Midterm Conferences & Term Reflection 2.0

Another overdue blog entry! Better late than never.

I wanted to share the new experience with midterm conferences in second semester (as students were more involved with the learning map and I made some tweaks to the reflection they were doing).

Student Reflection

This time around, students were better able to make use of the learning map. Since they had since it since the first week of the course they had a better understanding of what the map meant and how to use it. This meant that student's evaluation of themselves was generally more realistic. It also meant that students were better able to identify what they were doing well, and what they needed to set out as a next step (which meant that the report comments they helped me write were more meaningful).

Student Conference

Conferences were close to student-led conferences. More of them were prepared to show me evidence of their learning and defend their self-evaluation. Some were still under prepared, but there were a lot fewer that needed to go back to do the reflection before re-booking their conference.

Overall there was still some separation between where students believed they were and what I had seen, but it was a lot easier to ask them for evidence of the learning, which led to students doing some reflection in the moment and often realizing that they had not yet shown me something. They were productive conversations and students sometimes expressed they wanted to have more of them (they are time consuming, but I hope to find more and more ways to give students this individual time that they need).

Term Reflection

Some student feedback and personal reflection led me to realize that the reflection I was having students do was not as productive as it needed to be. At midterm I still had students identify a strength and need for each OLG and then evaluating using the learning map. Problem was, they were not engaging enough with the evidence of learning they had identified (and it was a little redundant), So I changed the first chart they were willing in to look like this: (note, you can see the previous version here)

Feel free to borrow and tweak this if you are interested!

Send me a tweet or comment on this blog if you have any other suggestions, ideas, or questions. Would love to hear from you :)

"Gradeless" Math 2.0

Well the blog updates got pushed to the bottom of the to-do list in second semester (not unusual) so this is a tad overdue, but I wanted to share some of the changes that my reflection on first semester lead to.

Some context:
- first semester did not have a learning map with descriptors until after midterm (I did not find I was able to write clear descriptors that I liked until I had evidence of student learning to use to write them)
- the learning map was not clear to students and since they had not engaged with it during the semester having them do final reflections and self-evaluate their course mark was difficult for them
- students relied heavily on the teacher for feedback

And so I set out in the second semester to make some changes. As many of you will be able to relate to, my thought process was more ambitious than life would allow for.

The new iteration (Gradeless 2.0):
- I added to my deconstruction of curriculum to include the learning map (read here for a description of the first week of class in Semester 1, I kept the math processes part and then the grades 10s did the following instead) by cutting up the map into pieces and giving it to them to put together (this forced them to read at least parts of the map and start to become familiar with it)
- Trying to spend more time modelling the use of criteria and feedback for students and giving them more dedicated time to do assessment as learning (trying to help them be less reliant on the teacher)
- Having students engage in the learning map by self-evaluating at the end of each set of summative evaluations (admittedly, this happened after the first set but did not get done in explicit class time after that)

New reflections:
- The new iteration was time well-spent. Students definitely had a better grasp of what the map was intended to do and were more comfortable using it (not all of them, there is still some work to be done, perhaps a more pointed effort to conference with students more often)
- I want students to refer to the map more to increase their focus on identifying where they are and what their next steps might be (keep the focus on noticing and naming the learning and reflecting on their progress)
- Students seemed to appreciate the transparency. One going as far as to say "I finally know what it means to be a level 4 in math" and used this as a way to help himself set goals
- The feedback at the end of the course from my students shows that even the ones who rated the learning map on the low side liked the idea of it, they just found it confusing at times

So it seems like the learning map is something I should continue to pursue and should put a focus on helping to make it more student friendly - I am just not sure what that would look like yet. I wonder if there is  way to make it a bit more interactive so that students can see examples of some of the more confusing parts or read explanations of terms.

If you have any suggestions they would be welcome!

Happy summer!

JALI Assessment As Learning Reflection

As many of you who have read one of my blog entries already will know, I am have been on a journey to improve my understanding and use of assessment in my teaching practices over the past few years. In semester 1 of this year I had the opportunity to participate in one of my school's "mini courses" offered for teachers. This one was lead by one of my colleagues and was to work on our use of assessment AS learning.

This is an area that I feel I have continued to struggle with but know that I need to tap into better. In order to survive in my quest (see recent post on this quest) for a feedback-focused math classroom I need to tap into the skills of my students to give themselves (and each other) effective feedback. Students deserve feedback, and getting them involved in the process engages them in the learning better, makes evaluation more transparent, and makes teacher workload a bit more manageable.

I was able to be exposed to some strategies I had not considered in my classroom before the JALI course and am now trying some new things in semester 2. My goals are for students to:
- engage in the learning map more regularly
- do more co-construction of criteria
- explicitly use criteria to give each other (and self) feedback on their work
- (and by extension) for students to better self-identify their needs

I am grateful for colleagues who are so willing to share their experiences and expertise with others and found sharing with the other course members was a reward in itself!

Reflecting on "Gradeless" Math - Modelling Life-Long Learning

This post can also be found on our team's TLLP blog.

As the title of this entry may suggest this entry is serving as a place to express my thoughts around how last semester went and the changes I am hoping to make. My desire is that this "public diary" will help me to be accountable to my goals, will inspire someone else to take a risk, and will model that we (teacher) practice what we preach - we are all learners.

What worked well that I will continue:

• Having students engage in deconstructing curriculum (specifically the math processes and instructional language)
• Making students reflect on their learning (often!)
• Having a grounding document for evaluation (learning map with overarching learning goals)
• evaluation is based in criteria
• Having students analyze their evidence of learning to determine their grades (and conferencing about it)
• Constructing success criteria with students

What I will strive to do better:

• Engage in curriculum deconstruction more frequently (not just at the beginning of the course)
• Doing more explicit instruction around reflection (how, when, why)
• Helping students understand where they currently are (map was not ready until midterm last semester, students did not know how to use it or make meaning from it) so they can better match evidence of learning to the map and, therefore, determine a midterm and final term grade
• Teaching students to self- and peer-assess and give appropriate, meaningful feedback
• Spending time getting students to co-construct criteria for types of questions or tasks (and for daily topics)
• Getting students to self-identify as needing help and committing to getting that help (perhaps with a simple Google form)
• Collecting student feedback on my practices

What I will do differently:

• Provide a copy of the completed learning map from the start of the course to each student
• Engage students in the use of the map frequently
• Scaffold student note-taking based on investigative learning (i.e. in the early stages I am publishing a "note outline" that asks prompting questions indicating that there is something they should take note of/think about

Future goals and desires (that are just not realistic right now):

• Have a usable learning map for the other course(s) I am teaching 
• Engage same-subject colleagues in work around assessment practices [we are engaging in some "department" professional learning time in the coming weeks that may help with this]
• Be better at recording observation and conversation assessment data of student learning

Seeking "Gradeless" Sanity

This post can also be found on our team's TLLP blog.

It has been awhile since my last entry. Life and work got a little overwhelming, in retrospect. The midterm part of the semester contributed to that (you can read about it here) on top of having 3 straight days of PL/a conference to attend to and I was well behind where I would have liked to be in terms of giving feedback to student. Summative evaluations began to pile up, the essentials had to be prioritized and returned first. No matter what anybody tells you, 84 students is a lot.

But too often this number of students for a secondary educator is a normal reality. So we need to make this better. We need to find ways to meet student's needs, give them the feedback they need and deserve, and still come out sane on the other side. I wish I could tell you that this reflection was going to provide you with the magic answer. But...I don't have it...

Yet.

I am determined to find a way. I am determined to figure out how to be able to leverage students to become effective self- and peer-assessors, despite having a curriculum that is loaded so heavily with content. There must be a way. I have spent time reading (and even talking to) Starr Sackstein and reading books about descriptive feedback. I have spent time talking to other educators, in various subjects, who are on a journey to better feedback (many of whom are on a journey to "gradeless" - or at least "grading less"). And I am sold - I have "drank the kool-aid" (as many have put it). I believe that what I am trying to do is good for kids - that it leads to improved learning and skill building, better self-confidence, ownership of learning, and is more likely to lead to growth mindset of life-long learning. What I am not able to find, is anyone who can help me find solutions that work in a content-based subject/curriculum. I believe that what I see now would make for some amazing learning in language classes. But I am still struggling to wrap my head around how it is possible to meet with provincial policy (i.e. cover the expectations of my course) and still be sane at the end of the school year.

Here is what I know:

1. Overarching learning goals and my learning map provide:

• Focus for my course
• Direction for students
• Clear, transparent assessment & evaluation that is rooted in curriculum & policy
• A third point for conversation around evaluation and reporting
• Something tangible for students to deconstruct and make meaning from
• A way for students to engage in self- and peer-assessment (descriptive feedback)
• A way for students to self-evaluate (know where they are)

2. Overarching learning goals and my learning map do NOT (yet?) provide:

• A way to help students see that sometimes the skills are hindered by the content knowledge (i.e. why they are meeting expectations in this area when studying trigonometry, but may not be when studying quadratic relations)
• the ability to "spiral" material in a course that has curriculum strands that are not related in any obvious ways (but this is also something I could see working on in the future)
• A way for students to give themselves and others feedback around individual content criteria needed (and honestly, I would love to de-emphasize this in my head as I honestly believe that mathematical thinking skills are the most important part)
• An effective way to record evidence of learning so I can track student progress (I am finding recording to be much more time-consuming than in the past)

3. Giving descriptive feedback helps:

• Students focus on learning
• Teachers focus on what is the most important at the time
• Students to identify potential next steps
• Students improve their learning
• Show students what you really value

4. Giving descriptive feedback takes:

• Time (giving "out of" marks is definitely faster, but I still very much believe has little real value)
• Effort
• Additional thought
• You to an uncomfortable place (so much cognitive dissonance!)

5. No matter how many times I am kicked down, I love what I do. And I will bounce back. I will accept my short-falls in the past, set goals for the future, and keep coming back for more.

Reflections on Midterm Conferences in "Gradeless" 9-10 Math

This post can also be found on our team's TLLP blog.

It has been an observation of mine that students are struggling to transfer the meta-cognition skills gained in other places into the math classroom. The ideas and structures I am putting onto their math learning seem to be very different than anything they have done in math before that they do not realize they have done it elsewhere. It has made for some interesting reflection on my part.

In continuing with my journey to explore student reflection I wanted to have students self-evaluate at midterm and conference with me to determine their report grade and report card comments. I set this up using an assignment on Google Classroom and had the sign up for a conference time-slot.

My grade 10s were given a reflection document that included a few things (outlined via images below).

Part 1: Identify pieces of evidence and start to identify criteria from the map that were evident in that evidence

Part 2: Highlight where evidence shows that they are for each criteria of each overarching learning goal in the course (the map is a partial map, only including the aspects relevant at this point in the course)

Part 3: Self-evaluate and reevaluate learning and next steps

When this was all said and done I opened this file when students came to me for their conference. Since I was finding that students were struggling with this process in math I ended up spending most of this time looking at their map with them and identifying areas where we disagreed so that we could discuss them. I recognize that I had not done the map justice (did not explain it well enough) and had already known that it would be difficult as it would be their first real exposure to it (I was only able to write the map myself the week before giving this assignment). Needless to say, I learned a lot - and had already planned to get a student focus-group together to help me reword the map more appropriately for students.

So next time I will:
- get students using the map earier
- rework it to use more student-friendly language
- model how to use the map
- have students evaluate using the map before midterm
- continue to build student reflection and self- & peer-assessment skills explicitly

The grade 9s I do not have a map for so I approached their reflection by having them fill in a chart while referencing the parts of the curriculum document that were relevant at this point. They were often able to identify specific expectations that they were doing well on and ones that they had to work on. What ended up lacking was them considering these expectations from a lens that expanded from just the "understand and use" - I need a way to make sure that the 9s consider the math processes as well in the future.

Overall students responded fairly positively during conferences when I pointed out things that had not considered that showed they were struggling with aspects of the course, but the discussions took a long time. The conferencing process was valuable, but I need to seek some ways to make it more manageable and to be away from facilitating student learning for less time.

Questions Coming From "Gradeless" Math

This post can also be found on our team's TLLP blog.

Going "gradeless" (using feedback-focused assessment) has brought about some great things with students, but often leads to more question than answers about my assessment practices. If you are reading this and have any ideas or suggestions I would love to hear from you!

Overarching Learning Goals & Learning Maps

I have started my year in grade 10 math with a set of learning goals and an incomplete learning map. I went into this process with an understanding that these documents will always be working documents. Changes will be needed depending on the group of students and changing needs of the course/society/etc. I am only 6 weeks into the semester and already envisioning the need for changes just based on pedagogy and assessment policy. Some of the reasons for this will be become more evidence in the topic below.

My learning map only has descriptors for level 3, which is partly by design.
1) I couldn't figure out how to describe the learning for 4 levels since I had not even tried using these goals for standards-based grading

2) I want student language to be used on the map so really need their voice to complete it

Hopefully I can get to a point soon where I have enough student evidence to show them that they can help me with that.

The Achievement Chart

I am grappling with the achievement chart in math - I am a fan of ensuring that we are assessing using all 4 categories (for those of you outside of Ontario those are Knowledge & Understanding, Application, Communication and Thinking) but I am struggling with the "descriptors" that Ontario uses to split them into 4 levels and even more grappling with what it means to have knowledge & understanding at a level 4 (exceeding expectations) when removed from thinking. I cannot get away from the idea that to show level 4 K&U you must also be showing T.

Manageable Feedback

This is the biggest question for me in out TLLP. How do I give students the feedback in math that they need and deserve in a manageable way? If I were to do all of what I think is beneficial I would literally not sleep. When everything is in place I will try to find ways to do it a bit more electronically so there is less hand writing to do, but the idea still baffles me in such a skill-based course (with the sheer volume of skills/understanding they need).

If anyone has any idea I would love to hear them. There is only so much that they can accomplish through self- and peer-feedback.

Managing Conferencing

I love doing interviews with kids about math. It is always an eye-opening look into what they actually understand (sometimes things they have not been able to articulate on paper and sometimes finding out just how much they are memorizing and not understanding). When I was teaching senior courses I usually found the time I needed to have these conferences, but I am having more trouble doing so with junior courses. It is a to harder to get them to be automonous for 3 days so that I can have the time needed.

Any ideas are welcome!

Week 2/3 in "Gradeless" Math - Self & Peer-Assessment and Reflecting on Progress

This post can also be found on our team's TLLP blog.

In the second full week of school I put a lot of focus on starting to develop student's skills in self- and peer-assessment. Without these skills the idea of developing an environment that creates more autonomous learners likely would not happen (and the burden of giving descriptive feedback would fall entirely on me - and I also have a goal to get more sleep this year).

Here is the gist of the steps I attempted to take last week:

1. Give students questions to use when reflecting on their work (such as "Have I written my solution so that someone else can follow it?"). I put these on the board and uploaded a photo of them to our Google Site for student's to reference.

2. Introduce the model I am using for descriptive feedback (Acknowledge what you are doing well; Describe what your next step should be; Determine how/when you are going to work on your next step). I also put this on the board and uploaded a photo to our Site. In the future, I would like to provide students with exemplars and discuss what good feedback looks like.

3. Assign students to choose a question they have done and use the questions from 1 and the model from 2 to write descriptive feedback for themselves (and asked them to upload to Sesame so I could give them feedback on their descriptive feedback).

4. On the next opportunity I modeled how I used the success criteria to write the reflection questions for students (this time we were looking at problem solving).

5. I then assigned a question for them to do as practice and when most of them were finished I had them swap with a neighbour and peer-assess using the questions and write descriptive feedback for their partner.

6. For homework that night I asked them to choose one of the questions they did at home to upload to Sesame and include descriptive feedback for themselves. I followed up with those who posted one to give them feedback on their self-assessment.

I plan to have report conferences with students at midterm and the end of the course to determine their report grades together. To help them prepare for this I also implemented the next two steps at the end of the week.

7. I created a chart (pictured below) with instructions for students for them to use to help them summarize what we had been doing. I filled in the overarching learning goals (OLGs) that I wanted them to focus on and they needed to list the evidence they had of that learning (i.e. quiz, homework, activity) and then list the corresponding success criteria from our learning map as ether "met" or "still working on".

8. Based on the instructions students sent home an email that summarized the chart (on my Google Classroom assignment it stated that they should: Tell them what they learned/were able to do; Inform them of what is still being worked on; Summarize how the student feels they are doing so far).

Once students started to send the emails and I looked at a couple I realized I needed to get them to do a reflection portion to help consolidate a bit better. Upon this reflection I decided to add this to the bottom of these reflections.

This will make sure students are reminded to revisit their goal and will hopefully lead to students setting some relevant goals for where they are at the time.

I will definitely be continuing to get students to use self- and peer-assessment and will continue to work on using the above style reflections to see how they go. Right now the tough part is convincing all of them to complete it (I gave them time in class, but probably not enough).

Week 1 in Math - My Motivations & Understanding Expectations with Students

What, Why and Where

I am finally embarking on my vision of a "gradeless" classroom. What does that mean? It means that my students will receive feedback that is feedback-based. Learning becomes about learning. Grades take a step back and are determine for reporting periods.

Why am I going here? I am giving the ownership of learning back to my students. For too long I have been the owner of the learning. It was believed that the teacher "gave" marks and students always wanted to know what they needed to "do" to get an 80. The shift is simple - I give feedback based on set criteria that students need to work toward and they reflect on their learning and act on a next step to meet those criteria. 

Where am I now? In the past 2-3 years I have done some work with creating overarching learning goals and reformatting evaluations (i.e. taking marks off of quizzes, using one-point rubrics to give feedback, etc.). Ultimately these changes have led me to need to go to a fully feedback-based classroom so that I can focus on doing this well. So this year (my grade 10 classes in particular) will learn math through feedback based on 5 overarching learning goals.

Our First Few Days

After spending a period on vertical surfaces solving a problem in groups we started to attack the curriculum. I wanted students to have a chance to find out what the curriculum was and to understand the lens through which the curriculum is taught. In fact, I wanted them to own it.

The Math Processes - the lens through which the Ontario math curriculum is taught

Students were in 7 groups of 3-4 students and each group was assigned to one of the processes. They were tasked with rewriting their process in their own words. I gave them two prompting questions to consider to help with the process: What does it mean? What will it look like in class?

Groups then rotated around and had a chance to add or suggest changes to the work of the other groups. When they returned to their own group they were to look at the suggestions made and decide on their final sentence - sharing their final work in a shared document.

As a group we looked at the final sentences which was my chance to ask them questions about their choices of words. This lead to us making some changes (I tried to make sure we were keeping as much of their wording as possible) and agreeing as a class that we understood what it looked like.

Overall Expectations - the content

Students were given the curriculum for one of the strands of the course and were tasked with rewriting the overall expectations in their own words. When they were finished I had the groups working on the same strand get together and come to an agreement before sharing it on our shared doc. We then looked at it as a class.

With my second section I made a better point of talking about the language in the document, defining words they needed and talked about what words were important to leave in.

Learning Map - putting them together

I reworded my overarching learning goals to use the students words from the above and then shared my learning map with the students. The 5 goals on this map are where we will focus our attention for the semester. Instead of having 7 processes and 10 overall expectations students how have 5 goals to manage and reflect on.

Reflection

While I am at a school where deconstructing curriculum is not new to grade 10 students it was their first time doing it with math "jargon" so the struggle was largely around the vocabulary used. When I do this again with students who are new to this process in math I would spend time at the start looking at math and instructional vocabulary and make sure that we know what they mean and which ones are important to keep.

"Skills Check" Quiz

This past school year my department head was introduced to a new style of quiz (origin unknown - if you know who in the board she got it from please let me know and I will give credit where credit is due). We use them as an opportunity for a specific skill check - generally knowledge-based but sometimes the level 3/4 questions will involve using the skill in a new context. There is no use of marks

The "quiz" is set up with a learning goal at the top with success criteria listed (I now look back and would probably argue for myself that the SC is really just 1 or 2 criteria split into levels). There are 4 questions on the quiz, set up in a chart (3 columns - the question with work space, feedback & reflection/corrections) starting with a level 1 type question and ending with a level 4 type question. A sample (from MCR 3U0) of the front of one of mine is shown in the image below (I put the level 3 & 4 questions on the back).

The focus of this style of quiz is on the feedback.

If a student is struggling with the level 1 question than I will focus my feedback there and stop. The feedback is descriptive (tells the student what they are able to do and what the next step needs to be - as well as where to get the help with it) and manageable - if they are struggling with the level 1 question then giving feedback on other questions will likely be too much.

What really sold me on this particular format is that it became easy for me to record a level for the student at the end - I had already done most of the thinking when I planned and created the quiz. This was mind-blowing for me because so much of the hardship in the adjustments I was making in my assessment journey was the extra time I was spending giving feedback and then figuring out levels.

Granted this is just a quiz and it cannot be used for all purposes. But it's a start.

Finally, when I return these to students I do not take them up (because the individual feedback they need is on them) but students are giving time to do corrections/reflections, redo the next question, and are then encouraged to hand it back in. I will then check their corrections and if they have succeeded at that level will look at the next one and provide them feedback on this.

The hardest part for me? Continuing to work on the classroom culture where this kind of practice is valued and more students take the opportunity to resubmit.