By Dane Ehlert, posted September 28, 2015 –

In my previous post, I wrote about using standards-based grading to promote growth mindset. Now that the system is in place, how do we respond to student progress throughout the year? The way we respond is crucial for promoting the mindsets we want in our students. One method that I’ve found useful is to create “Personal Growth Reports” to show students their current progress.

My goal for these reports is to review concepts that have been taught during a grading period (or throughout the year) while providing opportunities for students to work on their areas of greatest struggle. I begin the process by consolidating data from concept quizzes. From there, I create a report for each student using autoCrat. See this tutorial video, showing the process of creating these reports (click here for the template document).

Basically, I was looking for a student progress report that promoted a growth mindset with language and format (using language from Nico Rowinsky). I wanted the students to come away with a positive attitude and to be motivated about where they needed growth and their steps toward improvement. In the past, I’ve had issues with classroom status because students compared the grades on their papers. However, I went ahead and placed the current progress on the reports because I knew that some students would not be able to identify the areas where they needed the most growth. To avoid negative takeaways, I made sure to add the statement, "I'm giving you this feedback because I believe in you," thanks to Jo Boaler. No doubt, words can sometimes be empty to kids, but I was hopeful that my actions throughout the year would back up this encouraging phrase.

Once the reports were made, I created “leveled challenges” for each concept, so that students could work on improving their understanding. The challenges were designed to model depth of knowledge levels and were composed of the components discussed below.

SILENT SOLUTIONS

Level 1 typically included “silent solution” videos (the idea came from Cathy Yenca and Kyle Pearce). The videos are short, silent, and meant to be a quick how-to for students. I really like these because they're straight to the point, and students can easily play them again without spending a lot of time. The videos are designed to help the beginning learner shore up his or her procedural fluency. Here is a sample and a link to all the silent solutions I've uploaded to YouTube so far.

DESMOS

I used a lot of Desmos to increase the difficulty for each concept. For a slope-intercept form, Michael Fenton's Match My Line activity was perfect (with assistance from Cathy Yenca on thinglink).

OPEN MIDDLE

For most of the concepts, I used an Open Middle problem to reach higher DOK levels. In this case, I used the following from Jon Orr.

MORE DESMOS

For most of the level 4 challenges, I asked students to create something cool with Desmos, for example, a putt putt golf hole. These holes always seem to challenge even the most confident students.

Overall, I really liked the level approach to each assignment because the students who are "starting out" with a concept can find challenges in the lower levels, and the "got it and then some" kids are challenged in the higher levels. This allows for every student to improve his or her depth of understanding in each topic.

Here are the “level challenge” assignment links:

• Linear inequalities

• Slope

• Slope-intercept form

• Solving for y

• Systems of equations

• Quadratics

IMPLEMENTATION

For the task launch and implementation, I group students based on the concept they need to work on the most. If a student’s biggest area of need is quadratics, then I will place him or her in a group with other students who need to work on quadratics. However, I don’t put all the "starting out" kids in the same group. Here’s a sample of what a group could look like.

I would have these four students work on quadratics in the same group because the biggest area of need for each student (except Kobe) is quadratics. At the same time, the group still has enough resources to rely primarily on themselves because not all of the “starting out” kids are in the same group. Instead, there are students like Jessica and Kobe who have a solid grasp of the concept but just need to gain a little more depth of understanding. This grouping allows each student to focus on his or her area of need while still being able to support one another.

In addition, I may or may not have the whole class work on the same concept. If the whole class needs quadratic work, then each student will get a level-challenge assignment for that concept. However, if there are many different need areas (as usual), then I’m happy to allow groups to work on different assignments. The goal of the implementation is to allow students to focus on improvement and perseverance in the concepts they need growth in. This promotes growth mindset. I’ve found that my students are eager to work on their need areas instead of concepts they already understand.

Overall, this approach was a success this year. I plan to have a day or two set aside each grading period to give students a personal growth report and allow them to work on similar assignments to those linked above. However, I think there needs to be more frequent response throughout the year. Tune in next post to see a possible response.

Dane Ehlert, dane@whenmathhappens.com, is a secondary math teacher in Texas. He tweets at @DaneEhlert and blogs at whenmathhappens.com.