![]() So what does this look like in my math classroom?ġ. This has the benefit both of measuring “21st Century Skills”, and allows us to separate content mastery from behavior (something I believe strongly in – read some Ken O’Connor, et. See as an example (though obviously this isn’t a student at my school, just a stock pic): For example, this past year Content Mastery was 50% of the grade, while five school-wide learning outcomes like Collaboration,Work Ethic, and Communication were 10% each. So as part of the New Tech Network, we have the ability in our gradebook to separate content from other attributes that we would like to measure. Separating “Soft Skills” in the Gradebook ![]() (No, not every student mastered every concept – don’t judge me, I’m still learning this whole teaching thing!). The blue boxes indicate Proficient, while the yellow boxes mean they have not yet mastered that concept. Here you can see BlueHarvest in action for one of our quarters. But it did help shift conversations from “I need to get my grade up, what can I do for extra credit?” to “I need to learn how to solve systems by substitution” – which is always a joyous feeling as a teacher. I used it primarily because it was cool looking – there were no grades attached. Last year I used BlueHarvest to help the learners keep track of the concepts they had mastered and to manage some feedback. Next year I plan to create a simple rubric for each quiz that lets the students know ahead of time what will be considered proficient (I regret not having done this last year).ģ. It could be that they needed all to be correct, or (rarely) two of the four would suffice. Generally I would create the quiz (usually about four questions), then make a judgement call on what would let me know that they “got it.” It could be that three were correct, and there was a small mistake on the fourth. Of course, there are procedures in place for learners to get extra help and instruction, and to request a retake on their own, regardless of how long ago the concepts were discussed.Īs far as what constituted proficiency, it varied from quiz to quiz. (See this presentation from Dan Meyer for where this idea came from). The quizzes almost always have two or three concepts on them, spiraled back to give learners automatic retake opportunities. To better assess the mathematical skills (think “solving linear systems” or “factoring trinomials”) we use short content quizzes. I think of it as being similar to the Formative Assessment Lessons from the Shell Centre, which I consider to be good stuff.Ģ. This is where the content grade comes from, while the group time is graded on things like Work Ethic, Communication, Critical Thinking, and Collaboration. After we have “solved” the problem, thoroughly discussed it, made all of our thinking visible, and presented it one way or another, the learners will get another similar problem (or a problem derived from the project) to work through by themselves. We work through a problem or project in groups (though we’ll often start the problems thinking about them individually). So what does that look like in my math classroom?ġ. ![]() ![]() So how are we supposed to assess individuals for content mastery? Well, the only time we work individually is when we need to demonstrate content knowledge (i.e. So our school uses all PBL and PrBL, working through complex problems and projects in small groups. I’ll tackle these two issues one at a time.Īssessing Mastery with Cooperative Learning: Second, we use an interesting grading system that puts “soft skills” – like communication and work ethic – explicitly into the gradebook. First, for everything we do we use Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Problem-Based Learning (PrBL), and it is all cooperative (group work). It isn’t possible to describe how I graded in my math classroom last year without giving a little more background about the New Tech model that we use. ![]()
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