The Gradeless Classroom: The Progress Report Conundrum
It started yesterday at the lunch table. The "progress report talk." When will we send them? How long will they get to bring them back? How many assignments are on yours? How many tests have you given? Who is failing? I got a sick feeling in my stomach, kinda like I used to feel in middle school when progress reports were about to come out. When discussions like these happen, I always feel like the odd man out. It always makes me pause, just for a second, and wonder Is the way I'm doing it really best? Shouldn't I have given a test by now? Surely there's some kid that I should be failing...if they're all doing well doesn't that mean I'm just a slacker, the "easy" teacher?
Old habits sure do die hard. It's so easy to get caught up in the assignment trap, especially when the kids are stuck in the finished=grade=done mindset and you can't figure out a great way to communicate progress to parents without putting a number on anything. I've been fiddling around and tweaking my grading/ gradeless system for two years now, and the progress report conundrum has been an unsolvable riddle for me.
UNTIL TODAY!
You know how when you've struggled and struggled with a problem, and it seems insurmountable and impossible until the simplest of solutions just smacks you in the face? Talk about Occam's razor! I've always struggled with progress reports, because I don't want to put a number on the progress my kids are making, but at the same time I know parents need to know how students are progressing and what we are working on. I want my communication to speak to their learning in a meaningful way. I want it to be clear about what we are working on, how they are doing, how they think it's going, and how I think it's going. In the past I have sent a handwritten progress report home (with every child, every two weeks, for 110 students. It very nearly broke me). That was not sustainable. I never got anything else done.
Last year, I only sent notes or talked to the parents of students who weren't progressing or who were not turning in work. However, I didn't like that, because I didn't feel that I was giving enough feedback to the parents or the students. SO...I was driving to school this morning when a bolt of inspiration hit me. I needed a form. A Google form. A form that I would fill out in a conference with every student. A form that had a place for their input, and my input, and a checklist of assignments, as well as the "I can" statements for the standards we have been focusing on.
I sent the link to myself in an email and carried my I-Pad around with me while I was conferring during workshop today. I told the kids we would be filling out their progress reports together, and that whatever we wrote on the form was exactly what would go home to their parents. Here is a snap of what the form looked like:
We went through each part together, and students had their notebooks open and work out in front of them to support their progress toward the standards. We talked together about where they were succeeding, what they needed to work toward, and how they could best accomplish their goals. It was great, and I think having the form there as we talked helped them with metacognition. They are not used to having their progress reports really talk about how they are learning, or to have to give any input themselves. It took them a while to get the hang of the student statement of progress.
As an added benefit, these conferences served as an amazing piece of data collection for me about where students were feeling confident and which areas we still needed to work on, because of Google's handy-dandy charts and graphs function!
Because we are not sending progress reports home until Monday of next week, students have time based on our conversations to finish or revise the work they've been doing before the report goes home. I told them I'd be happy to revise the checklist to reflect completed work as they finish. So finally, progress report time doesn't have to strike fear in my heart or the hearts of the students. No surprises, no gotchas, no excuses as to why students don't know how they are doing. Happy students, happy teacher!
I am curious though, if you are gradeless, how have you solved the progress report conundrum? Are there better methods out there? I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment, or connect with me on social media! Facebook (Cristi Lackey Julsrud) or Twitter (@Mrs_J_of_EAMS)
Old habits sure do die hard. It's so easy to get caught up in the assignment trap, especially when the kids are stuck in the finished=grade=done mindset and you can't figure out a great way to communicate progress to parents without putting a number on anything. I've been fiddling around and tweaking my grading/ gradeless system for two years now, and the progress report conundrum has been an unsolvable riddle for me.
UNTIL TODAY!
You know how when you've struggled and struggled with a problem, and it seems insurmountable and impossible until the simplest of solutions just smacks you in the face? Talk about Occam's razor! I've always struggled with progress reports, because I don't want to put a number on the progress my kids are making, but at the same time I know parents need to know how students are progressing and what we are working on. I want my communication to speak to their learning in a meaningful way. I want it to be clear about what we are working on, how they are doing, how they think it's going, and how I think it's going. In the past I have sent a handwritten progress report home (with every child, every two weeks, for 110 students. It very nearly broke me). That was not sustainable. I never got anything else done.
Last year, I only sent notes or talked to the parents of students who weren't progressing or who were not turning in work. However, I didn't like that, because I didn't feel that I was giving enough feedback to the parents or the students. SO...I was driving to school this morning when a bolt of inspiration hit me. I needed a form. A Google form. A form that I would fill out in a conference with every student. A form that had a place for their input, and my input, and a checklist of assignments, as well as the "I can" statements for the standards we have been focusing on.
I sent the link to myself in an email and carried my I-Pad around with me while I was conferring during workshop today. I told the kids we would be filling out their progress reports together, and that whatever we wrote on the form was exactly what would go home to their parents. Here is a snap of what the form looked like:
We went through each part together, and students had their notebooks open and work out in front of them to support their progress toward the standards. We talked together about where they were succeeding, what they needed to work toward, and how they could best accomplish their goals. It was great, and I think having the form there as we talked helped them with metacognition. They are not used to having their progress reports really talk about how they are learning, or to have to give any input themselves. It took them a while to get the hang of the student statement of progress.
As an added benefit, these conferences served as an amazing piece of data collection for me about where students were feeling confident and which areas we still needed to work on, because of Google's handy-dandy charts and graphs function!
I am curious though, if you are gradeless, how have you solved the progress report conundrum? Are there better methods out there? I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment, or connect with me on social media! Facebook (Cristi Lackey Julsrud) or Twitter (@Mrs_J_of_EAMS)
For my 7th graders, they tell me what grade they think they're receiving, and I either agree or disagree - we only send home progress reports to students earning Ds or Fs (and I send them home if a student is earning a C. I didn't normally have them when I was giving marks/points on everything, and I hardly ever have them now. A bit simpler at the middle school! ;)
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful and thoughtful blog. As a parent, I feel as though the quality of learning for my child would have been so much greater had they had this opportunity. This is also an avenue for students to engage at authentic levels, as they are not being compliant only for a grade. I applaud your courage in leading the way. This scares me as we live in a society that places so much emphasis on external rewards. I ask myself, how would i know how well we are doing without a grade, test score or a mark of some kind. I guess this is the conundrum of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation resulting in high levels of learning.
ReplyDeleteHello Cristi! I love this idea. (It's too bad I continue to have to put numbers into PowerSchool regardless of other feedback I might give.) I am a great lover of Google Forms and want to try your idea. Please share how you took the feedback from the Google Sheet and made it presentable to parents? Did you just copy+paste into an email or Doc? Thank you very much!
ReplyDeleteForms gives you the option to print all responses, which is just what I did. I told the students as we were filling out the Form together that it was exactly what would go home to their parents. I wrote my statement of progress right alongside them, so there were no surprises there. I sent home a cover letter to the parents, explaining what they were looking at, and how my "grading" actually works, and I made a video explaining the process which I embedded in the "About" tab of my Google Classroom page. I also sent out Remind info so they can text me if they have questions about the process. It took a long time to get through all of the progress conferences. Next time I might just include the checklist of assignments and craft a teacher/ student statement of progress together. (You live, you learn!)
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