Is This For A Grade?

Guest post by laura steinbrink, posted in education

A NEW-OLD IDEA TO BUILD STUDENT INDEPENDENCE FROM GRADES

As a high school teacher closing in on thirty years of teaching, I have heard students daily ask “Is this for a grade?” any time we do activities in class that are on paper or digital. Of course, I want them to do the activity because I have designed it to help them master the skills our content requires, but I also don’t want to grade every single thing we do. The conditioning of our students to only do things for a reward, which includes grades, is a soapbox I will get on another time, but for now, I believe I have a solution that suits my personal beliefs on not grading everything I ask students to do, and will have students participating and engaged without asking, “Is this for a grade?”

I JUST CAN’T TAKE IT

Teachers have been using small student whiteboards in the classroom for years. In the middle of my teaching career, my dad bought a couple of shower boards from a building supply store and then cut the boards into smaller squares that were a bit bigger than a piece of paper for me. My school purchased the dry-erase markers and tiny whiteboard erasers, and I was in business. I was teaching 5 different subjects, but I really only saw use for the whiteboards in my Spanish class, where I could see if they were learning the vocabulary words, sentence structure, etc. in a quick scan of the room. As I moved to other districts and taught other things, I forgot about the whiteboards and did not consider other uses. Sometimes it is really easy to dismiss a tool from the toolbox if I have relegated it to only one use, one purpose, and then the need for that declines.

MY TEACHERS ALL GAVE UP ON ME

While actual student-sized whiteboards are still in use, some creative people (I assume a teacher or teachers) realized that sheet protectors can be used with dry-erase markers. This, I thought (and still think), is an inexpensive way to tap into the formative power of using the whiteboards in class. By now I am teaching high school English and related subjects, so I didn’t see how that tool would be useful in my toolbox. Again, I was very shortsighted. I became “tool blind,” meaning I had blinders on where this tool was concerned, so if I wasn’t teaching vocabulary or easy concepts, the tool could not work in my room. I could only see the tool used in one specific way or with one particular type of content.

NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY, I DISAGREE

In a PD recently with Dataworks Education Research, the presenter and co-founder of the company, John Hollingsworth, spent the day teaching my colleagues and me how to use his Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI) daily in the classroom. John wasn’t the only presenter there, since we were split up into smaller groups than the 100 or so educators that I work with in my high school, but he is the one who worked with my group. As we walked in, he had us grab a folder, sheet protector whiteboard, and dry-erase marker. There was a white card stock or thin cardboard sheet inserted into the sheet protector, and also inside was a small square of felt to use as an eraser. Huh. why didn’t I think to put white cardstock or cardboard inside when I first heard of people using sheet protectors to write on with students? John also mentioned that we could slide a graphic organizer or other handouts inside the sheet protectors to use in class too. That for me, was a game-changer for how I now looked at this tool.

AND WHEN I NEED SOMETHING TO SOOTHE MY SOUL

Now let’s dive into the pedagogy and grades-based thinking on using this tool. John demonstrated how to have a question for each chunk of information (one question per slide of a presentation, one question every couple minutes of a lecture, etc.) that students then write down on their whiteboards. Students could write paragraphs, sentences, one word, a multiple choice letter, or whatever you need to quickly see if your students are learning the concepts or content. Now, here’s where the beauty lies for me. If students write their quick writes, quick check responses, or complete a graphic organizer on the whiteboard, the expectation of turning it in and receiving a grade diminishes almost instantly. Now, we could keep track of who participates consistently and who doesn’t for a participation grade, but this tool may very well eliminate even that as an expectation for every activity or as a daily score. Learning for its own sake could be freed from the bonds of grading.

I LISTEN TO TOO MUCH ROCK ’N’ ROLL

However you choose to use (or not) this tool in your teaching, it is important to help re-orient students away from believing extrinsic rewards are a requirement for learning or completing work, and get their focus back on learning for the sake of learning. Curiosity, creativity, and more rely on intrinsic motivation. When students get extrinsic motivation (rewards) for doing what they are expected to do, or for learning what we expect them to learn, it erodes their intrinsic motivation, which eats away at their creativity and curiosity. So as you build your toolbox this year, remember that new and shiny aren’t always the best choices (sometimes they are, for sure), and we can always rethink how to use our old tools in new ways to elevate student learning.

HEADINGS ARE FROM PARTIAL LYRICS FROM THE SONG FOOLS BY VAN HALEN. About Rachelle’s blog

Follow Rachelle on Twitter @Rdene915 and on Instagram @Rdene915. Rachelle has a podcast, ThriveinEDU available at https://anchor.fm/rdene915.

Looking for PD for your school? I provide in-person and virtual training on the following topics. If you want to learn more about and explore AI and ChatGPT, contact me to schedule! Rdene915@gmail.com

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Originally published at http://rdene915.com on October 21, 2023.