Student Performance

I was just commenting on Adam's blog and thought that I would post here too. This semester I have taken a new approach to the language that I use with students when talking about their grades. Ironically, it began with a commitment to not use the word "grades" for an entire semester when talking to students. This is not as easy as it sounds, but I am doing my best and I do have a purpose. Every time I talk about student performances on homework / exams / etc I talk about feedback. I use the word "scores" instead of "grades" and although they signify the same thing, I think that they have different connotations. I have tried to tell my students that their scores on homework assignments and exams are feedback about their understanding of the material we are studying. Earning a low score on an assignment is not to necessarily be taken negatively because it is useful feedback about how well the student understands the material. Also, in my classes, scores are reflections of moments in time. For example, if a student earns 6/14 on a homework check, it means that he or she did not understand the reading from the night before. The student is allowed to come in during an unscheduled hour (more language here - I attempt to not say "off-hour" because that has a different connotation than "unscheduled hour") and make up points on the homework check. Each question is worth 2 points and students may make up half of the points possible. Thus, a student who comes in, corrects the missed questions, and writes an explanation for each question missed, gains back half the points. So the student who started out with 6/14 can end up with 10/14. I make a note in Infinite Campus about how many points on an assignment are makeup points. The message I am attempting to convey is that just because someone doesn't understand a concept the first time he or she is asked about it, does not mean that the concept is forever out of grasp.

The other strategy I have been using is talking about letter scores before exams. I tell the students that the letter scores they earn convey feedback messages. I tell them that if they earn a C (70-79%), they have achieved the basic level of understanding that I was hoping that they would achieve by studying the material in that particular section. If they earn a B (80-89%), they learned more than the basics. If they earn an A (90% +), they learned and can apply that information in many ways that will become more apparent as the semester progresses. If they earn a D or an F on an exam, then my interpretation is that they did not learn what I wanted them to basically understand. Those students are allowed and EXPECTED to come see me during unscheduled hours to discuss what went wrong and correct their errors on the exam. They may earn enough points to raise their grade to a 70% - my definition of the basic level of understanding. I realize that all of this relies upon an assumption that my exam does a great job of truly assessing the material from the unit, and there are certainly flaws with that idea. Yet I would hope that after five years at AHS I have learned to do this better over time. Excluding students who have learning disabilities and those who have no idea how to study, I will say that IN GENERAL, students who do better on exams can apply the historical concepts to past and present times better than students who perform poorly on exams. This is not always the case of course, and exams are not the be all and end all of assessment, but I am not ready to totally trash them either. A mixture of different types of assessments (including writing and discussion) works well.

In a future post I need to talk about students who perform well on exams and yet do not seem to be able to apply the information.