Standards Based Grading

To whom it may concern:

I am a fairly new teacher. I completed my student teaching last year and I am subbing this year. I have just realized I made a grading error last year.

I sincerely apologize,
Ashley Cogburn

Ok avid listeners/readers/prospective teachers, we must stop grading on a points scale! I have done three plus hours now doing some in-depth research on Standards Based Grading (SBG). I cannot believe the horribly atrocities, we, teacher commit by assigning points to our students for their work. Don't get me wrong, I know there has to be some sort of assessment of their work, other wise they won't have a grade, their parents will freak, and the State of Oregon won't grant them their graduation. BUT! (There is always a "but") we need to assign a better marker of how students are learning.

For example:
There is a 16 question test. 1-10 are multiple guess question, 11-14 are short answer, and 15 and 16 are essay questions. Assign points that you think you would give the students if you were the teacher. DO NOT LOOK AHEAD!

Alright, say you gave 1-10, 3 points each, for a total of 30 points. Then say you gave 11-14, 5 points each, total of 20, and 15 and 16 25 points each, for a total of 50. 30 + 20 + 50 = 100.

Now say that student A got 1-10 correct, 11 and 12 correct but none of the other questions correct. That's only a total of 40 points. Student A received 40/100. What a terrible score! But what if you were teaching the same class as me, but we assigned the points differently and your student passed the test, knew the same information as mine, but my student failed. Is that a fair way to grade? No stinking way!

Therefore I have found that Standards Based Grading is a better way to assess students in the classroom. There are different ways to go about this, but the most common I have found is that we need to start using more rubrics for specific standards*. Say you are teaching a freshman level social sciences class, there are 10 standards that you are going to teach throughout the term. Each standard should have a progression of learning. There should be four steps to mastering the standard. The first step should be a below basic level of understanding. Maybe the student has heard of the terms in the standard, but doesn't know anything else. That is 1 point. Another student may have a general, or basic knowledge of the standard, that is 2 points. A third student knows everything about the standard and is proficient, that is a 3. However, maybe you have a student that can take that standard and apply it to the outside world, other classes, his/her life, etc. Now that my friends, is a 4 point advanced knowledge of the standard.

*Another word for standard could be target, aim, goal, etc.

In the end, what I am trying to say is lets start changing our grading system so we can measure the literal knowledge that our students know about a topic. I want my students, now (even while subbing) and in the future to not be cheated by the point system, but to be measured accurately on what they have learned and accomplished.

SBG systems can better measure what a teacher needs to re-teach or introduce in another means to students. SBG systems can give better feedback to students by showing the students if their means of study is correct, or if they need to try and use a different system to produce different results. SBG can also give students and teachers immediate data on whether the students are meeting the targets/topics/aims or whether the students are not meeting the proficiency level. Maybe the teacher is using a method of teaching that is too direct, maybe lectures to teach the ways to use a map in geography is not helping. The teacher could then switch to a more interactive approach by handing out blank maps and having students work with the teacher to learn about maps.

There is also a number of assessment available for the teacher who wants to switch to SBG. Obstrusive assessments: asking questions to students during a lecture to check for comprehension. Unobstrusive assessments: observing students explaining, in a group, the way the Nile River Valley floods during the rainy season. And Student-generated assessments: Student A says that they are a visual learner and would like to create a movie for you, using clay, to show how population is relative to river flood plain in drier climates. The later is the most UNDERUTILIZED form of assessment. Students should have a creative outlet, if writing is their thing-let them write a paper, a bill, a speech, anything. If your student is into drawing, let them draw you a diagram, a picture, a mural, a collage of what they've learned. And for the fortunate, Ray Brown**, maybe your student is a builder and actually build you a sized to scale replica of a trebuche. I hope you all know what that is.

Thank you for listening to a rant about changing grading to fit what students actually know. Contact me for more information if you so desire.

** Ray Brown was my supervisor and advisor for my Master of Arts in Teaching program.

The Long Oregon Trail . . .

So, my wonderfully amazing friend Sunny has done it again y'all. I used her Oregon Women's Suffrage presentation for the International Women's Day workshop I put on at Eastern Oregon University. I had wonderful feedback!

I had three attendees, sad number, but they were all very informed when they left me. We talked about some of my faves: Abigail Scott Duniway, Vera Katz, Barbara Roberts, to name a few. I think overall I helped some very ambitious women learn about the Trailblazers of Women's Suffrage in Oregon.

I think that the way they left the presentation with confidence and a will to make change will reflect in our community. It also reflects upon all the hard work Sunny has done!

I don't thank her enough, and I know the Center for Women, Politics, and Policy should probably thank her more as well! She is a Trailblazers herself, as soon as her curriculum is mandatory in Oregon schools I will definitely brag about being one of the first to teach it! It changed my entire outlook on teaching.

I now know I need to help make every student who walks through my door connect to the material no matter the cost to my sanity. Just like I am trying to do now with my seventh graders. However, the Brazilian hip-hop dance video may have done the trick today!

Until later, keep it classy, brassy, and ever so sassy!

Industrial Revolution Solution!

I have been working on my industrial revolution unit, creating it for my eighth graders. Now, I have some fantastic ideas that I think may really work. But I thought I should write them out first.

1. Hold class with no lights, except for candles. This may be a problem, solution = electric candles. Boom! My students will totally respond and understand the importance of light bulbs. Second problem? Getting electric candles.

2. Morse code activity. Learn morse code for some sentence or phrase. Give my kids a sheet with morse code letters with their morse code code, then tap it out on the desk. First student to get the phrase wins a prize. Then have student learn to do their names, friends' names, etc.

3. Inventor day: have students come in with a prepared presentation, they are the inventor (can dress up) and at the end we all guess who it is. This will involve fun times and will teach my kids how to research.

4. Menlo Park day: students will pick one of Edison's numerous inventions, draw it, and we will create Menlo Park on a wall in the class.

HOW FUN ARE MY IDEAS????!!!!!!!! I am so super excited to be able to work with kids that are younger. I think they will appreciate all my ideas and learn at the same time. I have never been more excited about being a teacher, than I am at this exact moment. Woot!

Women, Eighth Graders, and Test Reviews--oh my!

So as I was transitioning into my second teaching placement I realized my new students were learning about Women's Suffrage. This is interesting because compared to my high school students, my new eighth graders were really glancing over the topic. They skimmed over the topic as if 80+ years could be discussed in a total of ten years.

I wonder how I can expand lessons to meet my students needs, yet at the same time not bog them down with information that is too in depth? And that begs the next question, what is too much information for eighth graders? They need to expand their critical thinking skills so that high school isn't too hard. But how do you transition students into higher levels of thinking when most students are apathetic toward pushing themselves further?

I want to motivate students to challenge themselves, but I am stuck on the how.

I helped my eighth graders review for their Suffrage test, yet most of them got a 5 out of 10. I just want my students to love learning, like my love for teaching!

Any advice would be ok with me fearless readers.

Topics for next time? Maybe, a little sushi and a discussion on standardized tests.

Listening to Sting Inspires Creative Thinking

The last month or so I have been on a Sting kick. If you don't know who Sting is, then I am sad. He is a singer AND he used to be the lead vocals for the Police. Google it. Now, I have been listening to him for my whole life, because my lovely mother made me when I was younger. But around 13 or 14 I actually started to love his lyrics.

As you all know I have been teaching my students some amazing lessons inspired by my good friend Sunny, and I finished that today. So I am sitting on my couch waiting to go to a meeting, and I am listening to my favorite Sting song, "Moon Over Bourbon Street." The lyrics have been so mysterious sense I was in high school. And the best quote is. "I must love what I destroy, and destroy the thing I love." To me this is the epitome of how I feel about my five days of teaching. (Yes I am summing up my entire mini worksample with Sting lyrics).

I loved teaching my students about what women went through to gain the rights they should have had from the beginning. But the hard part, is that students DON'T want to learn about this topic. It has nothing to do with the teachers, or the way we teach our lessons, it's the topic itself. WHY IS IT SO NEGATIVE? Why do students think that I am a hairy-legged, crazy, man-hating teacher if I teach about women's suffrage? Yes I am a feminist, but I am a third-waver. I love inclusivity (is that a word?) and I shave my legs for comfort.

The sad point I am trying to make here is that we need to take suffrage back! As women and educators we need to take this topic back and make it fun for our students. We need to show to them that learning this stuff is important and not boring. That it is interesting and engaging. I am sick and tired of people making suffrage to be this terrible topic like the Civil War.

Suffrage as a topic in public schools is cursed and has some terrible notion behind it. I guess the sad fact is that we haven't come that far. Burning our bras in the late 60s and early 70s wasn't enough. Throwing out our Cosmopolitan magazines, protesting beauty pageants, and throwing away our makeup was not enough to get out from under the patriarchy. I am sick and tired of feeling bad for loving a topic that inspires me to change the world.

I am tired of males AND females putting such a negative connotation with Women's Suffrage. Clearly, they weren't raised to think critically about history and learning. Clearly, they (males AND females I am ranting at) are not on the same playing field as all the other scholars I know. Clearly my fellow fems and I need to start a new Third Wave movement to show that women's history is, oh let's say 51% of the WORLD'S history. Does that not make sense to anyone but me?

I am just starting to feel the pull from "the man," and I am beginning to think that is not okay. I am thinking from scratch here when I say we need to change that whole idea, of "the man," as well as attitudes towards women. We haven't reached equity if people still can't understand that women's history is important. And complaining about suffrage is the entire reason women wanted suffrage.

Well, at least that is what I think. Keep is classy, brassy and a little sassy . . .

Shirley Chisholm

I must say, yesterday I forgot to blog about the AMAZINGLY inspiring, Shirley Chisholm. I too, want to be forever remembered as a catalyst for change. I think her simple and to-the-point quotes are so shockingly fresh.

I projected a quote from her "Tremendous amounts of talent are being lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt." And some of my students, with just as much tenacity as Chisholm herself, interpreted that quote in such a way that I wanted to cry.

Working with this beautiful curriculum, that Sunny put together, has really rejuvenated my activist spirit. I just can't express myself clearly enough in this blog. I feel like I am becoming the woman I have always dreamed about becoming. Going to NLO, and meeting women just like myself, renews my feminism and my love for women and politics on an hourly basis. I never knew how much I needed my own grit until recently. I never knew that teaching my students about phenomenal women would make me feel so proud of myself and so worthy.

At the end of the day I thank fate for pushing me to go to NLO, because if I hadn't gone I would have never felt so connected to myself and to my dreams and goals of raising awareness on women's rights. I would have never gotten the curriculum to teach my students about the trailblazing women from Oregon, and especially Shirley Chisholm.

Watching that footage from her 1972 campaign gives me goosebumps every time. She is the epitome of beauty. Her reasons for running for president were genius. Her words were so powerful, that when she spoke I couldn't tear myself away. Chisholm is a woman that I will never forget in my entire life. She is the reason that I feel confident in teaching my students about women's suffrage. She is the reason I look forward to hearing the whining about "learning about women" from my students. Because I can reply honestly, to my students, that what they are learning is important.

One student left my classroom the other day and thanked me for teaching because of my enthusiasm. I was touched, but I realized too, that I was excited to teach because the next day was Shirley Chisholm day.

I will leave you again readers, but this time with a quote that is more powerful than any other I have read in a long time.

"I am, was, and always be a catalyst for change." Shirley Chisholm

Roadblock on the way to Equity

Alright everyone, I have had some minor issues with curriculum. Let's say a couple of potholes. The first and foremost being whining. Apparently ALL my students have learned about women's rights and the suffrage movement, yet their scores on the content exam may say something different. I understand that they think what I am teaching is boring, yet at the same time I don't care.

I am passionate about what I am teaching, and I am excited so I feel like they should be too. I feel like all my students should try to engage in what I am teaching them, but it's definitely pulling teeth.

My favorite question thus far has been, "Ms. Cogburn, why do we have to learn about women?" Well young, impressionable student, we are 51% of the population--maybe it would benefit you to learn about them. Why does history and government have to solely be about males? I think that women are a very important and I don't understand why it's so painful for students to learn what teachers are teaching.

Therefore my answer is this, "I am the teacher and I decide what we learn. Ergo, deal with it." I just think that students need to try, no matter what their opinion on the matter is, just try it.

Other than that, my potholes comprise whining about taking notes and whining about writing critical thinking questions. Every now and then I get some minor snags with what is a part of the lesson, like today a fire drill ruined my jigsaw. But who knows? I feel like teaching is a fun challenge, and I never back down from a challenge. I love my students, they are great individuals, but all the little problems really built up this week.

I am feeling drained, but teaching the same thing, three times a day is really hard. At the end of the day everything is so regimented and structured I feel like I want to do something completely different.

Until next time, keep it classy, brassy and a little sassy . . .