So here is my conundrum, and tell me if you track. The definition for "C" (grade wise) in most everything I have seen, is "Minimally meets expectations." This statement on its own makes sense. It is written in plain english.
The expectations for B.C. are very clearly laid out in the Proscribed Learning Outcomes (PLOs) and Suggested Learning Outcomes (SLOs). The PLOs make up the big picture, and the SLO fill in the finer details.
So the solution seems clear at first. If you answer some questions correctly but not others, then you get a C. And if you answer all of them correctly, you get an A. Right?
Well the answer to that varies, and is where I have an issue. The definition for a B, not A, is "fully meets expectations". So if you get 100% on a test, you should get a B, right?
Well what does that leave for poor lonely A? It's definition is "Exceeds expectations", but if you are expected to know all the PLOs and SLOs, then how can you exceed those expectations.
This problem would likely drive me insane, if I wasn't lucky enough to have a Faculty Adviser (FA for those of you "In the know") that was pretty tuned-in to the whole assessment thing. Now I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but the solution to me seems to be Bloom's taxonomy again. The expectations are that everybody fills the bottom two rows, Knowledge and Understanding.
This scratches my itch, but it creates another more disturbing one. I received my fair share of A's in my academic career. I don't ever remember assessing, evaluating, or synthesising. Sure in English class I would write essays, but typically that was just regurgitating what the teacher had said. Essentially it was knowledge, often it wasn't even understanding, but I dotted my i's and crossed my t's and didn't dangle my participles, so I got my bright shiny A.
What do you all think? Do we give out A's too easily? Are we not challenging our students enough? Or are Tests just to see who can get a B, and the assignments and activities there to see who can reach the A level?
Saturday 21 December 2013
Monday 2 December 2013
Parable of the Parachute Packer
First, a comic from xkcd.com, because if you are anything like me, after hearing this argument, you are going to be pretty choked with your old teachers and the old way of doing things...
At First glance, this doesn't seem to have much to do with education, so let me use another example that ake the comparison a bit more obvious. I like to call it the parachute packers parable. Pretend you have 3 students. If you have taught for a while, you will probably imagine a past student when you hear their descriptions.
The Set up
Student 1 is a bit of a flake. They miss a great number of classes, but they show great potential to be a great parachute packer some day. When they try they get 100%, when they don't try they just doodle on the test. They get 50% on the final, and their average mark ends up being 50% as well
Student 2 showed great promise at the beginning of the year. They tried really hard, and received excellent grades. Unfortunately one bad mark seemed to ruin their motivation, and they checked out mentally. Their final mark ended up being zero, but their average was 50%
Student 3 struggled. In the beginning, they just didn't get it. They failed their first 3 tests, but by the 4th test they started to get it, and on their last 2 tests they did very well, and they got 100% on the final.
Their final mark was 50%
Here is a graph of their marks
The Choices
So all 3 students ended up with 50% in the course which, for the sake of argument, we will say is a pass. Which student would you want to pack your parachute?
I suppose if you have a death wish, you would want student 2, who apparently forgot everything they learned about parachute packing by the time the final rolled around. Maybe they were extrinsically motivated initially by the high marks, but when that motivation wore off, they stopped trying. Or maybe the embarrassment of doing poorly was too much of a hit to their self-esteem. Either way, not my first choice for a parachute packer.
You are going skydiving, so maybe you like to live dangerously, so maybe student 1 is your preferred packer. You have a 50/50 chance that they are on the ball that day, and by the time the final came around, they seemed to understand half of the concepts, so "YOLO" right? Do you want the student that put in the effort occasionally so that they would pass, but didn't care enough to try for the whole year?
Or, maybe you (like me) think YOLO means you should always wear a helmet, and seat belts are a must, so you want packer #3, who by the end of the course understood all of the concepts, but was punished by not understanding it at the beginning.
The Moral
We are checking for understanding, at least that is what we tell ourselves. But why does it matter if they don't understand something right away? What if it takes a while for the whole point of something to sink in? All 3 of these students received the same mark, do you think they all deserved the same mark?
Well? What do you think? Do you think they all deserved the same mark?
At First glance, this doesn't seem to have much to do with education, so let me use another example that ake the comparison a bit more obvious. I like to call it the parachute packers parable. Pretend you have 3 students. If you have taught for a while, you will probably imagine a past student when you hear their descriptions.
The Set up
Student 1 is a bit of a flake. They miss a great number of classes, but they show great potential to be a great parachute packer some day. When they try they get 100%, when they don't try they just doodle on the test. They get 50% on the final, and their average mark ends up being 50% as well
Student 2 showed great promise at the beginning of the year. They tried really hard, and received excellent grades. Unfortunately one bad mark seemed to ruin their motivation, and they checked out mentally. Their final mark ended up being zero, but their average was 50%
Student 3 struggled. In the beginning, they just didn't get it. They failed their first 3 tests, but by the 4th test they started to get it, and on their last 2 tests they did very well, and they got 100% on the final.
Their final mark was 50%
| Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Test 4 | Test 5 | Test 6 | Final | |
| Student 1 | 100 | 0 | 100 | 0 | 100 | 0 | 50 |
| Student 2 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 50 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Student 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 50 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
The Choices
So all 3 students ended up with 50% in the course which, for the sake of argument, we will say is a pass. Which student would you want to pack your parachute?
I suppose if you have a death wish, you would want student 2, who apparently forgot everything they learned about parachute packing by the time the final rolled around. Maybe they were extrinsically motivated initially by the high marks, but when that motivation wore off, they stopped trying. Or maybe the embarrassment of doing poorly was too much of a hit to their self-esteem. Either way, not my first choice for a parachute packer.
You are going skydiving, so maybe you like to live dangerously, so maybe student 1 is your preferred packer. You have a 50/50 chance that they are on the ball that day, and by the time the final came around, they seemed to understand half of the concepts, so "YOLO" right? Do you want the student that put in the effort occasionally so that they would pass, but didn't care enough to try for the whole year?
Or, maybe you (like me) think YOLO means you should always wear a helmet, and seat belts are a must, so you want packer #3, who by the end of the course understood all of the concepts, but was punished by not understanding it at the beginning.
The Moral
We are checking for understanding, at least that is what we tell ourselves. But why does it matter if they don't understand something right away? What if it takes a while for the whole point of something to sink in? All 3 of these students received the same mark, do you think they all deserved the same mark?
Well? What do you think? Do you think they all deserved the same mark?
Friday 22 November 2013
Why not grades? Part I - The early years
In my previous posts, I have been pretty down on the whole grading system. Maybe if I explain how I came about this opinion it will help a bit.
It boils down to motivation. A lot of educators view grades as both the carrot and the stick. The claim is that good grades motivate "good students" to do well and bad grades punish the "bad students" for not doing well. The rational is that if a student gets a bad grade it will make them want to try harder to get a good grade, if a student gets a good grade it will feel good and make them want to work hard to continue to do well.
I don't agree with this sentiment. First of all, it doesn't mesh with my high school experience. I know that when I didn't do well in the early grades I would feel bad, ashamed, discouraged. I had tried my hardest but it still was not good enough. I did fairly well without trying, so the discouragement did not happen often (thankfully for me). More often than not, I would not have to try very hard and I would do well. I'm not saying I am smarter than everybody else or anything, I think this was the case for most people. Early years are not terribly hard, so many students do not have to work that hard for the marks.
Unfortunately there comes a time in most student's lives where they do have to try in order to do well. In my case that was my first year of university. I would say it took me 3 years of university before I finally figured it out and understood how to study and prepare and actually learn.
What were your early years like? Did you breeze through only to struggle later, did you do poorly and get discouraged, or did you struggle and learn to work well?
I think students are a bit like butterflies. You see, a key area of development for the butterfly is breaking out of the chrysalis. If you cut it out, the wings will never be strong enough for the butterfly to actually fly. If you never challenge students, they never develop the ability to try. But if you punish them for trying and failing, they will eventually lose the drive to try.
Students need a safe space to try, fail, and learn from their mistakes
Grades are final to students. That 50% on a test is immutable, so why do anything about it? That 50% has helped the teacher to understand what the student doesn't get, but in all likelihood, the student still has no idea what they know, and what they don't know.
My ideal test
So I come down pretty hard on multiple choice (MC) tests. And I understand why many teachers like them. They support a diverse set of learners, they are easy to mark, they reduce test anxiety etc. etc. etc. But I am just not convinced that a student that gets 50/50 on a MC test actually understanding 100% of the material.
I've heard the response "Well how are we supposed to design a test then". I am going to try to put my money where my mouth is, and tell you exactly that
1) Get the knowledge stuff out of the way first. It should be fairly easy, recognition based, this is where you can have MC, matching, fill-in-the blank etc.
2) Comprehension and application questions. Probably written, one or two sentence answers.
3) Analysis.- get the student to draw out the big idea from the unit. This provides room for them to show you what they actually know
4) Synthesis/evaluation - here you write statements that the students will evaluate based on the information they have learned in the unit.
Obviously this model does not work well for all classes (math for example), but I will attempt to demonstrate how it would work for science.
Take this science 10 plo (Proscribed learning outcome) and it's corresponding Slo (suggested learning outcome)
B2 assess the potential impacts of
bioaccumulation
million (ppm), biodegradation, and trophic levels (with reference to
producers and to primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers)
‰
identify a variety of contaminants that can bioaccumulate (e.g.,
pesticides, heavy metals, PCBs)
‰ describe the mechanisms and possible impacts of
bioaccumulation (e.g., eradication of keystone species,
reproductive impacts)
‰ compare the impact of bioaccumulation on consumers at
different trophic levels (e.g., red tide in oysters and humans;
heavy metals in fish and humans; PCBs in fish, birds, whales)
‰ research and analyse articles on the causes and effects of
bioaccumulation (e.g., mercury contamination in Inuit
communities and the Grassy Narrows First Nation community)
Level 1 questions
"What trophic level experiences the greatest effect from bio accumulation"
Level 2 questions
" You suspect a gold mine has accidentally released mercury, you test the water, but your instruments are not sensitive enough to measure it at such low levels. How/what else could you measure to prove the water was contaminated by mercury? Why can you test it this way?"
Level 3 questions
It is hard to demonstrate with one PLO, this would probably take the other parts of the unit into consideration. Something like " Nature tends to find a balance, explain this statement using what you have learned from this unit"
Level 4 questions
I have the most fun with this level
"Your friend tells you that the oysters soak up all the red tide toxins, so all the other sea life is safe to eat, support or deny your friends claim"
or
"Your aunt tells you that 'the world is so polluted that there is no turning back'. How would you respond to this?"
What do you all think? How do you make your tests more challenging? How do you make sure you are not just checking for knowledge acquisition .
Why grades?
Over the past year or so, I've had a lot of discussion with teachers (old and new) about grades. The opinions seem to fall into one of two categories:
1) Grades are what the game is all about. Post them early, post them often.
There are variations on this theme, some say to keep it between you and the student, some say to put them on the wall, some even say put them on the wall from highest mark to lowest mark so the students know where they sit in the class.
2) The grades are not why the students are here, the students are here to learn. The grading is the least important issue of the whole process
I will admit my bias right now, and say that on the spectrum between 1 and 2, I am firmly on the 2 side. Not even close to 1.5
What really bothered me was the range of teacher opinion. How could all of these people, (every single one of them a fantastic educator) have such different opinions on a subject as integral as grading?
What I think it boils down to is not "why grades" but "why school". I think an educators opinion on grading is closely related to their justification for education in general. Do we have schools to keep kids busy, is it to train the next generation, is it to produce finely tuned adults, why do we send kids to school? The opinions on grading are so varied, because few teachers agree on just why exactly we send kids to school in the first place.
I can't speak for other teachers, but the following is my opinion on the matter.
Education supplies what society demands from it. Pre-industrialized nations simply needed enough education to allow farmers to count their pigs and chickens. As industry picked up and became more complicated, there was a need to have people that were trained enough to build railroads and operate machines in factories. Adjusting from an agrarian education model to an industrial education model is not terribly difficult. Math goes past 1+1=2 and into a squared plus b squared equals c squared. Easy as pie, people just go to school for longer.
What society demands from education now, is far more complex. Twenty years ago, there were jobs where you would follow formulas and punch in numbers. Those jobs still exist, but by and in large they have been outsourced. They are the focus of another society and another education system.
So what does THIS society require?
In a word, "innovation". Education 2.0 if you are into that kind of language. We need to train the youth of today to innovate and adapt. As educators, we can't see what is around the next bend anymore. The world is changing far too quickly. We need to teach our learners how to learn. Now does that mean we don't teach them the Pythagorean theorem? Of course not, but it should not be the focus of what they are learning. The learning with that should be how it works, how to use it, then practice problem solving with it. In other words, we need to move up blooms taxonomy a little bit
It seems like we spend a lot of time at the base, with knowledge. In fact, thinking back on my education, I would say that it was almost exclusively knowledge based. (It may have been even worse in university) .
I suppose I am trying to say two things here 1) I don't want to focus on general knowledge 2) I don't want to give students tests to show me what they know, I want to give students tests so they can show themselves what they know.
This is getting pretty long, so stay tuned:
Check out my future post on
"My Ideal Test"
"Why not grades"- on motivation
"It's not what you know, it's when you know"- on late marks, final exams and scaling
- Mr. H
https://deltalearns.ca/terryainge/2013/10/28/understanding-assessment-how-i-fell-out-of-love-with-the-grading-program/
http://tomschimmer.com/2011/02/21/enough-with-the-late-penalties/
http://chriswejr.com/2013/11/10/1-videos-for-starting-dialogue-on-rethinking-awards-and-rewards/
1) Grades are what the game is all about. Post them early, post them often.
There are variations on this theme, some say to keep it between you and the student, some say to put them on the wall, some even say put them on the wall from highest mark to lowest mark so the students know where they sit in the class.
2) The grades are not why the students are here, the students are here to learn. The grading is the least important issue of the whole process
I will admit my bias right now, and say that on the spectrum between 1 and 2, I am firmly on the 2 side. Not even close to 1.5
What really bothered me was the range of teacher opinion. How could all of these people, (every single one of them a fantastic educator) have such different opinions on a subject as integral as grading?
What I think it boils down to is not "why grades" but "why school". I think an educators opinion on grading is closely related to their justification for education in general. Do we have schools to keep kids busy, is it to train the next generation, is it to produce finely tuned adults, why do we send kids to school? The opinions on grading are so varied, because few teachers agree on just why exactly we send kids to school in the first place.
I can't speak for other teachers, but the following is my opinion on the matter.
Education supplies what society demands from it. Pre-industrialized nations simply needed enough education to allow farmers to count their pigs and chickens. As industry picked up and became more complicated, there was a need to have people that were trained enough to build railroads and operate machines in factories. Adjusting from an agrarian education model to an industrial education model is not terribly difficult. Math goes past 1+1=2 and into a squared plus b squared equals c squared. Easy as pie, people just go to school for longer.
What society demands from education now, is far more complex. Twenty years ago, there were jobs where you would follow formulas and punch in numbers. Those jobs still exist, but by and in large they have been outsourced. They are the focus of another society and another education system.
So what does THIS society require?
In a word, "innovation". Education 2.0 if you are into that kind of language. We need to train the youth of today to innovate and adapt. As educators, we can't see what is around the next bend anymore. The world is changing far too quickly. We need to teach our learners how to learn. Now does that mean we don't teach them the Pythagorean theorem? Of course not, but it should not be the focus of what they are learning. The learning with that should be how it works, how to use it, then practice problem solving with it. In other words, we need to move up blooms taxonomy a little bit
It seems like we spend a lot of time at the base, with knowledge. In fact, thinking back on my education, I would say that it was almost exclusively knowledge based. (It may have been even worse in university) .
I suppose I am trying to say two things here 1) I don't want to focus on general knowledge 2) I don't want to give students tests to show me what they know, I want to give students tests so they can show themselves what they know.
This is getting pretty long, so stay tuned:
Check out my future post on
"My Ideal Test"
"Why not grades"- on motivation
"It's not what you know, it's when you know"- on late marks, final exams and scaling
- Mr. H
https://deltalearns.ca/terryainge/2013/10/28/understanding-assessment-how-i-fell-out-of-love-with-the-grading-program/
http://tomschimmer.com/2011/02/21/enough-with-the-late-penalties/
http://chriswejr.com/2013/11/10/1-videos-for-starting-dialogue-on-rethinking-awards-and-rewards/
Monday 11 November 2013
The Best Day of My Teaching Life (so far)
I am a high school science teacher by training. So you can imagine my trepidation regarding being called in to be a primary LST teacher (elementary school teacher that helps with students that need a bit of extra attention). Well work has not been plentiful, so back to Elementary school I went!
The day started off much as I expected. Students were distracted and hard to control. They all had to be molly-coddled, and the language used to communicate with them was simple and limiting.
I came down to a class to take out a few students to help them with their reading, and it was pandemonium. The teacher was speaking to the students very kindly and saying "friends, can you all find your seats please?". It didn't work. She tried turning the lights off, she tried counting down, every trick I had ever learned, she tried. It didn't work. All the teacher jujitsu that I had been taught was defeated by a group of twenty five 8-year-olds. Fed up, I asked if I could try something. Exasperated, she said "sure, why not"
I stood up (from my tiny chair), and in my best teacher voice I said loudly and firmly
"Grade two's and threes, give me your attention now".
I instantly had their attention. Uh-oh, now what do I do with it?
"Everybody should be in their chairs in 3- 2- ...."
I didn't have to get to 1. They were all in their chairs, and paying rapt attention.
Great, right? Well I thought I had gone and done it now. I felt that I had scared these poor little tykes, and that they would hate me forever.
The other teacher asked the 4 students to line up with me. Strangely enough, I had 6 students. The teacher asked the 2 extras to sit back down.
"Aww, but I want to go with Mr. H" one responded.
'cute' I thought, maybe I didn't screw up to badly?
"I want to go with Mr. H too!" a student at their seat chimed in
I was met with a chorus of students that all wanted to go with me now. Being strict did not deter these little tykes at all. Now I was all sunshine and rainbows for the rest of the day, but it seemed like showing the occasional "rain cloud of reality" didn't hurt, it may even be beneficial.
Elementary teachers of the world, what do you think? Do we have to put the Marry Poppins voice away sometimes, or does being harsh with the children warp their fragile little minds?
The end of my day went even better.
The last 30min or so of my day were unoccupied, so instead of being a bad TOC, I thought I would see if I could help the other LST teacher. She had two groups of kids for some reason, and one group was working on cell theory. I asked if I could steal the science kids from her. She said "yes" quite gratefully.
I told the 6 students (Probably grade 6 or 7) that I was normally a high school teacher, so if I said anything that didn't make sense, to ask me about it and I would do my best. For the next half hour I had one of the most rewarding educational experiences of my life. These students were exceptionally curious. I ended up going into the formation of phospholipid bylayers, the early RNA world, how viruses work, just to name a few things. Part way thought I thought "oh god, i've lost these kids down the rabbit hole, there is no way they understand any of this" then one of the students looked pensive and asked
"If the DNA is how the nucleus controls everything, but DNA can't leave the nucleus, how does it do it's job?"
I was gob smacked. I didn't know if I wanted to laugh or cry. Not only did that question show that 1) He was paying attention and 2) that he understood, but probably most importantly he was thinking critically about the information that I was passing on to him. I felt like a prospector that had been getting by on gold dust, that finally strikes the mother load.
I went on to explain how RNA reads the DNA and then proteins are made from that RNA template, and the students ate up every minute of it. They peppered me with questions and then asked if I was coming back. If I could have spent all day answering their questions I would have.
To put a cherry on top of that, the other teacher informed me that the boy that had all the questions was "impossible to teach" he never payed attention to anybody.
If I can find students like that once a month, I would do this stuff for free
-Mr. H
Intro to this blog
My Name is William Hemrick, and I am a new teacher in British Columbia. I was lucky enough to have a very forward thinking supervisor for my Teachers College, so most of the ideas about teaching that I developed are on the "new" side.
As I have gone out into the world of education, I find that the ideas/ pedagogy that I have developed around teaching, are not quite what many other teachers are working with.
It is my hope with this blog to develop a dialogue with pre-service in-service, and post-service teachers. In the process, I may share a few "feel good" stories about teaching.
Stay tuned!
As I have gone out into the world of education, I find that the ideas/ pedagogy that I have developed around teaching, are not quite what many other teachers are working with.
It is my hope with this blog to develop a dialogue with pre-service in-service, and post-service teachers. In the process, I may share a few "feel good" stories about teaching.
Stay tuned!
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