SBG – Scary Beneficial Giant

So… last fall I was completely intrigued by Standard Based Grading and began to investigate. I really like the idea of focusing on the understanding rather than the grade. I know I only care about the understanding, but I do so many things because kids care about the grade and I know I reinforce it to get student effort. I decided in August to jump in and go for it in my calculus classes because I found someone’s Calc standards online that matched my curriculum and I’m the only one teaching it at my school so there’s flexibility for me to try something different.

I explained how I’m grading, and the kids didn’t really have any questions. They don’t have any other teachers that do this, or if they do it’s a minority for sure. I teach 3 periods of this class and finally after two weeks a kid did say they were concerned about the grading because a 3/4 would be 75% from a minor mistake. They must not have been listening to the explanation. I told them that it would be higher, but I don’t want to focus on what the grade is going to be so I tried to not say much more.

Our first assessment is tomorrow and I have it all ready. I don’t know if I’m doing it right, but it’s got most of the same problems I previously had, but organized by standards. Then to the left of each standard I put blank /4 where I will put their score. I’m a little nervous about how this is going to work out. I’m totally unsure how I am going to make reassessments on call even with notice… I’m doing an online form from google docs. But I’m excited to add an old objective on subsequent assessments.

Tons to think about. Pray for me.