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Blair Peterson

SMARTER TEACHER: Homework: Graded or Ungraded - 1 views

  • And yet, no dancer, no musician and no athlete gains credit for their practice except through their actual performance in the event. We do not applaud the dancer or musician during practice. We do not add statistics from practice to the athlete’s record.
  • he assessment should actually be of the effectiveness of the teacher’s instruction and in what areas the teacher should continue to provide instruction to assist student mastery.
  • Homework allows both the student and teacher to determine if there is understanding of the subject and/or where problems
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  • Students do not have equal resources for completing homework. (computer or internet, time, study space, privacy etc…) Homework that is busy work is often copied just for completion. If homework is summative then it must be graded. Often homework is merely checked off. Student homework assignments are the most likely to receive zeroes which can negatively skew the total grade that may be indicated by summative assessments. Homework should never be assigned over holidays thereby interfering with family plans. Kids do need a break. Many students have nights with hours of homework. Could students more out of 15 or 20 minutes of well planned practice rather than an hour of busy work? If homework is based on course standards then not doing the homework should naturally affect their grades on summative assessments. For this reason no separate grade should be necessary. Zeroes in homework followed by zeroes on summative assessments is punishing the student twice for that content. Failure to complete homework is a responsibility issue, and, as such, should be treated just as inattentiveness, not bringing materials, disruptiveness and similar issues. Many home help sites have blossomed in the past decade, casting doubt on how much work the student is actually completing.
Blair Peterson

The Homework Option Plan « My Island View - 1 views

  • « Twitter, Simply Complicated. The Homework Option Plan May 22, 2011 by tomwhitby I was recently asked, along with several other educators, to comment on a post dealing with grading homework. The premise on which we were asked to comment involved a teacher grading homework and giving a zero as a grade to those students who did not do the assignment. This is not an uncommon practice amongst educators. I employed this strategy myself for many years. It was and probably still is an accepted strategy, but after decades of teaching, I have grown to a point where i am not a big believer in giving homework. I stated my homework philosophy in this post, Hmwk: Less Value or Valueless? If homework is to be given by a teacher, students need to believe that the teacher will value their efforts in completing it. Homework requires a sacrifice of personal time on the part of the student. If students observe that the teacher is not at least checking homework, they will not spend time, which is important to them, doing the assignments that are not valued. A mistake often made however, is that rather than assess the work, the teacher records a zero, or a failing homework grade for the student. This would also apply to a project prepared outside of the class that was to be presented at a specific time, a deadline. I see assessment having two functions. The formative assessment is to tell me how much the s
  • he zero seems more like retribution for not finding value in what the teacher values, or has been told to value. It’s more of a control thing, and not an assessment thing. If a student consistently performs well in class, how is it that when assessed on the same skills performed outside the class in the form of homework, the work gets a zero? It is a power issue.
  • If the grade is an assessment of the work, and the student’s understanding, but it was not done, how can it be assessed?
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  • We could give control to the students, by giving them a homework opt-out option.
  • Students, with parents’ permission, could opt out of a homework grade for the year.
  • There is a very good possibility that homework may make no difference at all in the students’ learning. In that case, those who have opted out, have not been harmed at all.
Blair Peterson

Letter Grades Deserve an 'F' - Jessica Lahey - The Atlantic - 2 views

  • Letter Grades Deserve an 'F' The adoption of the Common Core could usher in a new era of standards-based grading. Jessica Lahey
  • When a child earns a ‘B’ in Algebra I, what does that ‘B’ represent? That ‘B’ may represent hundreds of points-based assignments, arranged and calculated in categories of varying weights and relative significance depending on the a teacher’s training or habit. But that ‘B’ says nothing about the specific skills John has (or has not) learned in a given class, or if he can apply that learning to other contexts. Even when paired with a narrative comment such as, “John is a pleasure to have in class,” parents, students, and even colleges are left to guess at precisely which Algebra I skills John has learned and will be able to apply to Algebra II. 
  • As Alfie Kohn has written, “what grades offer is spurious precision—a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.”
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  • For all the effort, time, and best intentions teachers invest in those reams of grade reports, we are lying to ourselves and to our students’ parents, cheating our students out of clear and accurate feedback on their academic process, and contributing to the greater illusion that grades are an accurate reflection of skill mastery.
  • What should the mark really represent? Should the mark be based upon ability or performance, or even upon zeal and enthusiasm? What is the best set of symbols to represent ability or achievement?
  • This approach is known as standards-based grading. It is a system of evaluation that is formative, meaning it shapes instruction in order to fill in knowledge gaps, and measures mastery based on a set of course objectives, standards or skills.
  • Many notions I had at the beginning of my career about grading didn't stand up to real scrutiny. The thorny issue of homework is one example of how the status quo needed to change. I once thought it was essential to award points to students simply for completing homework. I didn't believe students would do homework unless it was graded. And yet, in my classroom, students who were clearly learning sometimes earned low grades because of missing work. Conversely, some students actually learned very little but were good at “playing school.” Despite dismal test scores, these students earned decent grades by turning in homework and doing extra credit. They would often go on to struggle in later courses, while their parents watched and worried.
  • Teaching and learning with an eye toward mastery of a defined list of competencies circumvents many of the pitfalls that points-based grading causes.
  • While a shift to standards-based grading from the traditional, points-based system sounds daunting, now is the perfect time to make the transition.
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    "Letter Grades Deserve an 'F' The adoption of the Common Core could usher in a new era of standards-based grading. JESSICA LAHEY"
Blair Peterson

Should I Stop Assigning Homework? - Jessica Lahey - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • tudents who don’t complete homework receive zeroes, but they learn a valuable lesson about responsibility, many teachers argue, even though there’s no legitimate research connecting responsibility to homework. 
  • One, students, teachers, parents, and administrators expect me to, and when I don’t I am labeled an “easy” teacher, viewed as less serious or rigorous than my colleagues. Parents may rage about the veritable avalanche of homework that threatens to suffocate their children, but in my experience, parents also view that avalanche as a badge of honor, evidence of academic rigor.
  • I tried to picture a school year in which I shoehorn all of this work in to class time. I hardly complete a year’s worth of material as it is; a year without any homework at all seemed like a disaster in the making.
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  • Barnes spent that summer immersed in research on learning and homework, and returned in the 14th year of his teaching career determined to do away with homework and create what he calls a “results-only learning environment.”
  • Contrary to my first concern, Barnes found that most parents were in favor of his doing away with homework, particularly once he outlined the research for them.
  • Barnes points out that a no-homework policy does not mean that his students never work outside of class; indeed, they often do, because they enjoy the learning and want it to continue outside of class.
  • His class was a project-based classroom, so many students did choose to prepare for their projects outside of class. Barnes eliminated all work that required rote memory, and leaned more on context clues and word roots instead. “The result of eliminating traditional, mostly rote memory, homework was one of the most rewarding experiences of my teaching career,” Barnes wrote.
  • Above all else, my students enjoyed class and become intrinsically motivated independent learners.
  • I would add for the no-homework skeptics, and they are legion, you have to keep in mind that any research that supports homework is based almost universally on test results.
Smart Guru

Concept of SmartGuru: Student Get Exam, Checker Paper & Publish Result - 0 views

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    Education plays a very important role in shaping any individual's life. Education is all about learning new things. There are various mechanisms to learn like schools, coaching classes, private tuition, books, online material, etc.
Blair Peterson

Short Assessment Grading: Add or Average? | Learning and Teaching Math - 2 views

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    Long assessments can waste precious class time unless there is much material to be assessed, but shorter assessments (with few questions) can cause small errors to have too big an impact on a stude...
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    Long assessments can waste precious class time unless there is much material to be assessed, but shorter assessments (with few questions) can cause small errors to have too big an impact on a stude...
Blair Peterson

Real teaching means real learning: How I abolished grading. - 1 views

  • One day I realized that I wasn't weeding out the weak mathematicians, but instead weeding out the weak test writers.
  • Before you continue, I want to remind you that this does not mean I have not assessed, but not one student in my Calculus classes has received a grade at this point.  (Other than the report card mark which I must give).
  • First, I went through my outcomes, given to me by the government, and identified what the "Rocks" are.  These rocks are the outcomes which I expect the students to master above all other outcomes. 
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  • Next, these outcomes were rewritten in student friendly language and then provided to the students on the first day of class.
  • here were no "trick questions", just simple questions that would assess "Can the child demonstrate this outcome, on their own, as a basic level of understanding?"
  • I would write comments only on them, and either a "Outcome demonstrated" or "Need to learn" for each outcome assessed (Not on the overall assessment). 
  • ext, if the child received a "Need to learn" he/she must do the following: 1) Demonstrate the understanding of the questions given at a later date.  This usually occurs after a lunch session, a quick conversation, or multiple conversations with the child. 2) A conversation explaining how he/she made the mistake earlier and how their understanding has changed now 3) Write another assessment on the outcomes.
  • After 5-7 outcomes have been taught, then each child is assigned an open ended project. 
  • I simply take the number of outcomes and projects completed (at the end of the course) and divide by the total number of outcomes and projects.  This is not the best strategy, but it seems to work for me at this moment.  I do weigh projects twice as much. (I have 20 outcomes, and 5 projects, so the total is (20+5x2=30)
Smart Guru

Best Online Mock Exam for 10th & 12th Science Exam - 0 views

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    SMART TEST - 2017 Is An Online Mock Exam Presents By Smartguru For 10th, 11th, 12th Science (GSEB, Guj./Eng. Medium) BOARD & GUJCET + (CBSE) NEET & JEE (Main) Exam Aspirants.
Blair Peterson

Students of Harvard Cheating Scandal Say Group Work Was Accepted - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “I was just someone who shared notes, and now I’m implicated in this,” said a senior who faces a cheating allegation. “Everyone in this class had shared notes. You’d expect similar answers.”
    • Blair Peterson
       
      Certainly not a defense for cheating.
  • “I felt that many of the exam questions were designed to trick you rather than test your understanding of the material,” “the exams are absolutely absurd and don’t match the material covered in the lecture at all,” “went from being easy last year to just being plain old confusing,” and “this was perhaps the worst class I have ever taken.”
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  • “everybody went to the T.F.’s and begged for help. Some of the T.F.’s really laid it out for you, as explicit as you need, so of course the answers were the same.”
  • The exam instructions said it was “completely open book, open note, open Internet, etc.” Some students asked whether there was a fundamental contradiction between telling students to use online resources, but not to discuss the test with each other.
Blair Peterson

April 1-Writing Reflection/Self Assessment | Fulton's ELA - 0 views

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    MS English class published writing self assessment prompts.
Blair Peterson

The Boys at the Back - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Teachers of classes as early as kindergarten factor good behavior into grades — and girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better than boys.
  • No previous study, to my knowledge, has demonstrated that the well-known gender gap in school grades begins so early and is almost entirely attributable to differences in behavior
  • If the teachers had not accounted for classroom behavior, the boys’ grades, like the girls’, would have matched their test scores.
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  • If they are inattentive, obstreperous and distracting to their teachers and peers, that’s their problem. After all, the ability to regulate one’s impulses, delay gratification, sit still and pay close attention are the cornerstones of success in school and in the work force
    • Blair Peterson
       
      This seems very funny to me. So, why not use the carrot and stick approach with grades for these behaviors.
  • I emphasized boy-averse trends like the decline of recess, zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, the tendency to criminalize minor juvenile misconduct and the turn away from single-sex schooling. As our schools have become more feelings-centered, risk-averse, collaboration-oriented and sedentary, they have moved further and further from boys’ characteristic sensibilities.
  • Black women are nearly twice as likely to earn a college degree as black men.
Blair Peterson

Open-Book, Closed-Book, or 'Cheat Sheet'? Researchers Test the Merits of Exam Types - T... - 1 views

  • Another finding weakened Mr. Phillips's argument for cheat-sheet exams. An independent scorer evaluated the students' cheat sheets for organization and richness of detail. Higher-scoring cheat sheets, it turned out, had a weak relationship to performance on the exam.
  • "I was more adamant that the cheat sheet would result in better retention over all, and that wasn't the case," he said. "I think I might use more of an open book."
  • But, again, the results yielded a surprise. Students thought they would study most for the closed-book exams, but that view was not reflected in reports of their actual habits. Students in the psychology class spent the most time studying for the cheat-sheet exam, or more than four hours. Open-book exams yielded slightly fewer hours of study, while closed-book exams resulted in the least amount of time studying, 3.32 hours.
Blair Peterson

Student Sinks Impossible Shot To Secure Entire Class 100s On Organic Chemistry Quiz - 0 views

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    Impressive feat but it has nothing to do with academic performance. The grade is meaningless if you are trying to determine what the students know and are able to do.
Smart Guru

Best Online Mock Exam Software for 10th & 12th Board Exams - 0 views

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    SMART TEST - 2017 is an Online Mock Exam presents by SmartGuru for 10th, 11th, 12th Science (GSEB, Guj. /Eng. Medium) Board Exams & GUJCET + (CBSE) NEET & JEE (Main) exam aspirants.
Blair Peterson

Who's Cheating Whom? - 1 views

  • To put this point positively, cheating is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor.”  The same is true in “democratic classes where [students’] opinions are respected and welcomed.”[7]  
  • Cheating is particularly likely to flourish if schools use honor rolls and other incentives to heighten the salience of grades, or if parents offer financial inducements for good report cards[10] -- in other words, if students are not merely rewarded for academic success, but are also rewarded for being rewarded.
Blair Peterson

Studies Show More Students Cheat, Even High Achievers - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • high achievers are just as likely to do it as others.
  • A recent study by Jeffrey A. Roberts and David M. Wasieleski at Duquesne University found that the more online tools college students were allowed to use to complete an assignment, the more likely they were to copy the work of others.
    • Blair Peterson
       
      Telling finding. Maybe summative assessments have to be given in class. 
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  • An increased emphasis on having students work in teams may also have played a role.
  • Numerous projects and research studies have shown that frequently reinforcing standards, to both students and teachers, can lessen cheating. But experts say most schools fail to do so.
  • “When you start giving take-home exams and telling kids not to talk about it, or you let them carry smartphones into tests, it’s an invitation to cheating,” he said.
  • have found that most college students see collaborating with others, even when it is forbidden, as a minor offense or no offense at all. Nearly half take the same view of paraphrasing or copying someone else’s work without attribution.
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    Just wanted to add this one to the cheating articles.
Blair Peterson

Educational Leadership:Effective Grading Practices:EL Study Guide - 2 views

  • What do you think the purpose of grading is? Is it to communicate students' academic achievement to students and parents? Is it to motivate students to put forth their best effort? Some combination of both? How might that belief affect your grading practices?
  • If educators' goal is for students to learn, does it matter if it takes some students a little longer than others?
  • What's your current policy on offering redos and retakes? How did you arrive at this policy? Reflecting on the ideas Wormeli and Dueck present, how might you change your policy? If you don't offer retakes, what steps might you take to introduce them in your classes? If you do, what new ideas do you have for making the practice more effective?
Blair Peterson

Communicative Relationships: The Purpose of Assessment | JAMES MICHIE - 0 views

  • It’s important that the teacher helps the learner to understand what it is they are trying to achieve
  • It is also important that the teacher (as expert) provide feedback, helping the learner to understand where they are at and how to progress.
  • If enough opportunities for discussion, collaboration, reflection and evaluation have been offered, in a supportive environment, then I believe that all learners can develop invaluable meta-cognitive skills. Like the first relationship, trust is of high importance here. Trusting yourself is difficult. It takes time to reach a point where you can be effectively self-critical, where you can trust your own judgement. Helping learners to do this is the final piece of the puzzle in helping them to become independent learners.
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  • Early on with my classes I will arrange the learning in such a way that I assess their work first. This line of communication is pivotal early on as the expert needs to model what effective assessment looks like. I will then allot some time for them to reflect on this and to make amendments.
  • As my students trust themselves and each other more, I push the second and third communicative relationships to the front of the queue, more and more reserving my judgement for later. While I don’t like it, we are part of an exam driven system and I won’t be there at the end to help them.
Blair Peterson

The necessity of failure | Connected Principals - 0 views

  • In a first-semester freshman English class, a student has a score of 45% going into the final. This student has been a discipline problem the entire semester and has not done much homework. No matter what score this student receives on the final, he cannot pass. The entire semester was designed so that students understand the fundamentals and concepts of writing a five-paragraph essay; the final is the culmination of that effort. Since you do not trust this student, you stand over him and watch him write his essay so you know he did not cheat. When you grade the essay, you find it is perfection.  He learned every first-semester English standard. What semester grade do you assign?
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