Future Iterations of Standards-Based Learning in my ELA Classroom

As the school year wraps up this week, I thought I would reflect on my current practices with standards a bit. My opening blog for this school year detailed my process for distilling and prioritizing standards. For my English 9 course, I focused on the following Standards (adding Standard 9 once I got going):

Standard 1: Analyzing Literary Elements & Devices

Standard 2: Analyzing Nonfiction Elements & Concepts

Standard 3: Evaluating Text Genre, Form, & Structure

Standard 4: Utilizing Evidence & Research

Standard 5: Crafting Focus, Organization, & Conclusions

Standard 6: Composing Narratives

Standard 7: Expanding Vocabulary

Standard 8: Developing Speaking Skills

Standard 9: Employing Mechanics & Style

As with all work, revising and implementing new iterations is key to fine-tuning (or overhauling!) our process. This blog addresses how I utilize grades, communicating this learning to students, and condensing my list of Standards to better understand my own teaching.

TEACHING AND ASSESSING WITH STANDARDS

I appreciated linking each assessment to various standards and providing “look-fors” for students. My current rubric has evolved a bit since the Look-For blogpost I just linked from December, but the ideas are similar. While I am not on a 1-4 scale yet, I do utilize A, B, C, and F for scores. I am still averaging, but students are assessed within these grade bands. Anecdotal responses from students reveal that they appreciate this—they can make a mistake and still demonstrate their learning; they report that they now know where they stand with their learning. I am not completely working in a standards-based world, but I am closer, and linking all assessments to multiple standards has helped create clearer views student learning that are not complicated by arbitrary points. I still do assign point values, but they are more evenly distributed across trials (usually 5 points or 10 points per standard based on the extent of the assessment). I could not go back to tossing out points for homework, classwork, or participation. I do want to broaden my assessment types and eventually move to portfolios and potentially student-argued “grades” at the end of a semester, but I’m not quite there yet.

COMMUNICATING STANDARDS TO STUDENTS

I have not done a stellar job at communicating these standards to students outside of each assignment. The categories listed in my gradebook are the Standards, so there are multiple grades per assignment, and students can see their average (I know, I know, I need to move beyond averaging!) for each Standard.

Some ideas I plan to incorporate next year to help articulate each standard:

·         Post these prominently in the classroom so they are visible (which will help me reference them more often).

·         Include explicit reference to at least one standard in each our e-mail reflections home.

·         As I conference with each student during our readers-writers workshop, I want to begin linking each conversation explicitly to at least one standard and look-for on that assignment’s rubric.

REVISING STANDARDS

After working with these Standards for two semester (we are on an intensified block schedule) and in both an Academic (college-prep and inclusion) course and an Honors class, I know I want to make revisions to my list:

Standard 1: Analyzing Literary Elements & Devices

Standard 2: Analyzing Nonfiction Elements & Concepts

Standard 3: Evaluating Text Genre, Form, & Structure

Standard 4: Utilizing Evidence & Research

Standard 5: Crafting Focus, Organization, & Conclusions

Standard 6: Composing Narratives

Standard 7: Expanding Vocabulary

Standard 8: Developing Speaking Skills

Standard 9: Employing Mechanics & Style

Here are the changes I am considering:

·         Standard 3 (Evaluating Text Genre, Form, & Structure) was meant to address different mediums (music, art, plays, etc.) or retelling/adaptations (especially in myth and Shakespearean adaptations). However, I did not utilize this standard enough across various assessments—and when students did engage with this work, it made more sense to assess their writing or understanding of literary elements. I think I will need to combine this with Standard 6, which has its own issues.

·         Standard 6 (Composing Narratives) was included since students write a memoir, a hero journey story, and rewrite a scene of Romeo and Juliet into a different time period (but still as a script). The work here, however, often overlapped with applying the literary elements and devices encompassed by Standard 1. I used Standard 1 when we analyzed character or setting or point-of-view (and so on) and tried Standard 6 when students applied those concepts to their own narratives. I think combing Standards 3 and 6 can encompass text features (dialogue, paragraphing, stage directions, and so on) particular to certain genres and forms. Thus, Standards 1 and 2 would be application and analysis of fiction and nonfiction analysis.

·         Standard 7 is very specific with vocabulary, as we utilize Membean as a District. However, to favor broader categories (and reduce the number of Standards to better help us focus), I will be subsuming Vocabulary into Standard 9 (Mechanics and Style).

So, next year’s Standards will read as follows:

 

Standard 1: Applying Literary Elements & Devices

Standard 2: Applying Nonfiction Elements & Concepts

Standard 3: Utilizing Evidence & Research

Standard 4: Crafting Focus, Organization, & Conclusions

Standard 5: Structuring Text Genre & Forms

Standard 6: Developing Speaking Skills

Standard 7: Employing Mechanics, Vocabulary, & Style

This reduces and refines the skills we are focusing on. I’m inching closing to clearer instruction with increased student work while aiming to clearly label student ability levels and progress.