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Rubber Band Cars

There's something powerful about physically making something that works yourself. The tinkering, trial and error testing, and early frustration often lead to some impressive feelings of accomplishment in the end.

This year when covering the types of energy and energy transformations, I realized a project I ran for 6 years at my school in Michigan would fit in quite well: The Rubber Band Car Project.1

You can check out the handout and guidelines I provided to students, though the basic gist of the project consists of:

  • Building a car from found materials;
  • Using no more than two #33 size rubber bands to power the car;
  • Getting said car to move as great a distance as possible (6 meters is the goal);
  • Describing how the energy stored in the rubber bands is transformed and conserved as the car does its thing.

Testing Rubber Band CarsInitially students are generally pretty worried because the guidelines ban items like CDs & DVDs as wheels, and Legos or other such objects from being used. However, as I share some examples of cars from the past (see them here), and as students start tinkering and sharing ideas with each other, the worries start to fade.

Most of the building process takes place at home, but I provide one day in class for students to bring in their cars (or materials that will eventually become their cars) and work on them in class. This is often extremely helpful for students who are struggling to figure out how to put their cars together and get them to work. As they walk around the room, they can see how everyone else is tackling similar problems and get ideas for how to solve their own.

Issues

Standards-Based Grading. I had a pretty solid assessment system that I was quite happy with before I went all-SBG. I'm not sure I'm quite as comfortable with how I'm assessing it using the SBG system. As of right now I'm not too worried by this. The old system had many years of tweaks and adjustments to get it to that sweet spot, and it'll probably take a couple tweaks to get the SBG-assessment for the project there too.

"I didn't do it." In the past there was always a small minority (~2% to 5%) of students who just didn't make anything for the project. This year it seems like the percentage of students with no car will be higher. I'm not sure what to think of that, but it's worrying.

Cool stuff

Non-competitiveness. I try my hardest to make sure the assessment system and the general classroom environment is as non-competitive as possible for this project. I want students to share ideas and collaborate with each other even though they're all making cars individually. For the most part this works out. Students who've figured things out are generally happy to share their knowledge with students who don't. However, there's no getting away from the fact that most students want the bragging rights for having the car that went the furthest.

Engaging the unengaged. Having to physically make something that works is a different sort of project for many students. It's interesting to see how some of the "I-need-an-A-or-I'll-die" students struggle with the project while some who often struggle with traditional projects become the super stars.

Results. I've always recorded every students' results and shared who had some of the most successful cars,2 and this year I'll be using a self-sorting Google Spreadsheet to automatically post the results to the Rubber Band Car Project Page in near real-time.3 I'm not sure if that's really necessary, but it is a fun trick. Perhaps I'll have to do a post on creating self-sorting spreadsheets if anyone is into that sort of thing.

 

  1. A big tip o' the hat to Mr. Randy Commeret at Grand Rapids Christian High School; from whom I grabbed this project from nearly wholesale. Rumor has it this project has been around for 20ish years in total.     [↩]
  2. Which might feed the competitive nature that I'm trying to avoid, but to date it hasn't gotten too competitive between students.     [↩]
  3. Which means you can follow along with the results as we test cars on Thursday, March 24 & Friday, March 25. 🙂       [↩]
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Teachable Moments, for all of us

On Friday, when discussing the earthquake and tsunami that had just struck Japan, I remember saying to students, "It looks like the death toll will be in the hundreds, which is horrible, but considering the size of the earthquake is pretty low." Well...as I write this,1 the official death toll is at 2,414 and expected to rise to perhaps as high as 10,000.2

Still image from a 1st person view of the tsunami
Still image from a 1st person view of the tsunami

We've been discussing the earthquake and tsunami in class, though I haven't done much "educationalizing" of the disaster at this point. So far my M.O. has been to show some videos or pictures, give news updates of what's going on, and then have time for students to ask questions or just talk about what's going on. At some level I feel like trying to craft organized lessons about subduction zones, Moment Magnitude scales, tsunami generation, or nuclear power generation would be taking advantage of the disaster.

I want students to know what's going on in Japan. I want students to understand the details. That's why I show the videos, why I spent a big chunk of time searching for video and images that seemed to capture the disaster. And the fact is, students want to know about the earthquake and tsunami and potential meltdowns at nuclear power plants. They want to know why tsunamis are so dangerous ("I don't get it, it's just water, right?"), what causes earthquakes ("I heard it was caused by the 'super moon.'3"), and how nuclear power plants work ("If there's an explosion at a nuclear power plan, how can it not be a nuclear explosion?").

The general public wants to know what's happening and why. Our students want to know what's happening and why. I want to know what's happening and why. However, I want student interest to drive our classroom learning about the disaster. I don't want to use the disaster to drag out a month of earthquake & tsunami lessons if the students aren't interested in learning more.4

I have been pleasantly surprised with the number of more "mainstream" media outlets doing some exemplary explaining about earthquakes, tsunamis, and nuclear reactors. I've especially been impressed with the time given to explain how nuclear reactors work and then what's going on at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants. Boing Boing did an excellent job describing how nuclear power plants work and NHK World explained simply yet thoroughly what was happening at Fukushima.

These are the times when it seems very clear to me that a little scientific literacy (or at least a healthy dose of skepticism) is an extremely useful skill. There are quite a few bits of misinformation out there, but there are also a lot of quality explanations of the science behind the disaster.

 

  1. at 10:10pm EDT, March 14, 2011       [↩]
  2. via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Sendai_earthquake_and_tsunami#Casualties [↩]
  3. FYI, it wasn't. See here for a in-depth take down of the super moon myth     [↩]
  4. Yes, I get following the state curriculum means I'm essentially forcing this same thing most of the school year with students. My especially guilty feeling on these topics most likely derives from the fact that I'd feel like I'd be taking advantage people's suffering simply as an educational hook.     [↩]
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Exams: SBG-style

The goal of any exam, ideally, is to assess how much students have learned over the course of a semester or school year. I changed the focus of grading in my classes from counting points to counting progress towards specific learning goals, I knew my exams needed to reflect that change as well.

This summer I had initially thought I might design some sort of alternate, performance-based exam that would mesh well with the tenets of standards-based grading. However, this year all exams for the same class were required to be exactly the same regardless of teacher. Since I'm currently one of four teachers who teach the 9th grade Integrated Science course and the only one using standards-based grading, I knew I had to take our common exam and make the best of it.

So, the exams had to have the same questions, but they didn't need to be in the exact same order, right? I reordered all the questions on the exam based on the learning goal they assessed.

Multiple choice section, SBG exam

This process uncovered several questions which didn't address any of the learning goals, so these "others" were grouped together to make their own section.

Overall, I wasn't thrilled with the exam, but I think it was quite good given the requirements it had to meet.

Assessment

Breaking down the exam into its composite learning goals allowed me to assess each learning goal on the exam individually. It took decently longer to grade the exams in this way, but it also provided me and my students with a wealth of information about their learning throughout the first semester.

I created a Google Spreadsheet that automatically calculated the individual scores for each learning goal and the overall exam grade. Once the grading was done, I shared each student's spreadsheet with them through Google Docs.

Below is an example of a filled out scoresheet (and here's a blank calculation sheet if you're interested):

Example Exam Calculation Spreadsheet

Details

Overall grades. You may notice I calculated two "overall" grades. I told students their overall grade on the exam would be the average of their scores on each learning goal (giving each learning goal equal weight), but I wasn't sure if that might result in some odd effects on the overall grade due to some flaw I hadn't planned for. As a check, I also calculated the exam's score "traditionally," or simply by dividing the total points possible by the total points earned. Interestingly these two scores were almost always ridiculously close to each other (for most students it was <1%). I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Unfinished long answer questions. The exam had 6 long answer questions and students were required to complete at least 4 of them. I had a few students who either skipped the long answer questions entirely or did fewer than were required. It didn't make sense to penalize any one learning goal for not doing all the long answer questions (since, after all, simply not doing the long answer questions didn't necessarily mean they didn't understand the content of the learning goals). However, I felt that there should be some penalty for doing fewer than required1.  As a result, I calculated what percentage one long answer question was of the entire exam and divided that by 2- which gave me 1.84% in this case. For each required long answer question that was not completed, I took 1.84% off their overall exam grade.

Spreadsheet-fu. I honed some serious "if-then" formula skills in the process- an area of serious spreadsheet-fu weakness before this spreadsheet. Despite the time it took me to figure out how to make the spreadsheet do what I want, I'm still pretty sure using the spreadsheet instead of calculating everything by hand saved me several hours. Plus, now I have another formula type under my belt.

Final thoughts

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my predictions about what learning goals would be problematic for students on the exam were dead-on. They were the same learning goals that more students struggled with during the course of the semester. There really weren't any surprises on the mid-term.

What then, is the purpose of an exam in a SBG classroom? Exams are meant to assess how well students know the material that has been presented throughout the semester. However, if I am regularly assessing students' understanding of learning goals throughout the semester is there any benefit to a final, summative exam? Most students' exam grades were eerily close to their grades for the rest of the semester2.

If we're doing SBG well, it seems to me the final exam is unnecessary. We should already have a good understanding of exactly what students know, so why bother with a big test at the end of the semester?

Should the exam in an SBG classroom be something totally different than what we've traditionally come to think of exams as being? Or should they just be done away with?

_____

  1. At first I really balked at penalizing students for not completing the required long answer questions. However, after thinking about it for a bit, I came to the conclusion that to some degree the decision of a student to skip one or more of the long answer questions  was indicative of a lack of understanding of the content at least to some degree.     [↩]
  2. On average, the exam grades were just a bit lower than grades for the rest of the semester. I can rationalize that in several ways: additional anxiety due to it being an exam, or a less than perfect exam design, etc.     [↩]
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EduCon: Like being wrapped in a warm comforter

There's often concern expressed about events like EduCon or the group of people that we follow on Twitter as being an echo-chamber of similar ideas- where we all pat each other on the back for being the same. While that's a valid concern, for me, coming from my particular situation, it's invaluable to come together with a group of educators who are of a similar mind as myself.

The people were of all types, from all sorts of schools, filling all sorts of different roles, and yet there was this common thread: it was clear that we all cared about students and their learning first. This wasn't just a get-together of a group of far flung friends, it was a meeting of passionate like-minded individuals. What struck me most about the weekend was how strong the feeling of community was among this seemingly disparate group of educators. Despite the event lasting just over 2 days, there was a tangible sense of shared purpose. It was great to meet so many amazing educators.

It was like being wrapped in a warm comforter after being left out in the cold.

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SBG: One Quarter Down

This Friday marks the end of the 1st Quarter of the school year. At this point I'm totally a SBG n00b. For the standard, "I can successfully implement standard-based grading into the 9th grade Integrated Science classroom," I'd rate myself at the "basic" level. I've got the basic idea, I've got the basic setup, it's going basically well, but it's a long way from where I hope it will be by the end of the year.

Reflections

Students don't get it

Students understand that their overall performance in class is based on their scores for the learning goals we've gone over in class. They understand that only their most recent score for each learning goal counts. Unfortunately they have at least 8 solid years of being conditioned point-grubbers. The whole concept seems totally foreign to their entire school experience. It saddens me that explaining to a student their grade is based on their actual understanding of the content draws a blank "I don't get it" look. I keep telling myself that by frequently explaining the basic tenets of SBG and sticking to my guns students will eventually reach the point where understanding smacks them upside the head and they spend the rest of the year walking around school demanding that all their teachers do it this way. However, I'd be willing to bet a big part of the problem is the fact that...

I don't get it

Well, I get it, but I'm not sure I get how to implement it. I'm not sure I get how to communicate it. I'm not sure what I'm doing day to day supports the "radical" mandate of SBG1. There have been several changes to my school life this year that have left me time-strapped and feeling I just don't have time to go through my curriculum with a fine-tooth comb and tweak it to fit the SBG mandate. Part of the issue is my understanding of...

Qualitative SBG

Many of the SBG Titans out there teach quantitative subjects such as Math or Physics. I'm teaching a much more qualitative 9th grade Integrated Science. Conceptually, I understand how SBG works within a qualitative course. On the implementation side I'm not as comfortable. Great inquiry-based activities focused on the life cycle of stars are a little trickier for me to design than those around the work-energy theorem. I'm not trying to cop out of providing a curiosity-rich learning environment here; some topics are just harder for me to design great stuff around. Which leads to the complication of the...

State curriculum

The Connecticut State Curriculum Standards for 9th grade Integrated Science aren't that bad. Sure, they're often poorly worded and overly expansive,2 but there are a lot of interesting and relevant topics in there. I'm not one to worry about skipping a standard or six, but there are people (generally the people that fill out my evaluations) who think it's best that I not miss any.

Yesterday I had a crazy daydream about a place where there weren't oh-so-specific standards for each class and I could really let students' questions and curiosity drive what we cover when. I get why we have state standards and think it's generally a positive thing, but I dislike their specificity. We keep forgetting to leave room for curiosity and the pursuit of interesting questions. I need to find a balance between keeping up with the other Integrated Science teachers and making sure I'm putting student learning at the forefront, which is much more difficult because I'm...

Going it alone

I'm the only teacher at my school using SBG. I've pitched it to my Integrated Science colleagues and explained its wonders to my principal, but they didn't seem too interested3. I'd like to work with them to puzzle through how we'll deal with the state standards while doing SBG, or share the effort of designing great activities and projects that keep curiosity and discovery at their center. Even trickier: we were given a mandate that our mid-term and final exams must be exactly the same. That wouldn't be a big deal if we were all on the SBG Express. Since I'm riding solo the common exams probably won't live up to my expectations of what an SBG exam should look like. It certainly won't be focused solely around the learning goals I've developed, which is a major bummer.

Some Questions

2nd Quarter

In the traditional points-driven system, the points simply reset to zero at the beginning of each quarter. Students start fresh. In my understanding, that doesn't really jive with the SBG system. At this point, I'm planning on bringing over all the learning goals and scores from the 1st Quarter into the 2nd and not reset student scores until the end of the semester. How do you SBG wizards out there handle this? I'm not sure if holding over grades from quarter to quarter is technically "allowed," which might make that decision for me.

Assessment routines

While there's no one right way to implement SBG, I'm always looking to make my implementation higher-impact while remaining easy to understand. Here's how things have gone down so far:

  • I give frequent small quizzes over a learning goal or two that we've been talking about in class.
    • If there is an obvious deficiency in student understanding, we take some time in class focused on the weaknesses and do an in-class reassessment later. If the vast majority of students understand the topic it becomes the responsibility of individual students to reassess before or after school.
  • I do frequent projects or activities that cover a couple to several learning goals. Usually there are at least a couple content-based learning goals and a few skill-based learning goals.
  • I've been pretty formal about letting students know when I'm assessing a learning goal. I'm not sure if this is the best method- especially for learning goals in the vein of, "I can effectively communicate and collaborate with others to complete a task." I'd like that to simply be an "always on" learning goal that can be assessed anytime they work in a group. However,  I'm not quite sure how to communicate that assessment in the midst of group work, or whether it'll cause a problem to not assess every student on that learning goal for each group activity. For example, it's easy to pick out students who aren't doing well on that learning goal while it often isn't as attention grabbing when they're doing well. As a result I worry about assessing the negative instances more than the positive, thus artificially driving that score down.

How do you handle "on the fly" assessment?

______

  1. "Learning is King"       [↩]
  2. There are at least 5 standards I could envision being semester long courses by themselves. [↩]
  3. On a positive note, my SBG implementation came up in a meeting where the Asst. Superintendent of Curriculum & Instruction was present and she seemed interested in hearing more.     [↩]
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The Story of My (Connected) Life: CECA 2010 Preso

This post includes information and additional resources for my presentation at the Connecticut Educators Computer Association (CECA) conference on October 18, 2010. The full conference schedule is available online, if you'd like to see the other sessions being offered.

[UPDATE: Several people requested information about how to access twitter from school if it's blocked. I added the info in its own section below.]

Presentation Title

The story of my (connected) life: Building your own network for professional learning

Description

Follow one educator's journey from online newbie to a well-networked teacher while exploring and discussing the possibilities for in-time, on-demand professional learning through online connectivity tools such as blogs, twitter, and more along the way. We'll explore how to create your own professional learning network that will allow you to share and connect to other expert educators from around the world.

The Slide Deck

The story of my (connected) life- CECA2010

The Rules

  1. Learn.
  2. It's about relationships.
  3. Jump in. Play around.
  4. Figure it out as you go.
  5. Share. Don't be shy.
  6. You don't need to read it all.
  7. Be patient.
  8. Reply. Converse.
  9. Follow people of interest.
  10. You don't need to do it all.
  11. There are no rules.

Resources

RSS & Google Reader

Resources mentioned

Accessing Twitter from school (if blocked)

First, I recommend trying to get Twitter unblocked. Many times it's blocked by default without anyone really thinking over the benefits of leaving it open. These are all options I've used at one time or another, all with varying degrees of success. Many I haven't used in a long time, so your mileage may vary.

  • Tip #1: Use FireFox
    • Mozilla FireFox is a web browser that lets you add "plugins" that give it additional features. It also tends to work better than Internet Explorer. I've been able to convince my IT people to download FireFox on my school computer without too much effort1.
    • Add Twitter Plugins to FireFox
      • TwitBin or TwitKit
        • I've used both, though I tended to like TwitKit better. Even though Twitter was blocked it was able to update the twitter feed- though the twitter user's images never showed up.
  • Tip #2: Use HootSuite
    • If you can't download anything, you might try HootSuite. HootSuite is a web-based twitter application that has a nice set of features. Though Twitter has been blocked at various schools where I've tried, often HootSuite isn't. If it's not blocked, then you can get to your Twitter stream. HootSuite does require you to create an account, but it's pretty easy to do.
  • Tip #3: Go big.
    • This option might be frowned upon by many IT people & administrators, but from what I've heard it works exceptionally well. Of course, there is a price to pay (literally). WiTopia is a program that allows you to circumvent internet filters. It's primarily designed for those living in areas with a censored internet (i.e. China), though I've heard it works quite well at schools as well. The downsides are a) it costs $50, and b) it requires a download, which you may not be able to do on a school computer.

Please don't use any of these tips if they'll really tick off your IT people or violate state, federal, or local laws. 🙂

Personal Learning Network (PLN) Info

Education/Science Blogs I Read

  • 2¢ Worth
    • David Warlick's blog on educational technology. Warlick has been blogging about educational technology longer than I've known blogs existed.
  • Action-Reaction
    • Frank Noschese is a high school Physics teacher in New York. He blogs about his adventures in standards-based grading and physics education.
  • Always Formative
    • Another member of the standards-based grading borg, Jason Buell teaches middle school science in San Jose, CA.
  • Apace of Change
    • By Damian Bariexca, an English teacher turned school psychologist who also happens to be quite savvy with the instructional use of technology.
  • apophenia
    • Written by danah boyd, one of the premier thinkers/researchers on the subject of teens' use of social media.
  • Bridging Differences
    • A back & forth exchange between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch on education, policy, and reform.
  • Deborah Meier's Blog on Education
    • As advertised. Meier is on of my personal edu-heroes.
  • Digital Ethnography
    • Written by Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropology professor at KSU. He studies how we interact in and through online environments and is an amazing educator in his own right.
  • Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?
    • Scott Elias, now a middle school principal (& Apple Distinguished Educator) shares his thoughts on leadership, education, & technology.
  • Drape's Takes
    • Darren Draper is a director of technological services at a Utah school district and (if I'm not mistaken) is working on a Ph.D focused on teacher professional development.
  • dy/dan
    • Dan Meyer has taught math in CA and is interested in using digital media (among other things) to create meaningful learning experiences for students. He's gotten a lot of recognition lately, including a stint on Good Morning America & an interview on CNN. Currently a doctoral fellow at Stanford.
  • Educational Insanity
    • Jon Becker is an assistant professor at the Educational Leadership Department at VCU and knows a lot about school law, educational research, school policy, and the founder of the "data-is-a-plural-noun" posse.
  • Ideas & Thoughts
    • Dean Shareski is a digital learning consultant at a school division in Saskatchewan (easy to draw, hard to spell) and teaches at the University of Regina. He was awarded the 2010 ISTE Award for Outstanding Leadership in Technology and Education, which is kind of a big deal.
  • ijohnpederson
    • John Pederson is an Educational Technology Liason in Wisconsin who shares short, interesting, and sometimes quirky & irreverent bits of knowledge.
  • in education
    • A creative-commons licensed online educational journal that explores "our connective educational landscape."
  • JoeWoodOnline
    • Joe Wood is a teacher and instructional technologist from California. He's done quite a bit of work with Google Earth and helping teachers maximize the technology they have available to them.
  • Mathalogical
    • Sarah Cannon teaches math in South Dakota. I believe she might be currently working on an advanced degree in education policy.
  • Megan Golding
    • Megan Golding is a math teacher from Georgia who shares her thoughts and ideas on math and a variety of other subject.
  • Moving at the Speed of Creativity
    • Wes Fryer has been blogging, podcasting, and presenting about education for a very long time. He shares tools, tips, and insights into education and technology use.
  • Nashworld
    • Sean Nash, a biology teacher from Missouri, shares thoughts on teaching, pedagogy, education, and technology. Typically very insightful & interesting reading.
  • Non-Inertial Teaching
    • Brian is a physics teacher in Ohio who blogs about teaching physics and implementing standards-based grading (a system I switched to this year as well).
  • Open Thinking
    • Alec Couros is a professor of educational technology and media at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. He's tweeted more times than any other one person I follow on twitter and is a education rockstar in his own right.
  • Practical Theory
    • Chris Lehmann is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy, a progressive, inquiry-driven high school in Philadelphia. He's an inspiring leader and advocate for children, learning, and schools. I'm really not sure how he fits everything he does into a 24 hour day.
  • Quantum Progress
    • John Burk teaches physics at a private school in Atlanta. He's a standards-based grading aficionado.
  • /Re:thinking/
    • OK, I don't really subscribe to this blog (because it's mine). I post irregularly on science education, reflections from teaching, standards-based grading, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
  • Science Teacher
    • Michael Doyle is an ex-pediatrician now teaching high school science. His beautifully written blog shares his thoughts on life, education, and living (among other things).
  • Stager-to-Go
    • Gary Stager (who happens to be the CECA 2010 keynote speaker) provides his thoughts on education policy and reform as well as articles written on computing in the classroom. He's been using technology in the classroom since I was just wee child.
  • Teach Paperless
    • Shelly Blake-Plock shares his vision and work to create student-centered, technologically advanced classrooms that empower students to take charge of their own learning.
  • Teaching|Chemistry
    • Ms. Bethea shares her thoughts and experiences from the chemistry classroom. A member of the standards-based grading borg.
  • The Edge of Tomorrow
    • Ben Grey does a lot of thinking about what schools and instruction should look like given the resources that are available to us. Good deep thinking shows up in his posts. Also, don't utter phrases like "media literacy" in his presence.
  • The Line
    • Dina Strasser is an all-star English teacher. She's one of my favorite bloggers- she knows her stuff and loves to share her experiences.
  • Think Thank Thunk
    • Shawn Cornally is an ultra-super-duper standards-based-grading enthusiast who teaches physics, calculus, and some programming. An excellent educator who focuses on learning before all else. His writing style (and links and hover text) is irreverent and awesome. He's from Iowa. He might turn into Cornally-Hulk if I forgot to mention that.
  • WCYDWT-Science
    • Inspired by Dan Meyer's (see dy/dan above) "What Can You Do With This" method of instruction, this is a group blog of science teachers posting videos and images that might be useful to spur student inquiry. Started up by Eric Brunsell.
  • Weblogg-Ed
    • Will Richardson has been a visionary thinker in the educational use of technology for a very long time. He's a super-blogger who will often get scores of comments on his blog posts. He provides plenty of food for thought.
  • (worthlessness and wit)
    • Daniel Agins teaches middle school social studies in Connecticut and is one of the few members of my professional learning network that I've met. There are a lot of good thoughts and ideas coming from his direction.

That's a lot of blogs (see Rule #6).

  1. Even though I didn't have the ability to download programs on my school computer, it did let me install FireFox plugins. If that doesn't work for you, I'd recommend talking to your IT people about changing some settings around.       [↩]
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Citations & tracked classes: SBG questions

We're now 8 days into the new school year & standards-based grading has officially been introduced and implemented (though we don't yet have much in the way of assessments in the book). I really like how the use of SBG has required me to rethink how I present a topic and how we spend our time in class1.

However, a couple issues have popped up where I could use a little guidance from some SBG-brethren (or sistren):

Problem 1: Citations & plagiarism

In the past, if students failed to cite their sources or plagiarized, I wouldn't accept their project/assignment/what-have you. I would give them an adequate amount of time to make the necessary changes and re-submit it without penalty, but if they didn't fix it up they wouldn't get credit.

As I was thinking through the SBG system, I realized that if I have a standard for properly citing sources and not plagiarizing information I could be opening a loop-hole. I did a twitter shout out on the issue, and the SBG-Jedi @mctownsley, responded to my question with a question:

Is citing sources an important issue you want all of your students to demonstrate?

Well, yes. I believe it's a very important skill to cite your sources- both for academic integrity and to point any readers toward your sources so they can read them and see if they agree with your interpretation of them. However, imagine a student really hates citations (let's face it, they are a pain) and decides to the play the system. They realize that as long as they use citations properly for the last assessment that requires them, they really don't need to do citations for any other previous assessments. This doesn't seem ideal.

My solution as of now: I have a standard for citations. In addition, if a student turns in a project or activity that is missing citations when it should have them or is plagiarized, then I'll give it back, tell them to fix it up, and not change any grades on any standards (except for the citation standard). While this technically leaves a loop-hole intact, I believe it'll prevent too much monkeying around.

Problem 2: Tracked classes

I teach 9th grade Integrated Science all day, every day. However, there are three(!) levels of Integrated Science: Honors, regular, and Foundations. Let's ignore issues with tracking students since it's an issue beyond my control at the moment2.

Should all Integrated Science classes share the same standards? Should achieving mastery be defined the same for all classes? My school weights honors classes more heavily (to prevent students taking low-level classes from becoming valedictorian, presumably), which seems to suggest there's a belief that the class requires less effort3.

My solution as of now: (1)The standards for all levels of Integrated Science are the same, but may be adjusted as I see necessary. If one level is showing a lack of knowledge I feel is important, I'll feel free to add a standard in for just that level (and vice-versa for removal of standards). I'm trying to be flexible and provide the best learning opportunities for all students. (2) I'm really not sure about this one. Right now I'm going to expect students in all levels to demonstrate similar levels of knowledge or skill to achieve mastery. Since I'm flexible on how much time I spend on standards in different classes, I'm willing to spend extra time if needed to get all students to mastery level.

Whatchoo think?

I know there are many people out there who have already dealt with similar issues. I'd love to hear your own solutions to these problems as well as insights into my "solutions as of now."

_____

  1. I really like the way it allows me to focus in on areas of student weaknesses and differentiate instruction with super-laser-guided-satellite-gps precision.     [↩]
  2. For the record, I find it's 95% a bad thing- including some pretty serious (but never mentioned aloud) issues with minorities being over-represented in Foundations and under-represented in Honors. There's an unspoken message being given to our minority population...     [↩]
  3. Not an assertion I agree with, but thems the facts.     [↩]
Posted on

Re:naming (Re:thinking)

For the last 32-ish months, this blog has been titled "Sustainably Digital." It was something I didn't spend much time coming up with. Basically, I was playing on the idea that if we want technology to become a regular part of the school environment, it needs to be implemented in a way that can be maintained easily by even those who aren't exactly tech savvy to start.

I can't really say the content of this blog has related too well to that original idea. Thus, I'm rechristening this space:

BRAAAIINNNNSSS!!!!

Re:thinking

Rethinking:

  • science education
  • lessons, projects, and activities
  • school culture
  • education policy

Re: (my) thinking:

  • reflections, thoughts, and ideas

No promises the content of this place will improve with the (hopefully) more apt name.

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Image: Brain Model, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (2.0) image from biologycorner's photostream

Posted on

SBG Express: Details

The basic idea of standards-based grading is simple: Grade students on their understanding of specific learning goals. It's the details of that implementation that are devilish. In honor of the "publish, then filter" idea, writing this post is my way of working through (and hopefully solidifying) those details.

What standards?

I've started making a list of standards. I keep oscillating between thinking, "These standards are way too specific!" to "These standards are way too broad!" I'm taking that as a sign that they're about where I want them. This is a list in progress. As of this typing the standards cover the first several mini-units of 9th grade Integrated Science. I'm open to any insights, questions, or comments you have concerning the standards. If you missed the subtle hyperlink earlier, CLICK HERE TO VIEW STANDARDS!

Grading

When the rubber hits the road, I need a specific way to calculate a student's letter grade at any point in time. Figuring this part out is spending more mental energy than anything else. An incorrect implementation might make SBG no better than old-fashioned grades by cumulative points- and in face could be worse. I'd like to avoid that.

  1. Each standard is worth 10 points.
    • Points translate directly to % and grades, so 9.5 = 95% = A
  2. The overall grade is calculated by averaging student scores on all the standards that have been assessed.
    • Some SBG'ers don't like the averaging method since some poorly understood standards might be covered up by a few well understood standards. Conjunctive scoring would get around this (Jason Buell gives a nice overview of conjunctive scoring here), but I worry that conjunctive scoring is a bit too "out there" for administrators, teachers, or students to get behind, and furthermore I'm not sure PowerSchool (our student information system) can handle it. I've put conjunctive scoring on the "possible future enhancements" list.
  3. Students may re-assess on any standard on any day.
    • Limits:
      • 1 standard per day, per student (the Cornally Corollary)
      • Students must know what standard they want to re-assess
      • Students can get help from me or re-assess, but not both on the same day (the Nowak Limit)
  4. Mid-terms and finals are summative
    • Meaning these grades can't change with reassessment. Total value of both combined is 20% of the overall course.
  5. I'll be using the SBGradebook along with PowerSchool to record & report student progress.
    • I'm not going to lie, I'm a little worried about how much time it'll take to enter grades in twice. However, the SBGradebook looks like such an exercise in graphy-awesomeness I couldn't not use it. Plus, it should help students track their own progress more effectively.

I'm pretty sure if you've written about SBG in the past 12 months you'll see something of your system here. Hopefully you view it as flattery and not me biting your awesome ideas.

I'm pretty sure writing this post helped me more than it will help any reader. I needed to hash out several competing ideas I had floating around my head. As always, if you see something glaringly obvious that will sink this SBG ship, let me know.

Posted on

SBG Express: I've got a ticket to ride

I mentioned it in my last post, and I'm officially announcing it here. My ticket is punched and I'm on board the SBG Express1 for the 2010-2011 school year!

I've spent the last few weeks reading and rereading several teachers' explanations and reflections on standards-based grading (including, but not limited to Shawn Cornally, Jason Buell, Frank Noschese, Matt Townsley, and several others who will be mad at me for not giving them a shout out). The more I read, the more I knew that standards-based grading was something that in some sort of sideways, subconscious way I've been working towards implementing the last several years even though I didn't even know what "SBG" stood for until May of this year.

Here's my basic understanding of SBG to date:

  • Assessment and grades should accurately reflect student learning (not just student homework-turning-in abilities)
  • Instead of using cumulative-points-earned as the basis for student grades, use progress towards a set of "standards (or "learning goals", or "knowledge criteria," or "whatever you'd like to call them")."
    • These standards describe specific areas of knowledge or expertise that students should gain. For example, "I can explain the law of gravity and understand what factors affect the strength of gravitational force."
  • Grades in your gradebook should help students realize where their understanding is great and where it's lacking.
    • Knowing they flunked "Quiz: Chapter 7" isn't helpful. Knowing they got 6 out of 10 on "I can explain why stars transition from one stage to another as they progress through their life cycle" gives the student valuable information that allows them to focus their remediation.
  • A grade on a standard is not set in stone (until exam time). Students can re-assess on any standard at any point in the school year. Grades can go down if the student shows a lack of understanding later in the course.
    • This should allow a students' grade to more accurately reflect their actual learning rather than be punished for not learning something before a big test when they knew it by the end of the course. Likewise, the student who crams successfully for the big test then forgets it all should have a grade that better reflects actual understanding.

I know! Sweet, right?

Fortunately, I've been blessed with a personality that's totally fine jumping into a project without having worked out all the details ahead of time. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to explain this whole SBG thing to quite a few students, parents, teachers, et cetera, in just a few days.

Tomorrow I'll share what I've got so far in the "details" folder.

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  1. copyright, 2010, Shawn Cornally [↩]