Witnessing Student Growth...#winning

As I have written about before, this year I am implementing Standards Based Grading. Here's how it looks in my classroom:

Students take quizzes often. Usually, there are 2-3 skills on a quiz, but each skill is separated. Here's an example of a decimals operations quiz my 7th grade general classes recently took.

Multiply & Divide Decimals Quiz 

Students get a score for each specific skill, and this is what goes in the gradebook - not the overall score. Since there's just a few problems for each skill, I have decided that mastery is missing 0-1 problems. If a student missed  0-1 problems, then I don't require them to re-quiz. If they miss more than 1 question, they are required to re-quiz on that specific section. I give re-quizzes on Friday. Students that do not have to re-quiz are given game time on their Chromebooks. They love this incentive!!

I am LOVING this way of grading. It is holding students accountable for their learning. If they don't master the skill the first quiz, they know they have to re-quiz on it on Friday. And if they still don't master it the 2nd time, they know they will be re-quizzing again. I have only had about 10 of my 100+ students that have needed to re-quiz a 2nd time. Most students are mastering the skill on their 1st re-quiz. This, to me, is such a win!

When settings up their interactive notebooks at the beginning of the year, I had students title 4 pages "Quiz Forms." After every quiz and re-quiz, students write in their score for each section of the quiz. This way, come Friday when it's time to requiz, they look there to see what specific sections they need to re-quiz on. Not gonna lie - this has been a struggle for many general students. I should have went around to every single kid after returning the first quiz to ensure they had done this correctly. I will definitely do that next year. Those who did it right the first time are okay. Others, not so much. I even saw this past week where one kid had glued in an actual quiz in the quiz form section. (Insert blushing emoji). I then tore the quiz out, and I went through and wrote in every quiz and score in his notebook. (Insert impatient/annoyed emoji).

I wish I had a picture of a notebook that was done correctly. I will take a picture this week and add it here.

My original plan was to make the quiz report forms myself and have the student just fill in the score and glue them in. I did that for my first class, but I just had my other classes hand write them in. Maybe I will start creating these for general classes.

Many of my advanced students are making careless errors on their quizzes...forgetting a negative sign, adding when they were supposed to be subtracting, etc. Making them re-quiz because of these mistakes forces them to be more and more careful with each quiz.

Re-quizzing has definitely allowed me to see student growth and has helped me to also identify weaknesses.

After classes have taken the 1st quiz on a topic. I grade them and sort them low-high. The following day, students work with a partner on making corrections. I do not grade the corrections. It is just for their learning. I take a quiz from the top of the stack (a low score), and a quiz from the bottom (a high score). The two students get together, and they know that if they have the high score, they have to actually teach and help the other student - not just show them their answers. This has been so beneficial! I hear the "ooooh, I see what I did" and "man, I can't believe I forgot that."
((music to my teacher ears!))

Beginnings of Standards Based Grading(ish)

One of my goals for the 2015-2016 school year is to implement some sort of new grading system. Why? Because I hate how now, students can take a test, fail it, and think it's no big deal because we automatically move on to something else.

NO!! IT IS A BIG DEAL! I want to hold my students accountable and have high standards for them. If they don't understand something by the day of the test, it doesn't just go away. They will see that same topic again, so it is important for students to "get it." I really don't care if they "get it" after 10 minutes or 10 weeks - all that matters to me is that they eventually master the topic. Not everybody learns the same way or in the same amount of time. Totally cool with that. And that's why something's gotta change in room 207!

I have read and heard a lot about Standards Based Grading (SBG), and I have been intrigued. I want to change my traditional use of quizzes, tests, and exams so that skills are specifically listed in the grade book instead of a meaningless quiz title such as "Quiz 3.1-3.3". I want to know the exact skill(s) that students do not understand and have not mastered rather than a mere grade of 16/20 on a quiz that covered 4 different skills. So, this year, the score for each skill will be listed in the grade book.

Once I know the exact skill that students are struggling with, I can reteach and provide opportunities for students to practice and re-quiz on that specific skill.

I don't think what I'm going to do is full out SBG, but is definitely more in that direction.
I'm not going to allow students to make anything lower than a "B" or 85% on ANY skill covered on a  quiz. If they do, I will enter that grade in the grade book, but students will be required to re-quiz on that one skill, and then their score will be updated in the grade book.

Although it will most likely change, this is how I'm envisioning this happening in my classroom:
-Teach 1-4 skills
-Students take 1 quiz on those skills. Each skill has it's own section and spot for a score within the quiz. So, if a quiz covers 2 skills, students will actually get 2 scores in the grade book - one for each skill.
-Return graded quizzes. Students fill in their scores for each skill on a grade tracking sheet I will pass out. They will glue these in the front of their Interactive Notebook. (see picture below)
-Students will re-quiz ONLY on the skill that they did not get an "A" or a "B" on.
-I replace the grade in the grade book if the score is higher than before.

Quiz Tracking Form

For re-quizzing, I'm thinking I will have it in class probably once a week or once every other week or whenever time allows. For students that have mastered every single skill, they will have some free time while their peers are working. This will be a great motivator for students to do well on quizzes the FIRST time.

Questions/Thoughts I have as I am working through all this:

•  Should I still give tests? How will that work? Just give a cumulative test after every 2-3 chapters/topics since I will be giving more quizzes than normal? 
• This seems like a lot of grading...how can I manage that? Use Digits, Google Form, Socrative, etc. so that it is automatically graded? 
• I'm teaching 3 preps this year (yikes!) - should I only start this with 1 prep? Or go all in and have all my classes do this? 
• Should I enter all grades as I usually do (numerically)? Or, should I only enter the numerical score if the student passed the skill with an "A" or "B" and enter a "NY" for students that have "not yet" mastered this skill, but enter the actual numerical score in the comments section so that it is still on record?

What are your thoughts? I would love any feedback and/or suggestions you have!!