Is SBG possible in your school system?

It's been a while between posts - life of the first year teacher is certainly proving to be hard work and sleep deprivation effects are beginning to kick in. Unfortunately, I think SBG is making it even more work - but I'm hoping it will pay off for my students, and that it will get easier when I teach the same topics next year. Before I write about my initial experience of SBG, I want to discuss the first challenge I faced: would it be possible, or even permitted, for me to try out SBG?

So, is SBG possible in my school system? Unfortunately the short answer is SBG options are limited in the NSW (Australia) secondary school system. Two key factors act as brakes on implementing SBG: state mandated assessment protocols and linked assessment across classes. I suspect teachers across many different school systems will be facing similar challenges.

State mandated assessment protocols block alternative approaches

The assessment process for senior years (Stage 6 Prelim/HSC courses) is strictly defined by the NSW Board of Studies, mandating a fixed number of summative assessments over a two year period.

While there is flexibility in the nature of the assessment, this specification precludes an SBG-style "continuous assessment with retry attempts permitted" approach. Similarly, for the Year 10 School Certificate course, assessment procedures are clearly defined. So for Year 10, 11 and 12 classes in my state jurisdiction, SBG really isn't an option if you want SBG to actually play a component in determining student grades (which is the whole point!). Fight the battles you can win - and this isn't one of them!

Linked assessment across classes makes change harder

What about junior secondary school years?  Despite the intent of the syllabus designers, every school I have seen has implemented the NSW Board of Studies mathematics syllabus "three pathways design" as three separate ability graded "Standard, Intermediate, Advanced" streams.  By Year 9, when the pathways design really affects lesson programming, mathematics faculties align their classes to a pathway and then quite reasonably use a common assessment protocol for each pathway.

The net effect is to create groups of assessment linked classes - ruling out a change to assessment procedure unless it is done for all classes in the same group. So that rules out going solo on SBG with my Year 9 class because it would be impossible to equate my grades with those of other Year 9 classes doing the same syllabus pathway.

Room at the bottom!

Which leaves Year 7 and 8. Fortunately at my school, each Year 7 and Year 8 class is assessed separately. While common tests are used, student grades are not linked - students are not ranked across the year group - so each teacher can implement their own assessment process. Which means I have the option to try out SBG with these classes. Since I'm new and green - the sane approach is to try with only one class - and with the support of my Head Teacher, Year 8 was my choice for SBG.

Should you abandon testing?

So can I forget about tests and do SBG as I wish with my Year 8? No - not really. These students will still have to do a grading test at the end of the year to determine their Year 9 syllabus pathway - and it would be irresponsible of me not to prepare them for it. Also - since I am new, and SBG is new - I do want a barometer to tell me how we are travelling - so I've decided to keep the topic tests for Year 8. My compromise is to reduce the test grade value compared to the SBG grade value. My students will hopefully get the benefits of SBG, while the adults who want test results can look at those. I'm kind of trying to have my cake and eat it too: have the benefits of SBG while still conditioning the class to tests and generating data so I can measure the effectiveness of the SBG approach.

It's interesting to observe how a few key syllabus and assessment rules at the top of the system - even just in the final years, percolate all the way down to the early years. And where do those rules come from? That's another story...

What barriers have you encountered as you consider changing assessment methods for your class? Were you able to find a way to makes changes? In my next post I will describe the initial SBG experiences in my Year 8 class, and then consider some of the politics of introducing SBG.

Where did that elephant come from?

And I swear I did not discuss the Mathematical Elephant with my class....

Putting student voice into practice

Something I find incredibly valuable for my teaching practice is to regularly seek anonymous student appraisal of my teaching.

Student Survey Form - download available

Asking students to critique your teaching is scary - and doubly so when you are a new teacher - or worse - a student teacher! On my first practicum, I only dared survey my senior students - but very soon I realised just how valuable the exercise was, I threw caution to the wind and even did it with my most junior and most challenging classes. I have never regretted this decision.  

For maximum impact, present the results to your class the very next lesson -
 and make sure there are some good critical suggestions on display
 - don't be afraid to show you are still learning!

Some important things I've learnt over the last two years about student surveys:

• Emphasise the survey is anonymous and you want to receive honest feedback - "if you're not happy or concerned about the class or my teaching, this is a great time to tell me".
• Keep repeating "Don't write your name" while the students are doing the survey - it's a strong instinct. Some students may actually want to be identified and put little identifying marks on their paper - discourage this, otherwise you only hear the nice feedback.
• Get a student to collect the folded forms, ask them to mix them up before giving to you. Make a bit of show of this - to emphasise you cannot track back the students. Do not leave forms on desk for others to read.
• Aggregate the feedback and make sure it contains genuine criticism and suggestions for improvement.
• Share the aggregated results with the class the NEXT lesson - they really appreciate it - especially if you share critical comments and discuss what you learned. Students are usually stunned to see a teacher discuss critical comments about their teaching - it's a special moment - enjoy it.
• Don't show the individual forms to anyone - sometimes students say unkind things about other teachers or say things that may look like you are ego-tripping  - shred the forms immediately after collating data. Only share the aggregated data.

What's missing? It's important to be aware this information  is student self-reported views on what they have learnt. To complete the picture, you also need to assess what they understood - and that's where a regular dose of diagnostic quizzes - perhaps aligned to an SBG strategy - come in.  Something I've not done before - and will try - is to see how the overall student perceived understanding compares to the overall student outcomes!

By seeking student views and acting on them, we demonstrate to students through our actions that learning is a continuous process - even for the teacher.

Update [April 2011] Student Feedback in action:  See how feedback from my Year 7 class gave me valuable information about the need to offer greater differentiation and forced me to consider if I was perhaps treating them like children instead of young adults.

Update [Dec 2011] Student Opt-In  The student feedback template has been updated to add an "opt-in" box to allow students to give permission (or not) for you to share their anonymous comments with others. Since I advocate sharing the feedback with the class it's right and proper to get consent - even if the form is anonymous. Sometimes the comments are personal and students would be uncomfortable for them to be shared.

Mr Zuber's Student Feedback Kit

Step 1. Copy the student feedback template. The template is two forms per A4 sheet - just photocopy enough for the class and guillotine in half.  This takes 15 mins. Less if you are already at the photocopier.

Step 2. Explain to the students what you are doing - emphasise the survey is anonymous and you are genuinely interested in their views. 5 min conversation the first time you do it. 2 mins the second time.

Step 3. Give students time to fill out the form.  They are usually done in 5 mins. 

Step 4. Have a student collect the folded forms, shuffle them and give to you.  5 mins.

Step 5. Collate the data using the Student Feedback Excel template - tally in the scores, summarise the comments.  The Excel template makes charts ready for presentation.  30 mins max for a whole class once you know how.

Step 6. Present the data back to the class ASAP. I normally post on edmodo the same night, then display the charts on a data projector to the class the next day - with  short discussion of what I learned, and see what the class thinks of any new ideas I might have as a result of the survey. 15 mins

Rinse and repeat once every three to fours months.

Flying to Ancient Egypt with Year 7

A funny thing happened on the way to starting the new school year with my Year 7(*) students - we ended up on the plane to Egypt.

We had spent our first lessons getting to know each other, looking at what the student survey showed us (two students have the same birthday, we have lots of dogs and cats, 3 left handers and 24% of class doesn't like maths) and working out our class rules. Now we were ready to start the official maths syllabus - exploring number systems. I was looking for a way to start the maths, while reinforcing our class formation ideas, and also helping reduce the anxieties of the 24%. And then it hit me as I waved goodbye to the class the other day saying "tomorrow we're going to Egypt!".  Here's how it turned out....

I lined the students up outside, telling them we were about to board an airplane to go to Egypt. A few students looked at me like I was a suffering from the heat.  "Nice straight lines please! Boarding is about to commence. When you go inside, check the board at the front for your seat allocation". This was only the second day with a seating plan - so it was nice reminder.

   

What the students saw when they came in - a map showing where to sit
(student names obscured)

As one student came in, she remarked "I thought I was going to Room 213 - not an airplane!". That's when I realised we were actually Qantas flight 213.  Several seats were empty - it's their first week at the school, so some were wandering lost outside in the playground. On impulse I leaned out the window and yelled to them "Calling all passengers to QF213 to Egypt" (praying the principal wouldn't walk by). The class got into the hang of the game quickly.  "Is that where we are going?" they said - pointing at the background image of an Egyptian ruined temple on the screen.  I don't quite know what made me do it, but I grabbed the hand sanitiser bottle from my desk and walked down the aisles - dispensing to every student - I apologised there would be no in-flight meals. Silly - but got us in the mood! A few students even told me to close the classroom door - otherwise the plane would crash.

"OK - so what do we need to go to Egypt?". A few suggestions were offered - and I nudged us to something I had prepared earlier:

We need a PASSPORT.

And our passport is our class rules - at which point I brought back the brainstorm diagram we had done the previous lesson - then overlaid with my formalised summary.

We need a GUIDE BOOK.

And our guidebook is our maths textbook. We took a diversion to issue textbooks.

Hmm - could go a long way exploring this metaphor. Most importantly : the book is not the country!

And we need a TRAVEL DIARY to record our journey. Well - that's our exercise book.

I used this segment to show an exemplar of good book work (Thanks to Simon Job)

And while we were doing all those preparations - our plane landed in Egypt! 

Then all we had to do was roll back the clock ..... 

Illustration (right) via http://www.eyelid.co.uk/ 

... and now we're ready to look at the wonderful world of hieroglyphs. We were making good progress, so we had time to look at the Rosetta Stone and how it was decoded (now that could be extended to a great discussion on mathematical problem solving!) - and then - just about the time one student cried out "But sir, this isn't maths!" - we discovered the novelty of the Egyptian numbering system.

via http://www.eyelid.co.uk/ 

The students spent the rest of the lesson working out Egyptian numbers - I encouraged them to copy out the number problems in hieroglyphs form for as long as they wanted.  Some got it faster than others - I asked students to help their neighbour work it out if they hadn't yet. Over the next ten minutes of working (mostly) quietly, several students remarked:

"Sir - this is very tiring writing out long long numbers like this" 

"This is silly - they don't care about the order of the numbers at all!" 

"This is like doing tally marks"

Which was exactly the point! Couldn't have said it better myself. We shared the findings with the whole class - and they will be the starting point for the next lesson - before we redirect flight QF213 to Ancient ROME!

I'm hoping the 24% in my class who don't like maths just maybe will give it another chance!

Resources:
Mark Millmores Discovering Ancient Egypt website is a treasure trove of resources. Includes maths puzzles and free wallpapers. Reasonably priced applications to generate maths worksheets using Ancient Egyptian numbers.

The 1893 paper by E.A.W. Budge "The Rosetta Stone" is an excellent explanation of the techniques used to decode Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.


(*) Year 7 students have just arrived from primary (elementary) school - it's their first week in the "big" school. Our Australian high school is like a combined middle and high school in the USA.

Standards Based Grading meets Marzano

Robert Marzano has been reviewing education research for decades and summarised his findings in a practical and concise teacher guide "The Art and Science of Teaching". (Marzano, 2007). So let's put our Standard Based Grading [SBG] hat on, and consider the key ideas from Marzano's first chapter, which asks the question:  "What will I do to establish and communicate learning goals, track student progress and celebrate success?"

The following ideas read almost straight out of the SBG credo:

Distinguish between learning goals and learning activities : It's important not to confuse learning goals with learning activities. A learning goal typically is stated in the form "Students will understand ____________ and be able to ____________".   Following Marzano, it is best practice to build our SBG standards on goals - not activities.  (Action Step#1, p. 17)

Write a rubric or scale for each learning goal: Marzano recommends a finely grained scale be defined for each learning goal. While he says a simple one is sufficient, which appears to be the way most SBG teachers are working, a finely grained scale provides more value. I'm not sure though if this is feasible when there are many standards for a topic - it may well overload the student and the teacher. (Action Step#2, p.19)

Assess students using a formative approach: Don't wait until the end of the unit - assess as you go. Yep - that's SBG. (Action Step#4, p.24)

Have students chart their progress on each learning goal: Well if this doesn't just scream SBG at you, I don't know what does. Marzano emphasises the importance of students evaluating their progress on each goal, as well as setting achievement targets and strategies. An implied caution for teachers using automated software for their SBG tracking is to ensure students engage with the data in a meaningful way - there is a risk the student could just look at a pre-generated graph and move on.  Marzano provides a proforma how a student can extend their chart into an active learning plan. (Action Step#5, p25)

Recognise and celebrate growth: Use the feedback about progress in SBG goals to show student growth - not just absolute achievements. (Action Step#6)

Marzano also offers a suggestion which can be used to extend SBG:

Have students identify their own learning goals: I love this idea! Extend the standards to allow each student to set an additional personal learning goal for what interests them, or what they would like to achieve for the current topic. While tracking student progress for their unique goal may add complexity, it seems like a valuable idea. A suggestion for those using Active Grade or some other automated system (Excel anyone?): make a standard called "Student Selected Standard" which can be marked off for all students - then a separate table somewhere to record what those selections were and how the student and teacher agreed it would be assessed. What a powerful meta-cognitive strategy! (Action Step#3, p.23) 

All up - SBG as currently formulated matches 5 out of 6 of Marzano's recommendations in his first chapter, indeed Action Step#5 is arguably a prescription for SBG. Marzano is highly influential in the US education scene (and beyond) - so if people are asking you "Why are you doing SBG? Where is your evidence?" point them at Marzano's work and make the links to SBG. (Bonus: Amazon has the book on sale for $10.11!)

In concluding this tour of four different approaches to effective teaching, it is remarkable to observe all four approaches recommend similar, or at least complementary, strategies - many of which are at the core of the SBG idea. The Circle of Courage shows how SBG can contribute to psychosocial growth through mastery and independence, while providing opportunities to develop a sense of belonging and to practice generosity. Andrew Martin's work shows us how SBG can help build academic resilience and combat fear of failure by demonstrating to students how effort, strategy and attitude are the basis for improved performance and mastery. John Hattie's Visible Learning shows how the feedback provided by SBG can be used as a powerful tool for improving teaching practice - that SBG is as much a tool for transforming teaching as it is for transforming learning. And finally, Marzano reaffirms we are on the right track, and suggests extending our standards to include student selected standards.

A closing thought from Marzano about evidence:

It is certainly true that research provides us with a guidance as to the nature of effective teaching, and yet I strongly believe that there is not (nor will there ever be) a formula for effective teaching. [...] The best research can do is tell us which strategies have a good chance (i.e. high probability) of working well with students. Individual classroom teachers must determine which strategies to employ with the right students at the right time. In effect, a good part of effective teaching is an art. (pp. 4-5)

Where is the evidence for SBG? All around us!

Standard Based Grading : Show me the evidence!

One of my university tutors, Dr Nigel Goodwin, would regularly have us recite a catechism whenever we discussed ideas in education:

Show me the evidence!

And what is our currency for measuring the evidence? [yell it!]... 

Improved student outcomes! 

Forget the talk, the opinions, the fads: show me the evidence of improved student outcome. Careful though -  this does not mean just using standardised test scores based on the 3R's! We mean peer-reviewed evidence that we can have confidence in.

In looking for evidence relating to SBG as currently formulated and being trialled by science and maths teachers, part of the challenge is the newness of this formulation. So as a proxy for evidence about SBG, I'm looking at evidence of effective teaching practice and seeing if there are connections to SBG.  And when it comes to evidence, there is a special place in evidence heaven for John Hattie.

Hattie is famous for his meta-analyses - a technique that allowed him to review student outcome data for 80 million students, as reported in 50,000 peer reviewed studies. Using the concept of effect size, Hattie produced a list to answer the question ‘What has the greatest influence on student learning?'. Even more helpful than just presenting data, in his book Visible Learning (Hattie, 2009) synthesises these results into an explanatory theory.

John Hattie's Visible Learning in a nutshell:

Visible teaching and learning occurs when learning is the explicit goal, when it is appropriately challenging, when the teacher and student both seek to ascertain whether and to what degree the challenging goal is attained, when there is deliberate practice aimed at attaining mastery of the goal, when there is feedback given and sought, when there are active, passionate and engaging people (teacher, student, peers) participating in the act of learning. It is teachers seeing learning through the eyes of students, and students seeing teaching as the key to their ongoing learning. The remarkable feature of the evidence is that the biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching, and when students becomes their own teachers. When students become their own teachers they exhibit the self-regulatory attributes that seem most desirable for learning (self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-assessment, self-teaching). (Hattie, 2009, p22)

How does this relate to SBG? And how might it suggest we extend our thinking about SBG? Some of the more obvious connections are worth stating:

Explicit goals: SBG is all about explicit goals.

Appropriately challenging goals: SBG allows teachers and students to decide - based on previous results and current  intentions, what an appropriate goal for each standard is. They aren't pie-in-the-sky goals, they don't relate to abstract numerical grades - they are focused "I would like to get Proficient in "Can factorise a quadratic"" - and they allow us to agree that perhaps this student should aim for Expert, not Proficient.

Deliberate practice ... : SBG allows us to make the link between focused effort and mastery. A caution we need to bear in mind with SBG is that by allowing students to sense "I'm done - I've mastered that skill" - we may undermine deliberate practice. Is this any riskier than traditional grading practices? Probably not - but it's something to consider. How can we use our new SBG tool to encourage ongoing, deliberate practice?

... focused on mastery learning :  Yep - that's SBG!

Feedback is given and sought : The major strength of SBG. As we implement SBG, it's important we encourage students to actively engage with the feedback provided by SBG. (Effect size: 0.73 - 1,287 studies).  And even more importantly, that we respond to the feedback. Hattie writes

 "it is only when I discovered that feedback was most powerful when it is from student to teacher that I started to understand it better. When teachers seek ... feedback from students as to what students know, what they understand, where they make errors ... then teaching and learning can be synchronised and powerful. Feedback to teachers makes learning visible" (p.173).

So the most powerful feature of SBG may well relate to Hattie's observation that the biggest effects on student learning occur "when teachers become learners of their own teaching" (p.22)  In other words - if we have the perspective that SBG is a tool that allows us to continuously evaluate to our teaching - we transform SBG from just being another grading system into a powerful tool for monitoring and adapting our teaching.

So rather than "Hmm.. Johnny still hasn't reach proficiency on 'solving right triangles for the hypotenuse - what can he do?" we say "Hmm.. I taught this concept to Johnny for three lessons - what can I change?". And that's where the money comes in!

With apologies to "Jerry Maguire"

Next in this series: looking at the work of Robert Marzano. The evidence considered in this post relates to student outcomes - for an SBG perspective on student motivation and engagement see the earlier post looking at the work of Andrew Martin.   SBG is also considered in relation to a developmental framework called The Circle of Courage.

Standard Based Grading : helping eliminate academic fear and failure

Following from the discussion SBG and the Circle of Courage,  I would like to consider SBG in relation to the work of Andrew Martin - a leading education psychology  researcher on student motivation and engagement.   Here's my interpretation in stick figures (with apologies!!) of Andrew Martin's most recent book Building Classroom Success: eliminating academic fear and failure.  While the book doesn't have stick figures, it's extremely well written and a great asset for teachers.

Students build a view of themselves that works like this:

As a consequence, students build many clever but often maladaptive behavours to protect their self-esteem. So for example: I only got 20% because last night I was playing games on the internet instead of studying - but really I could do it if I wanted to - it's not about my competence. In fact, the student is terrified they will fail, and so to protect their self-esteem, they make sure they play that game all night. We need to help students break the tight linkage they make between performance, competence and self esteem:

and instead help students see the role that effort, strategy and attitude play:


Observe also that knowledge and skills are identified as distinct from competence. They are developed through effort, strategy and attitude - and these are all factors the student can control.  We then extend the view to show that failure is not a direct link to competence; that competence can be developed; and that self-esteem can be built on more than just competence:

Andrew Martin goes on to encourage us to help students focus on mastery of the subject, rather than dwelling on performance compared to other students, and to show how effort, strategy and attitude will help gain mastery. Most importantly: to show students that these factors are actually under their control.

So where does Standards Based Grading [SBG] fit in this model?  Let me count the ways ... here are just a few:

Most importantly, SBG smashes the simplistic correlation of performance to competence. Instead of providing a single figure "you passed, you failed" therefore "you are smart, you are not smart", it highlights individual elements of knowledge and skills the student has mastered and has not mastered.  So long as we have the discussion carefully, we never impune the student's competence: we have a discussion about what they know, not how smart they are.  And note this works for the advanced student as well as the less successful student: they don't get "87% great!", they get "you understood this, now lets focus on these...".

SBG helps show students that performance depends on prior mastery : Academic success doesn't just happen because you are smart - it's built on successfully mastering earlier work. SBG makes this very clear - because mastery of previous knowledge is explicitly recorded and tracked.

SBG helps turn failure into feedback for future growth : When students encounter failure in assessment, big or small, they get specific information on where and how they might improve.

SBG provides a mechanism for having the discussion about effort, strategy and attitude : A concept that has come through strongly in the SBG discussion is that before students can ask to be reassessed on a standard, they have to actually do something to help master it, and demonstrate this effort, before we offer them the choice for reassessment.

SBG allows us to customise appropriate success goals for each student: For each student we can help them define mastery goals to extend them from where they currently are. We can also help them track improvement and personal bests, building their self-esteem in the process.

The take home message? SBG as it's being discussed in the blogsphere seems well aligned to best practices recommended by leading ed psych research for maximising academic success. Andrew Martin's work suggests we need extend the SBG process to look carefully at the "what happens next?" question: once we have determined where the student is at for each skill on the SBG chart, what sort of discussion do we have with the student? What can we do to support increased effort, appropriate strategy and positive attitude as the student prepares to either reassess a standard, or move to the next set of standards?  It seems we need to think carefully with the student which of these elements will benefit from further attention - and then help them find ways to progress.