Feedback Over Letter & Number Grades

I have been on a quest to provide meaningful feedback and grading practics. In 2020 I was part of an Teacher Action research project with Diane Cunningham. After reading Sarah M. Zerwin’s Pointless: An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading (Heinemann, 2020) I was on a quest to create more meaningful grading and feedback practices with my students and move away from numerical and letter grades. As an English teacher, my goals are to help grow students as critical and close readers and creative communicators. This year as I participated in the What Schools Could Be learning experience I aimed to hone that feedback loop with students to provide more reflection and understanding in a way that numbers and letters cannot provide. In lieu of grades, clear and meaningful learning goals are established, feedback in multiple forms is utilized, and students are held accountable to their learning and growth. Many of the teaching tools (writing conferences, rubrics, checklists, reflections, and PowerSchool) teachers already utilize daily I repurposed to better enhance student feedback for their growth and deep learning. 

Reflection was a key component to learning in English 8. After all assignments, students completed a reflection. In the first quarter students wrote a letter of their learning and growth the first ten weeks of school. 

The student responses from the first ten weeks of school were insightful. Each student took a metaphor to help tell their stories and show their growth and insight to help reflect on their role as a reader and writer. Students were provided with a model for building the metaphor based on the student sample on the second page of the assignment. 

Here are some student responses:

Amelia’s growth over the past semester has been tremendous. At first she started out as a little caterpillar who was unorganized and didn’t take care of the important things she needed to do. Amelia has now grown into a butterfly, she can flap her wings and is on top of her work. Everyone has something they can transform into to make a better version of themselves. That is exactly what Amelia did.

I have a love-hate relationship with reading, which led me to procrastination and lazy reading towards the beginning of the quarter. Once I learned how to take notes and make inferences, reading became more interesting and easy to do. I have found a strength in summarizing text, this enables me to be able to break down what I am reading and jot notes every 5-10 minutes. This keeps me always thinking while I am reading as well as focusing on the theme and central idea. A few growth moves that I can make are reading more consistently, having superb focus while reading, and taking close, more specific notes often to help me understand the author’s message.

Cate has always felt that she is a rather strong writer; however, she occasionally fails to properly elaborate her topic sentences and analyze her quotes with relevant details. At first, she would get frustrated by the feedback she was given and refused to tweak her sentences for clarity. She would protest to herself, “Why do I have to fix this part? I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I think that sentence is perfect!” Now, Cate is open to constructive criticism and eager to fix her mistakes. Whenever her writing is returned to her with corrections and suggestions, she immediately makes sure she can understand where she had flaws in her work so that she can improve. “Growth mindset”, an idea developed by Carol Dweck at Stanford University, is “the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort.” During the first quarter of eighth grade, Cate has acknowledged that she won’t excel as a writer without accepting her mistakes and learning how to grow from them. Additionally, Angela Lee Duckworth states, “They’re [students] much more likely to persevere when they fail because they don’t believe that failure is a permanent condition.” With this mindset in place, Cate is no longer angered by her flaws as a writer because she knows that the best way for her to learn is from her mistakes. 

Frankie feels that she has made a drastic change throughout the first quarter. All she wanted to do was win the game, she would take messy shots and never followed through with her shots. Occasionally she would get lucky and score. Now, she thinks about the small details to improve her game. She realized that basketball isn’t only about winning, but it is about her performance as a whole. 

Taking the time to reflection on one’s learning process helps us decide where to go moving forward. In the next two quarters reflection was part of our writing process. During the following writing unit students were to meet with their teacher at least once during the writing workshops to discuss their stories. Students had to come to the conferences with specific questions and then both the teacher and the student recorded notes on the conference to return to later on. These notes from the teacher were recorded as a running record on Powerschool in the comments section. 

Before the end of the last quarter students completed a reflection on Google Forms. This was more than a single question survey but consisted of rating scales, checkboxes,  short responses, and paragraph responses. Again, students were asked to reflect on how they have grown as readers and writers. Students were asked to rate the quality of their work and even give themselves a number grade with evidence to support the number provided. 

You can view the questions and complete Google form here.

Students again shared insightful responses. 

I have grown as a reader through this quarter by starting to take more notes on my reading and extending my understanding of developing theme. Before this quarter, I didn’t really pay that much attention to sensory details and I wasn’t giving it my all to learn at my maximum level. As of recently, I have started to practice better reading habits such as making mental notes of plot and theme developments. Another way I have developed as a reader and a student is by creating stronger text evidence to prove my points. This all shows how my reading and writing has advanced over the quarter.

I feel I have grown as a writer in the third quarter because I learned to use more detailed language to vividly show the reader the picture I am trying to portray. Through listening to the Lethal Lit podcast, and reading mentor texts in class, I realized how important small details are to make the piece interesting and inviting to the reader. My setting piece in particular was very beneficial because I was able to stretch out one scene to make it very detailed and vivid. The setting piece made me realize the importance of using specific adjectives or phrases to convey the proper mood forward to the reader. Additionally, I feel I have gotten better at re-reading and editing my work. I am more open to many different people reading it, and taking in all of their constructive criticism and/or ideas to make my writing as strong as possible so it can please different audiences. Overall, quarter three has made my writing grow tremendously because I began to use strong details to clearly convey my ideas.

Over this quarter, I felt that I have grown as a reader by being able to interpret the reading material better, and therefore make better inferences about it. I felt like going into this quarter, while I was able to understand the text I read, I wasn’t fully able to dive deep into what was hidden in between the lines. When we read Animal Farm, I felt like it expanded my ability to understand the theme of a story. Because Animal Farm was allegory, the novel was mainly about finding the bigger picture, rather than just the surface plot, and so reading it pushed me to be able to better identify the themes the author may have hidden in the text. When we read our books in separate groups, our group read Unwind, and rather than just skimming through the basic ideas of the book, I was able to analyze it through note-taking. By using the bookmarks, I was able to comprehend the text better, and I found that after I finished reading and taking notes, there were so many important details I might not have noticed without taking notes. Overall, I think I was able to become a better reader by understanding what I read, and recognizing themes in my reading.

In terms of my reading, writing, speaking, listening, and collaboration skills, the obstacle I faced in the 3rd quarter was really ensuring that everything I wrote/said made sense to someone else. Rather it was giving someone good constructive criticism, taking notes on Lethal Lit, writing my own mystery piece, etc., I had to make sure that I was clear and concise. When I read novels by successful authors, I can understand what it takes to make a story make sense to others, but at some points when I tried to do this myself, it was slightly difficult. I typically write out everything I want to say on my paper first and then go back to editing. It was a challenge for me to be aware of how much more the writer understands the plot and details than the reader who has never read the story does. I was glad to meet this conflict because I very easily overcame it through revision work.  I learned this quarter that editing my notes and writing is crucial so that other people understand what I mean no matter how much effort, time, and trials it takes. 

What I have described above is the feedback that students provided me, their teacher, about their learning growth and challenges. At the same time I was giving students ongoing feedback. Immediate feedback was provided on writing assignments in terms of written feedback and verbal feedback using Mote, a Chrome extension on Google Classroom. During writing conferences I also provided immediate feedback that was specific to the students writing needs and always provided models, mentor texts, checklists, and rubrics for feedback and assessment. 

Consistent, ongoing and detailed feedback can have a positive effect on student success in the classroom. Research shows that feedback also helps to increase student self-confidence and self-esteem. I do see students feel more confident and comfortable to take risks with their writing through feedback. What I have found is that not only does feedback need to be immediate and specific, but it should also be task related and describe specifically what the student did well on the task as well as what they could improve. I always begin the constructive feedback with “Consider . . . “ or I might provide an example from a mentor or student mentor text. There is also process feedback which I might tell students, “It has helped me to read aloud my writing before submission” or “Darcy has coded all her clues and red herrings on the Google Doc. It might help to go through your own mystery story and highlight all your clues and red herrings to see if you need to any additional ones.”

Lastly, there is personal feedback where I share with the students something positive about their effort or growth. 

Are my students obsessed with specific numbers and letter grades, YES! I don’t think we will ever be able to get rid of them. But when we put feedback at the forefront, there is a lot more specific data to help students grow as readers, writers, and thinkers. Students are more reflective of their actions and learning in the classroom and we have more accurate evidence of their growth that a letter and number cannot provide. 

The Power of Questions

This past Friday I attended a workshop with the educational consultant, Diane Cunningham. I have attended a few of her workshops and classes over the past few years and always walk away with valuable information. This session was on supporting student questioning. We explored four different questioning strategies.

Questioning is important in the classroom because we want students to ask questions and have their questions drive learning because questioning is a key skill of critical thinkers and promotes ownership and engagement.

When I am teaching both middle school and on a college level I might share a video for students to view and discuss. I have students create a chart in their ELA Notebooks or give them an organizer that requires them to jot down what they see, what they think, what they wonder. This strategy is great to use with images, videos, and even primary sources or text.

This thinking routine is from Project Zero (Harvard Education) and encourages students to make careful observation, stimulate curiosity, and set the stage for learning or inquiry.

Another questioning strategy that I use often is QFT from The Right Question Institute. The QFT process requires students to produce as many questions as possible in a specific amount of time about a quote, image, statement or problem. Back in 2018 I wrote a blog post about the QFT method titled, “THE ONE WHO FORMULATES THE QUESTIONS OWNS THE LEARNING.” The cofounder of the Right Question Institute, Dan Rothstein argues, “The rigorous process of learning to develop and ask questions offers students the invaluable opportunity to become independent thinkers and self-directed learners.”

Rothstein and Santana have their own Question Formulation Technique (QFT) –  four rules for producing questions:

1. Ask as many questions as you can.
2. Do not stop to judge, discuss, edit, or answer any question.
3. Write down every question exactly as it was asked.
4. Change any statements into questions.

Not only is this a great strategy for students to showcase their wonderings, but it can lead to a discussion about Convergent Questions and Divergent Questions. Convergent questions focus on a correct response whereas divergent questions allow for more than one plausible and reasonable answers.

Questions have been the subject of hundreds of studies, as this Edutopia article refers to Kathleen Cotton’s research. Here are some of her most insightful takeaways in this short quiz:

1. Which is more effective for fostering learning?

A) Oral questions posed during classroom recitation

B) Written questions

2. Posing questions before a reading should be done with students who are:

A) Older/better readers

B) Younger/struggling readers

3. Increasing the use of higher-order questions to _____ percent improves student-to-student interactions, speculative thinking, length of student responses, and relevant questions posed by learners.

4. Should wait time differ when asking lower- vs. higher-order questions?

ANSWERS Answer 1: A, oral questions Answer 2: A, because young/struggling readers often read only the parts of the text that help them answer the questions. Answer 3: 50 percent. Answer 4: Yes. Wait time should be about three seconds for lower-order questions, and longer for higher-order questions.

When students are working in book clubs or literature circles I aways assign a different discussion director for each meeting. The role of the discussion director is to create questions around the big ideas or themes in the reading to help initiate a lively discussion about the text. Again, students are in charge of creating their own questions and sharing their thoughts, ideas, insights, and wonderings.

The one questioning strategy that was new to me was the question matrix designed by Andy Milne. Students are provided with the question matrix and an image, text, video, even an infographic and have to brainstorm the different questions using the stems on the question matrix. Diane had a poster size of the question matrix on the wall for students to add sticky notes with the question stems based on images viewed.

Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation states, “Questions stimulate discussion and creative and critical thinking, as well as determine how students are thinking. Questions help students retain material by putting into words otherwise unarticulated thoughts.”

• Questions can diagnose student understanding of material.
• Questions are a way of engaging with students to keep their attention and to reinforce their participation.
• Questions can review, restate, emphasize, and/or summarize what is important.
• Questions stimulate discussion and creative and critical thinking, as well as determine how students are thinking.
• Questions help students retain material by putting into words otherwise unarticulated thoughts.

Feedback as A Teaching Tool

Writing is a skill that needs to be practiced often. Many students do not believe they are good writers, due to the constant grading of their work. Students can be very sensitive about their writing and grammar skills. Due to this, when teaching, I do not use terms such as, right or wrong. I aim to help students develop their writing skills and prepare them for their future since writing is used everywhere, not only in classrooms.

I observe my students writing over the course of several weeks and create mini-lessons to teach the aspects of writing they are struggling with. Editing and revising their work can show my students the mistakes they have made and can help them understand how they can refine their writing for clarity and preciseness. Students spend ample time working on rough drafts and editing before turning in a major writing assignment. Writing conferences assist students in producing better work.

I want students to understand writing is hard, but also very rewarding. Writing is an important skill that is used everywhere and needs to be practiced often. I support my students by having them write every day, providing them with choices for writing topics, finding engaging ways to learn grammar, not grading every writing assignment they do, and helping them feel comfortable when writing in my classroom.

This year in ELA I have stepped away from traditional grading to offer more valuable feedback to students and families without using letter grades. Students do not receive a grade on any single assignment. The grade book keeps track of whether or not a student is keeping up with their work and how they are doing toward the learning objectives for this course. I want to be able to show students and families in real time which standard they are meeting, exceeding, and working towards our online grade book. More importantly, I add narrative comments on written tasks and in the online grade book to include more specific information that impacts each student’s performance.  It is my hope that taking away the emphasis on letter and number grades will allow students to take more risks and responsibility with the reading and writing completed in class without worrying that it will negatively affect their grade. The expectation remains that students will complete all of the major assignments.

After reading Sarah M. Zerwin’s Pointless: An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading (Heinemann, 2020) I have attempted to create more meaningful grading and feedback practices.  In lieu of grades, clear and meaningful learning goals are established, feedback in multiple forms is utilized, and students are held accountable to their learning and growth. I have repurposed tools that I already have in place including PowerSchool, Conferences, Rubrics and Checklists, student reflections to better enhance student feedback for their growth and deep learning. 

Book Influencer Kit Summer Reading Assignment

Scrolling through social media I came across some posts where book influencers post images or video unboxing a publisher’s influencer kit. A book influencer is someone with more than 5,000 followers promoting books and reading. Publishing companies develop an influencer kit in order to market and promote a new book and title. An influencer kit includes a copy of the book, nicely designed press materials, and a few small gifts or products that complement the content of the book.

Oh, I would love to be unboxing some of these amazing publishing book kits!

The image above was posted by Abigail Owen on her website. The influencer book she showcases contained:

• The custom box that matches the cover art and is a piece of art all by itself, inside & out
• A custom temporary tattoo to match the cover, created by artist Amy Shane
• A collapsable hand mirror that says “Born to Rule” on the back (the tagline)
• A diamond art kit that is a skulls and flowers design
• The book itself!

Inspired by the images, I designed this book influencer kit summer reading assignment for my students. Students will create their own influencers box based on their summer reading. For additional fun, you can have them create TikTok like videos unboxing and showcasing the influencers kit for others. The objective is for students to make the book’s content come to life. Students will have to think of creative ways to pull the book’s content off the pages and into something fun and tangible. 

• Consider creating a print showcasing your favorite quote or phrase. 
• Make the package personal by including a letter or handwritten note. 
• Include products that will help a reader put the concepts in your book into practice. Maybe include bright glow in the dark stars if the protagonist is fascinated with the universe and the possibility of UFOs. Or atomic fireball candy if the book is Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon. Even simple items like themed socks, buttons, and stickers can add a little something extra to your package.
• Design the box so that it is visually appealing. Choose colors and fonts that connect with the story.  

The influencer’s kit should contain 4-5 items including the book to market the book to other readers. 

I am so excited to see what my students put together.

Middle School Student Reading Assessment

Earlier this May I had read a post from Isabelle Popp on Book Riot, “What Do Your Favorite Books Say About You?” Intrigued by this article I found myself thinking this prompt would make a great opening narrative essay assessment and assignment for students. And a reading assessment came to fruition.

I have scaffolded the article for students to explore what their favorite books say about them as readers, writers, and individuals. My plan is for this assignment to be an un-graded pre-assessment of their reading and writing skills. I can use the data from their essays to map out writing lessons for the school year and learn about their reading habits. I made a same organizer for myself as a model for students.

Back to School Stranger Things Themed Syllabus & Opening Day Activities

It’s a syllabus.

It is a hyperdoc.

It’s a menu of opening day activities for students.

Actually, it is all three rolled into one.

I saw a class syllabus from @MrsGearheart laid out like a game board with station activities for each part of the syllabus. Students read and complete the syllabus to earn badges. I loved the format but was thinking how to personalize it for my middle school students. And wallah, here is the syllabus, hyperdoc, and first days of school menu choice board for students to complete. The syllabus covers about the teacher, class expectations, each of the units we will complete throughout the year, information about standards based grading, and classroom policies.

Rather than the badges, that @MrsGearheart created – and there are a lot. I have paired down a menu of activities for students to complete the first two days of classes. For the appetizers, students choose one to complete and share about themselves with the whole class. Thinking in different formats, students can either create an infographic about themselves using Adobe Express or can conduct an interview with a peer on Flip(grid). The main course is an assignment that all students will do the end of the week. It will not be a graded assignment but will help me learn about students’ reading and writing skills, likes, and literary influences. I will share that assessment in next week’s blog post. For dessert, these are short activities to help students get comfortable with the tech platforms I use weekly and also tell me more about themselves. I am a dessert person so I thought, why not complete all these activities. I think students will be able to do the appetizers and desserts over two 40 minute class periods. If you would like a copy of this template, you can click here.

Enhancing Meaning Making with These 4 Graphic Organizers

I am a big proponent of graphic organizers to help students organize and visualize information. Graphic organizers are helpful to outline a writing task or showcase understanding during reading. Jay McTighe and Harvey Silver write in Teaching for Deeper Learning (ASCD, 2020), “The use of graphic organizers enhances meaning making and promotes deep understanding of critical content – especially when reinforced through questioning and summarizing.”

In 8th grade I begin the school year providing graphic organizers for all students to utilize and access to organize content information. I share and utilize different organizers with each assignment. Sometimes I might demonstrate filling out the organizer and use think aloud to show students the process of making meaning using graphic organizers. Slowly, using gradual release, I encourage students to create their own graphic organizers in the second semester of the school year. The first twenty weeks of school students have curated a toolkit of strategies and organizers for to choose which are the best to create based on the assignment and learning goals.

Here are four different organizers that are the go-tos for note making and organizing information.

1. It Says, I Say, So What – Taken from Smoky Daniels, this three column organizer helps students record the literal details of a text, make connections and inferences. Inferences are hard for many students, especially struggling readers, because the text does not explicitly say. To make an inference students combine what the text says with what they know to come up with the answer. They need a scaffold, something that visualizes and helps students internalize the process of how to infer. The It Says—I Say chart helps students finally see a structure for making an inference.

It Says – Find information from the text that stands our or addresses a question. I Say – Think about what you know about the information. So What – Combine what the text says with what you know
to come up with the answer.

2. Window Notes/Organizer – Jay McTighe and Harvey Silver introduced this type of note making in Teaching for Deeper Learning (ASCD, 2020) “Window Notes at its core is an invitation to think actively, to express curiosity, and to use prior knowledge and personal feelings to help construct meaning during note making process. Students use a window shaped organizer that encourages them to collect four different kinds of notes: 1. Facts: What are the important facts and details? 2. Questions: What questions come to mind? What am I curious about? 3. Connections: How does this relate to my experiences or to other things I have learned? 4. Feelings and reactions: How do I feel about what I am learning?”

3. Know. Question. Reflect. New Questions (KQRN) – I am over KWL charts. I think they work well in elementary school but when I see them utilized in middle and high school, we are not asking students to use higher level thinking. Here is a blog post I wrote ten years ago with alternatives to the KWL. What are some other organizers that are alternatives to the KWL and activate schema at the same time? The KQRN. This is another note making organizer that helps students extend their thinking about an idea or concept. Now with any of these organizers, the teacher wants to model for students how to complete these graphic organizers with examples and think alouds.

4. Character Traits Organizer – Characterization and theme are two key elements we study when reading literature in 8th grade English. Characterization refers both to the personality of a character and the way in which an author reveals that personality. A character’s personality is made up of different qualities, or character traits, that the reader discovers as the work unfolds. An author often gives characters several different traits to make them seem real and believable. Helping students develop the language to describe character traits and read to identify character traits is necessary to work on throughout the school year. Characterization leads to insight and inferences about theme. I have a stand alone organizer for character traits but also have created a hyperdoc based on the short story Raymond’s Run by Toni Cade Bambara that scaffolds the entire process of curating character traits then building out a written response about characterization as it impacts theme.

Assessment Speed Dating

Formative Assessment is a constantly occurring process, a verb, a series of events in action, not a single tool or a static noun. — from Formative Assessment That Truly Informs Instruction (NCTE, 2013) 

Assessment is an integral part of instruction determining whether or not the goals of education are being met. It is used to measure the current knowledge that a student has. It is through assessment that teachers are continually asking:

“Am I teaching what I think I’m teaching?”

“Are students learning what they are suppose to be learning?”

A test, quiz, or assessment project is not just a grade to evaluate the students at the end of a unit but an ongoing evaluative tool for the teacher.  Teachers are engaged in assessment every minute that they are in the classroom. As teachers we are always observing, noting, and evaluating. There are three types of feedback and goal setting assessment tools that teachers need throughout a unit of inquiry:

Pre Assessment (Finding Out) – Pretests, inventories, KWL, checklists, observations, self-evaluations, questioning, mind mapping, anticipation guides

Pre Assessment allows student to demonstrate what they already know about what is being planned and what further instruction opportunities are needed or what requires reteaching or enhancement. Teachers can not just begin a lesson without taking a “temperature” of what the students know in the beginning.

Formative Assessment (Keeping Track and Checking Up) – Conferences, peer evaluations, observations, talkaround, questioning, exit cards, quiz, journal entry, self-evaluations

Formative assessment occurs concurrently with instruction and provides feedback to teachers and learners. Formative assessment can be formal and informal to frame meaningful performance goals.

Summative Assessment (Making Sure) – Unit Test, performance task, product and exhibition, demonstrations, portfolio review

Summative assessment shows what students have learned at the conclusion of an instructional unit and is evaluative.

For reliability and validity teachers should use a variety of assessments to provide enough helpful feedback to improve performance. Assessment should be used for guiding, self-reflection, instruction, nurturing, and used over multiple activities. In addition, students should be involved in daily or weekly evaluation of their progress. Rubrics and other scoring tools help evaluate understanding of content and skills that are used by both the teacher and the student for both specific tasks and long term progress. I never handout to students an assessment without also giving them the evaluation rubric at the same time so they know exactly what I am looking for when I evaluate their projects and assessments. Here are four criteria of quality feedback as defined by Grant Wiggins (1998): 

1. It must be timely.

2. It must be specific.

3. It must be understandable to the receiver.

4. It must allow the student to act on the feedback (refine, revise, practice, and retry).

It is easy to give tests and quizzes but in actuality, they are not always the most accurate evaluation tools. Teachers want to use a variety of assessments or data sources and teacher data mechanisms to help gain a more accurate picture of students knowledge and understanding.

To help my pre-service English teachers consider the various aspects of assessment, I created this Assessment Speed Dating Hyperdoc that walks teachers through various literacy based assessments in the English language Arts classroom and more.

The hyperdoc and speed dating template was inspired and adapted from Amanda Sandoval @historysandoval.