"...and Not to Yield": Explorations in English Education

With an organized list of conflated standards and associated learning targets —along with a system for reporting in the gradebook —I now turn to rubrics. However, in a gradeless classroom, I found “rubric” to feel inadequate as a title, since we’re not specifically placing students on a scale. I’ve opted for the title “Feedback Guide.” This will also work into students’ weekly reflections and five-week (mid-quarter and quarterly) reflections and grade pitches . FORMER RUBRICS Originally inspired by Jennifer Gonzalez’s (@cultofpedagogy ) single-point rubric , my former standards-based rubrics looked like the following: As I read a student’s work (the above rubric was for a constructed response analyzing mood), I could put an X in the “I can” or the “I cannot yet” column next to each learning target or add more focused feedback in the form of sentences. Then, in the grade column, I’d assign an A, B, C, or F. My original post on this model can be found here . FEEDBACK GUIDES N...

With weekly and quarterly reflections throughout our course generally set, I needed to turn my attention to the specifics of assessments. This post, and my next two planned posts, will articulate my current thinking. This post will briefly discuss key assessments, while my next two will explore how I plan to set up my gradebook (we use Infinite Campus) and set up my rubrics for feedback. KEY ASSESSMENTS As written, our district curriculum (whose composition I led) has set writing assignments and a cold-reading multiple-choice test (modeled after our state test) for each of our four units in English 9 and 10. Depending on the unit, the writing assignments range from literary analysis paragraphs, to creative writing, to a multiparagraph persuasive composition, to script-writing, to a multiparagraph argumentative piece, to a multiparagraph literary analysis (spread across grades 9 and 10). I plan to label these assignments as “key assessments.” Following Joe Feldman’s (@JoeCFeldma...

With Standards and Learning Targets determined and an overarching reflection and organization document for the semester , I needed to turn my attention to organization on a weekly scale. HYBRID SCHOOL PLAN My students are scheduled to return to school on September 8 th . I will see half of each class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the other half on Wednesdays and Fridays (with Monday being a virtual day for everyone). I do not want to rely on in-person instruction once school begins—especially when students become absent (for any reason). Rather than needing to see a student in-person to “catch them up,” I want everything available online. Then, we can use class time for conferring and community. To this end, I will also be settling on weekly-long explorations/lessons. Each week will include brief instructional videos, readings, an assessment (usually writing), and a reflection. We’ll begin journaling (either in response to literature or as open-writes) early on. Our school util...

With my English 9 course standards and learning targets decided, I next turned to figuring out how to possibly organize a data collection system that focused on feedback and reflection rather than points. Some of my most recent thinking can be attributed to Sarah Zerwin ( @SarahMZerwin ) and her book Pointless: An English Teacher's Guide to More Meaningful Grading . In the past, I had developed work logs where students could record their reading, journal, and copy the day’s learning target. Last spring, before going virtual, students were tracking their online vocabulary program progress and gathering evidence of their writing style in two additional Google Docs. I wanted to keep many of these organizational options, but I also wanted to ensure that I didn’t have students needing to always open so many documents. WEEKLY LEARNING GUIDES Last spring, for my Honors English 9 class, I created a Google Doc for our two units we explored while at home. For my Academic English 10 cl...

[ Revision note, 8/22/20: Shout-out to Hector Caudillo ( @CaudilloHector ) who suggested I rearrange the learning targets of Standard 2 . They have been sequenced so writing a claim comes first, then formatting proper in-text citations, and then using those citations to analyze the topic at-hand. The text below is edited from my original posting .] Continuing from my previous post , I plan to use the following six guiding/power standards for the 2020-2021 school year: Standard 1 : Reading Nonfiction and Informational Texts Standard 2 : Composing Nonfiction Standard 3 : Reading Fiction and Literature Standard 4 : Composing Fiction Standard 5 : Developing Speaking and Listening Skills Standard 6 : Employing Mechanics, Style, and Vocabulary Even from my post a couple days ago , I have changed a category and added Vocabulary back to Standard 6. I was going to have it integrated throughout, but it makes more sense to have one learning target (subcategory) for it under one Stan...

As I have shifted to a readers-writers workshop approach and focused more on standards-based learning, I have had to change not just how I teach but what I teach. If students are working more in class (rather than on homework or writing outside of class), I cannot fill an 80-minute block with lecture or group reading. Comprehension questions are no longer necessary as students are working on a lot of independent reading or as they are writing paragraph-length analyses. This has caused me to “lose” some stories and lessons I have enjoyed in the past. But that’s the catch. I enjoyed them. We all know we each appreciate different stories and different concepts. When I opened my class up to choice reading and having students analyze their own texts, I had to provide more class time for this. As others have said more eloquently than me, we must make time for what we value. I want my students to love what they are reading (and, by extension, I want them to love reading), and I want my ...

My Instruction and Assessment Philosophy Over the past couple years, I have been reading into standards-based grading and “healthy” grading practices. Along with a variety of blog posts, @TG2Chat/#tg2chat and the #sblchat community, the following resources have assisted me in developing my standards-based assessment (and, in turn, instruction) philosophy: ·          Grading from the Inside Out by Tom Schimmer ( @TomSchimmer ) ·          On Your Mark by Thomas R. Guskey ( @tguskey ) ·          Assessment 3.0 by Mark Barnes ( @markbarnes19 ) ·          Standards-Based Learning in Action by Tom Schimmer ( @TomSchimmer ), Garnet Hillman ( @garnet_hillman ), and Mandy Stalets ( @MandyStalets ) I believe that students must seek learning, not points, and that their grade in my course should be a reflection on tha...