Assessment System with Resources: An Overview

Most of the conversations I hear around assessment center on either isolated practices ("No late penalty" or "Prioritize recent scores") or vague, generic concepts ("Use standards-based grading" or "We should be focused on mastery"). All of these elements are great, but the problem is that we too often don't have a picture of how all the pieces work together to build a cohesive system. 

This was my struggle for the longest time (and in some ways still is). I would change my grade book, but I didn't change the types of assessments I used. I stopped using late penalties, but I didn't develop a different method of accountability. I viewed everything in isolation, and as such, I felt like I was floundering, juggling all of these individual plates, just hoping one of them wouldn't fall. 

How it felt keeping my isolated practices running.

This post is my attempt to explain how the isolated practices build into a larger system of assessment that is cohesive, comprehensive, and flexible. I'm always continuing to work on it, but I'm at a spot now where both my students and I have access to meaningful data about learning that we can act on. I am also going to try to provide templates along the way for you to steal and use for your own. No sense reinventing the wheel if it's already waiting to go on your wagon. If it's in here and helpful for you, you have my permission to take it, make a copy, and use however you need to. 

1. The Grade Book

This is the foundation of how all of this operates. Sadly, I've never found an online grade book that does what I need. Too often I'm warring between my values and philosophy of assessment and what the online grading program allows me to do. I finally realized that the only way for this to work was for me to develop my own space for record-keeping in a way that makes sense, prioritizes learning, creates space for growth, and emphasizes a summative evaluation of data instead of an average over time. 

Now, what I'm not saying here is that you shouldn't put things into your official grade book. There are people who depend on that - administration to be able to enact systems of support, parents to be able to stay informed about their student, etc. There is value and a necessity to the online grade book, but what I am saying is that most of what happens in that space has nothing to do with learning. 

What I have found helpful is to create a separate space for record-keeping that I have control over and can design to do what my students and I need it to do. To help illustrate this, my template is linked below. I will explain some elements of it afterwards. 

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE GRADE BOOK TEMPLATE

KEY ELEMENTS:

The goal for me is that I have a grade book that has a primary organization based on learning outcomes, space for multiple attempts at learning, and a way to calculate grades in a more meaningful (and less harmful) way than simply an average of scores over time. 

• Organized by learning outcome: If you look across the top of the grading template, the different sections each focus on just one learning outcome. This allows me to categorize my data into something more meaningful than just simple tasks. It allows me to see trends, patterns, and stories – those are where the you find meaningful information.
• Space for multiple attempts: What is school if not a place for students to try, fail, try again, and eventually succeed? While we may talk about how important that is, if our grade books don't have space for that to happen without penalizing the failure, we're just talking the talk, but we aren't walking the walk. Under each section, there is space to track multiple attempts towards a specific learning outcome. This allows both me and the student to be able to see growth in a tangible way. 
• Method of grade calculation: Unless you are in a mythical school where grades are a relic of a forgotten civilization (if so, I want to be you), you still have to enter grades into your official grade book. Most that I've run across have different methods for calculating final grades, but even the best ones still seem to have their flaws. By creating a teacher-controlled space for this, we are creating room for professional judgement and, hopefully, student self-evaluation to be a factor in determining final scores. My spreadsheet uses the mode, but then students and I talk together to determine if that is an accurate portrayal of their understanding. 

If you want to watch a video with me talking through my grade book, click here.

2. Grade Conferences

Once I've collected this data, my goal is then to be able to give it back to students and have conversations about their progress. These conversations actually results in the student and me deciding together what their grade should be. During the course of this conversation, the student talks me through each skill (sometimes only focusing on just the ones in the unit instead of all of them from a term). They identify what they believe to be their current score for each skill, as well as an overall grade for their progress. 

Because the grade book is organized by these learning outcomes and I can categorize data into them, it makes for much more meaningful conversations, as they truly can be data-driven while the student fills in the gaps and provides context to give the numbers a more comprehensive background.

Below is a link to an example of what my grade conference sheets (or data dashboards) look like. 

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE DATA DASHBOARD

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

I use a tool called Autocrat that pulls the data from my spreadsheet and maps it onto this document, creating a separate report for each student with just the click of a button (once it's all set up). 

Here are a couple of resources to explain how this works, if you're interested:

• This gives you an overview of my process: CLICK HERE
• For a more detailed walkthrough for Autocrat: CLICK HERE

Those individual reports get emailed to students with editing access right before grade conferences begin. I set up some time for students to process through their data, look at assignments for evidence, etc. to prep for those discussions. 

I will note that this is really uncomfortable for students to do at first. Students rarely get any sense of control with their grades. They are almost always just a passive recipient in the grading process. However, while it's awkward at first, students begin to really embrace it and take ownership of it after the first couple rounds. 

My goal (not always possible, especially right now) is that I get to have these grade conferences every 2-3 weeks so that we can update their progress and update the official grade book. 

3. Student Portfolios

The downside to the data dashboard is that they have a strong focus on scores. While it's helpful in guiding our conversations and helping students reflect, that emphasis on scores can actually be distracting to students (and harmful to learning if those scores are in front of them when receiving feedback). As such, each student has their own portfolio. The point of these portfolios is super simple: students identify their best work (engaging in some self-evaluation) and they record their feedback from their assignments, allowing them to collect the feedback and see trends, patterns, and growth (again, which is where the meaningful info is) as opposed to just isolated incidences of feedback that they see as connected to the task and not the learning. 

The goal with these portfolios is to provide space for processing after an attempt at demonstrating their learning. Too often we give students results and move on, expecting them to make meaning on their own. That's not the case more often than not, so this adds a step for us to pause and reflect, with the goal of looking ahead towards what we can learn next. 

Here are some examples of what these portfolios can look like: 

CLICK HERE TO SEE A GOOD STARTER PORTFOLIO

CLICK HERE TO SEE A PORTFOLIO ORGANIZED BY LEARNING OUTCOMES

CLICK HERE TO SEE A PORTFOLIO WITH A RUBRIC SPACE

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

Once I've given each student their own copy, they then get time after each assessment, project, etc. (anything that they get feedback on) to go in and reflect in this document. I'll be honest. They don't always love it, especially not at first. The key is that what they do on this document has to make an impact on what they learn after. Otherwise, this just feels like busywork, but if they truly get to reflect, identify trends, and then pursue learning they identified in that process, it becomes a step towards meaningful ownership, which is where a lot of untapped motivation hides in our schools. 

Again, the goal is that this is something separate from the "grades" so that the student has a space dedicated to learning while they are engaged in it. Then, using the first two steps, at intervals we can come together with the portfolios and the student data dashboards to have conversations about grades that are full of context and understanding. 

4. Providing Feedback

Now that we have a space to record the data, we have a method of providing that data to students, and we have a way for students to make meaning out of their feedback, the next thing we need to address is how to provide feedback to students. 

The key with all of this is that the feedback has to focus on trends (yes, that word again), and it has to be clearly connected to future learning. The goal is not that we're identifying errors but that we're identifying the next thing the student could learn. It's forward-focused feedback, or feed-forward as some call it. 

Here are a few of the methods that have been valuable for me and my students:

A. HYPERLINKED RUBRICS

If you are using rubrics to provide scores for students, that's technically feedback. However, too often I found that the scores didn't connect to any future learning. They were isolated from instruction. As such, I have started hyperlinking my rubrics. 

CLICK HERE TO SEE AN EXAMPLE OF A HYPERLINKED RUBRIC

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

The key is in how the rubric is built. Notice that the different levels are not indicators of quality, but rather more like steps in a process. You learn X first, and then we move onto Y. This helps the student be able to take ownership in their learning. I may not know how to go from "multiple errors in end-of-sentence punctuation" to "a few errors," but I can learn how to go from developing simple sentences to developing compound sentences. It makes the growth tangible, more concrete. Not only that, but it doesn't devalue earlier steps in the learning process.

Once those concepts are identified, then it becomes easy to see how to hyperlink resources in there. This makes the link between feedback and instruction tighter. It closes the loop on what used to feel like an open-ended process. 

B. VIDEO/AUDIO FEEDBACK

Especially during this time where we are often not face-to-face with students, feedback lacks the personal nature that we can bring into the classroom. We may write a comment on the side, but we also get to see the student and explain it in person. That personal touch is an incredible valuable aspect of meaningful feedback. Not only that, but many of my students have told me that they much prefer feedback in one of these formats. 

TO LEARN HOW TO DO VIDEO/AUDIO FEEDBACK, CLICK HERE.

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

Once I've left feedback for students, we take time the next class period for them to listen through or watch their feedback. The value of using a different medium is that they have to do some processing on their own to take the audio or video comments and add them to their portfolio. In this step, I encourage students to really think about the most important elements in the feedback and then look through previous feedback to see if they notice anything worth noting. 

C. TEXT EXPANDERS

Seriously, this is a game-changer for me. I got so sick of writing the same thing over and over on student work, and worse, often I had to give abbreviated comments simply because I didn't have enough time in the day. A text expander is the solution for that. What it does is allow you to create comments that you can then add by typing in a code. The video below will show how this works. 

TO LEARN ABOUT TEXT EXPANDERS, CLICK HERE

There is a similar thing you can do that's built into Google Classroom, but the piece I love about this is that not only can I add really detailed comments in less than a second, but I can also link resources in there, again tightening up that link between feedback and instruction. 

While all this feedback is great, it has to end up recorded and processed somehow. The portfolios mentioned above are how I help students make meaning of these isolated incidences of feedback, in an attempt to build a cohesive system of assessment. 

5. Gathering Evidence of Learning (Assessments)

First thing I will say about this step is to start changing your language. Stop talking about assignments, tests, etc., and start talking about evidence of learning. It broadens the scope of what we see as viable methods for gathering data about student learning. Really, this is the whole point of shifting towards a more standards-focused grading and assessment practice. It opens doors for us to assess in a variety of ways, to differentiate how we assess different students, and to look for evidence in new places. 

The second thing I'll say, going along with this, is that we should be using a varied approach to assessment. Are multiple choice questions bad? No. Are they the most reliable? For certain things, maybe. Do they give a complete picture? Definitely not. However, as pat of a larger set of data, they can be incredibly valuable in helping us triangulate student levels of understanding. That's really the goal. We should never be relying on a single assessment, but rather the goal is that we are relying on a large set of data to help us understand where students are currently at. So, let's start there: gather as many small pieces of evidence as you can instead of leaning on a few large ones. 

I definitely won't be able to cover everything about assessment or every type of assessment that I've found valuable, but I will have time to cover a couple things that have helped get past some sticking points for me in this new approach to assessment. 

A. What if I need more evidence from a student?

Do a brain dump. Brace yourself for giggles, especially if you have 9th grade students like I do. Here's what a brain dump is: "For this skill, tell me everything you know." It can really be that simple, but it gives you additional information that you can use to determine where a student is at. I like to take it a step further, as that is really just assessment OF learning, and try to move it towards assessment FOR learning by adding another elements. Once the student has identified everything they know, they get time to research more and add things in a new column. This helps them see what they still have yet to learn about the topic, pointing them towards their next steps (and again tightening up the loop between assessment and future learning). 

CLICK HERE TO SEE A TEMPLATE FOR A BRAIN DUMP

B. How do I assess students if I give them choice?

This was a nightmare for me. I would have them email me projects, but then I wouldn't know what skill they were working on. I would have half the projects in my inbox because they couldn't be attached in the LMS. It became almost too much of a headache to make it worth it, even though some of the best stuff I saw from students came when they were allowed the ability to choose to demonstrate their learning in ways that showcased their passions and interests, or when they got to choose the skill they were closest to mastering and got to give it another shot. 

As such, and this isn't anything revolutionary, but I created a memo sheet that accompanied anything involving student choice. On this memo, they would identify what they did and what they learned. Honestly, sometimes I didn't even need to look at the project because all the info I needed was on that page. 

CLICK HERE TO SEE A SAMPLE MEMO

Final Thoughts:

We've gone from creating a record-keeping process that emphasizes learning and growth to finding ways to give students their own data so that they can be involved in the grading process and feel a sense of ownership over it. From there, we talked about creating space for students to make meaning out of their feedback, and we went through a few different ways that we can provide that feedback, ending with a couple ways to gather more evidence of learning when needed. 

Obviously, this isn't everything. There are details not addressed and questions still left unanswered, I'm sure. My hope through this is that you see that simply changing an isolated practice while keeping the larger assessment ecosystem the same can result in lots of frustration or cognitive dissonance as you try to make two unmatched puzzle pieces fit together. Also, I hope this helps you see that simply shifting to standards-based grading doesn't in-and-of itself mean that the student experience will become more meaningful. 

We have to view everything as connected, and I don't just mean that in terms of assessment. My structuring of curriculum is tied to my assessment layout. My lesson planning is tied to students valuing feedback and taking ownership over their access to resources to push their learning. Even things like my students' social-emotional health is connected to how they experience grading and the worth they often associate with that in school. 

I can't emphasize enough that every single thing we do in our classrooms is connected to the other elements of our teaching. It's overwhelming. It really is, even still for me. 

But it's the little shifts that will end up making a big difference. A shift in mindsets that changes a shift in practice that changes the student experience even just a tiny bit for the better. That's what this is all about. That's why we get up every day to try to be better – because the kids we have in our room deserve it. 

We can't do it all at once, and we can't do it alone.

But together, over time, we can create the experience our students deserve.