Next year is my last year of having an instructional coach so I really want to get all of my big ideas out there on the table by next year so that I have some kind of help and guidance when things go wrong.
I am always thinking about SBG and how I can make it work. I re-read my last post on SBG, which was almost a year ago. I think that might now be possible. My math teacher counterpart is leaving after this year and I'm thinking the administration might consider hiring the current student teacher. If so, it will be their first year and so far they seem really...'moldable'. And I think any first year teacher would love to have another teacher give them resources, ideas, and collaboration. If this is true, we might be on the same page with SBG and so on!
Anyway, my brainstorm is this. My number one struggle with SBG has been not assessing everything I teach. In my mind, I feel like if I'm teaching it, why wouldn't I assess it? Now I'm thinking that I just need to cluster. Concepts build on top of each other toward an ultimate goal. If I only assess that ultimate goal, then it requires knowing the concepts that build up to that goal without assessing every little thing individually. I would call this ultimate goal a performance event and use a rubric idea to grade it. A perfect score would be getting every skill correct. Otherwise, each skill would move you one step higher on the rubric.
Here's my example based on a mini-unit of solving systems of linear inequalities. The ultimate goal of the unit would be to graph a system of inequalities from a word problem.
Skill 1: Write a system of inequalities from a word problem.
Skill 2: Solve each inequality for slope-intercept form.
Skill 3: Graph both lines of the system (dotted or solid).
Skill 4: Plug in a test point and shade.
Skill 5. Choose an ordered pair from the solution set.
To earn a 5 for the ultimate goal, they would have to correctly complete skills 1-5. If they could only do 1 and 2, their score would be a 2. By comparing the rubric and the students grade, it should still be easy to remediate.
Here's where my idea breaks down. What if they complete every skill but they screwed up on skill 2? If they complete the subsequent skills based on their answer for skill 2, they may have done the process correctly but still ended up with a wrong answer. Would they then get a 2 because that is the level where they screwed up? Or would they get something like a 4.5 because they did the process correctly? Translating to the gradebook, if each skills was worth 20%, would the student get a 40% (2) or a 90%(4.5)? That's a huge difference.
Another option would be to count each skill as one point (20%) so that they get credit for every skill they performed correctly but then their score would tell me nothing about where they messed up. :(
Other than that, I am liking this idea. The individual skills will be assessed throughout the unit through class work and homework quizzes but the unit test would now be replaced with this performance event idea.
I also want to try math portfolios next year. I'm thinking (hoping) that this idea would naturally tie into the portfolio. After completing the performance event, the student would then write a structured reflection/explanation of the process. Throughout the year, these performance events and reflections would be collected as a demonstration of mastery.
One last thing we are working on are End-of-Course tests. This is not a state mandate but a district suggestion. We want it. We have currently finished our Algebra I EOC minus a few edits. We will give this four times a year to show growth over time. This will also help students be prepared for long, standardized tests as opposed to the short performance event quizzes covering only one concept.
Please tell me where you see potential downfalls and advise me on how to grade!
I want to make this workkkkk.
