If you've taken steps to improve your own grading practices to be more accurate and equitable, then hats off to you. But a big part of a teacher's grading reform work should also be helping other teachers to do the same. Few teachers, if any, receive any education on effective grading in their teacher preparation… Continue reading Helping Teachers to Begin Grading Reform: A Staff-wide Grading Email
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Planning Ahead to Keep Up With the Rapid Evolution of School
Like it or not, our schools are rapidly changing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When schools first closed in March, educators had little time to prepare for the precipitate transition to distance learning. Perhaps most challenging was the unknown: not knowing what effective distance learning instruction looks like, not knowing exactly how to do it,… Continue reading Planning Ahead to Keep Up With the Rapid Evolution of School
Motivating Students Without Grades
Image by Gerd Altmann As distance learning continues around the country, teachers may find themselves grappling with the topic of student motivation. Bereft of the traditional tools and strategies commonly used to motivate students in face-to-face instruction, teachers may feel powerless to teach any student other than the most motivated. And for many, the biggest… Continue reading Motivating Students Without Grades
Navigating to a Pass/Fail Grading System
Once districts take the significant step of officially changing their reporting system, the real work of transitioning to the new system begins.
#DistanceLearning Recommendations for Grading, Assessment, and Feedback
Here are some distance learning recommendations on learning expectations, assessment, feedback, and grading to consider when making decisions in learning teams.
5 Steps to Address Distance Learning Problems
In this post, I'm proposing five steps to address some of the big distance learning problems. Of course every school and district is different, but I think if every school across the country took these five steps, our students will be in a pretty good place once we come out the other end of this crisis.
Some Criticisms of Distance Learning Packets
I’ve been openly critical of the packets that school districts around the country have assigned en masse as a part of their COVID-19 response plans. So I’d like to provide context for these criticisms. I'd also like to point out that these criticisms are meant to push our schools to continue to do more to serve… Continue reading Some Criticisms of Distance Learning Packets
Resource Spotlight: Argument of the Week
Photo by geralt from Pixabay As an English teacher, I've been profoundly influenced by the work of Kelly Gallagher. Although I've heard him speak many times and read most of his books, I was recently inspired by his keynote talk on fostering literacy in the classroom at the California Teachers of English Conference (CATE) in… Continue reading Resource Spotlight: Argument of the Week
Reflections on First Semester Grading Reform: 3 Challenges
This post continues from the previous one in which I shared some initial reflections on my first semester grading reforms. I’m doing so for two main reasons: To be thoughtful and deliberate, hopefully learning as much as possible from the experience to continuously improve my own practice.To help others who may be undertaking similar grading… Continue reading Reflections on First Semester Grading Reform: 3 Challenges
Reflections on First Semester Grading Reform: 3 Successes
It’s approximately the half-way mark of the school year, and to me, this means a couple of especially important things. It means the first semester is finished and grades have become a permanent part of student transcripts. With the second semester comes the opportunity to reflect on the successes and challenges of the 14 grading… Continue reading Reflections on First Semester Grading Reform: 3 Successes
Practical Classroom Solutions to Grading, Assessment, & Feedback 