting better at meeting student needs, and this is one area that I want to focus on in the coming year.

What’s Working I think that my grading scheme using SBG has been positive. The aspects that I like and that I get good feedback on include the following: kids get the feeling that they are not collecting marks, and know that they need to focus on learning; if a student has problems with a topic, they know they can still improve without punishment from previous attempts; the learning objectives are really clear; students for the most part appreciate the opportunity to try and figure out stuff on their own. I didn’t have kids take notes this year, nor did we do guided notes. I think that freed up a lot of time and in general it was very positive.

What I Need to Improve On Grade 8 math was fun last year, and I gave my classes a good amount of PBL opportunities and group activities to use to progress through different topics. However, one thing that I could do better would be to tie it all together. Or even better – get the students to tie it all together. While we were using Big Ideas and Essential Questions, I didn’t scaffold or support a specific way for the students to summarize the units. We did use journals, and it was moderately successful in getting the students to reflect on certain things. Another big area of needed improvement is to better recognize and assess what it means to get an A. I’ve relied on quizzing and testing for grades, for the most part, but I need to improve the method for showing mastery of a topic and understanding.

The Plan SBG So here is my general plan for SBG and student notes for the coming year. For the past two years I’ve used a 3 point scale with SBG: Apprentice (lots of problems and misundertstandings), Junior (generally get it with some mistakes or small misunderstandings) and Master (get it with no mistakes). This works very well for two reasons. First, students can easily find where they are on the scale and there is little debate about it. Secondly, it reinforces the idea that the goal is to “master” something. We aren’t super interested in distinguishing different levels of “not getting it” in terms of a grade. However, this year I will somewhat reluctantly be moving back to a 4 point scale. The only reason I want to do this is to create a method of assessing high order Transfer Tasks. The 4 point scale will be something like this: 1: lots of mistakes or significant misunderstandings 2: some understandings and skills shown, but concepts are not fully developed 3: concepts and skills are understood. Some small errors or mistakes 4: mastered with no mistakes or misunderstandings.

How to Get an A Each unit will have one objective which will basically be, “I can apply knowledge and understandings to a new task or problem which requires a solution that has not been practiced.” In order to attempt this learning objective, the student needs to be at a level 3 or 4 in the other LO for the unit. The reason for the 1-4 levels is to separate the 2’s and 3’s.

If I were to use last years scheme with only 1 level in the middle (Junior) there would not be enough granularity. Too many Juniors wouldn’t be ready for the transfer task, while there would be some Juniors that would be ready. I originally thought that I would allow only Masters to do the transfer task, but in reality there are kids that can do higher-order problem solving without fully mastering simpler problems (usually through carelessness I think).

Mastering the transfer tasks will be the key for students to get an A.

Learning Portfolios In the past I’ve had students grade their own work along with tracking their grades. Everything, including all the quizzes and tests, were kept in duotangs which we called “learning portfolios”. I will continue with this, although I think I will not have the students keep their quizzes in learning portfolios. However, I plan to include a new aspect to the learning portfolios, based on the idea of interactive notebooks.

I don’t know a lot about interactive notebooks, but I think the concept can help my students with the idea of summarizing their learning. The idea is that each student will have a learning portfolio that contains unit plans with enduring understandings and essential questions, learning objectives progress charts, SGB reports, and learning logs. These are all things that we used last year, but not necessarily in a cohesive manner. The interactive notebook idea is to incorporate some ways for students to summarize their daily learning at the end of the lesion. It would sort of be like journaling but include some formats and guidance in what they record.

To help with the learning logs/interactive notebooks, I’m hoping to get the book “Teaching Science with Interactive Notebooks” by Kellie Marcarelli. http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Science-With-Interactive-Notebooks/dp/1412954037 I’m a bit hesitant to buy the book though, since I think I just need a quick glance through it for ideas. I’ve seen interactive notebooks used in math classes, I found most of the ideas to be a bit gimmicky. However, if I can find just a few clever or concise tools for kids to use for their learning logs, it would be worth it. The closest library I’ve found that carries the book is the University of the Fraser Valley. I can get a library card for their library, but it’s a bit out of the way…

The idea of the learning log would be to include some prompts for kids to methodically summarize what they did for the day, what problems or successes they’ve had, and what things they did to work on or get help with. The learning portfolios would then be a tool that is in the class every day, which links what they’re doing (summeries), why they’re doing it (EU and EQs), and how’s it going. Again, I’ve done this kind of thing before but I’d like the process to be formalized and regimented a bit better. This will require me to include 10 minutes at the end of each class for students to record their thoughts. Things like notes, textbooks and handouts would be separate resources that the students use for reference and information.

I still need to flesh out lots of details for this scheme, but the above should form the foundation of a good working plan moving forward.