Quizzes

This past year I have really been focusing on providing my students with as much quality feedback as possible. However the problem with feedback is often the quality. With 60+ students taking IB Economics at my school, I need to somehow balance helping them and leaving me with a vague semblance of a social life.

In the past I would give gives a quiz out of 15 marks or some other random number, then just divide their score by the total, times by 100 and there is your grade. While I will save much of my ranting against a 100 point scare for another post, as a teacher who must ensure a student is learning material over a two year period, I found these percentages in the grade book not very representative of my students' learning. More importantly I found them even less useful when reflecting on how I could better help my students.

One idea I have really embraced with my Year 1 students this year is the idea of standards based grading. The idea behind standards based grading is that you are assessing students on specific learning objectives. As an IB Economics teacher these are laid out quite clearly in the syllabus thus most of the work is already done for you.

Rather than give a kid a percentage grade on the whole quiz, they earn a 1, 2, 3, or 4 for each learning objective. Four means they have mastered the learning objective, three means they are proficient, two demonstrates they are still learning, and one signifies there is no evidence of learning. Each quiz might have six to eight learning objectives that students are assessed on. What I have really enjoyed is that this format allows me not only to target specific learning objectives and provided necessary feedback, but allows me as a teacher to see what didn't work or where there is some confusion in the class.

Below is a screen shot of a Google Spreadsheet where I keep track of all the learning objectives from each quiz. All the objectives are straight from the syllabus and I usually prioritize which ones make it on the written quiz. As you can see from the screenshot below there was still some confusion in regards to drawing the labor market diagram (2.3 Diagram Unemployment). My constant message over the two years with my students is: "Make your weaknesses, strengths." There is too much material to study everything as well as their other classes, they must prioritize. Students can now have a better understanding of where they are in class not only for upcoming summative assessments, but also when we begin reviewing next year for their IB test.

You can quickly format each cell to appear red or any other color to highlight
for the students and you where some gaps in the learning may be.

As for the grade book there is obviously some disconnect on the 100 point scale my school uses and the standards based approach I am employing for my students. Getting a two would be equivalent to a 50% and even a 3 is only a 75%. Thus each formative quiz is marked in the grade book as complete/not complete. The above spreadsheet is made public for both students and parents so everyone is clear on what is being assessed and marked.

As for the drawbacks the strongest one I believe is the focus on compartmentalization of the material and taking away from the big picture the students will ultimately be assessed on. Students might have difficulty making those connections on an IB type written assessment such as Paper 1. I am also struggling on how to assess those learning objectives which will be assessed as higher level thinking prompts. These are welcome challenges though as in the end the students need to know the material in order to form any type of response.

Utilizing standards based grading allows me to make quick time of getting quality feedback to my students. It is also helping better inform my lesson planning and future assessments. Now if I only knew what to do with all this time.