By Megan Heine, posted January 30, 2017 —

My previous posts have discussed students taking responsibility for their work. Although my work with standards-referenced practices is still in its infancy and I have a long way to go, the conversations I have had with students and the behavior I have seen are positive. 

Every time students take an assessment, they record their score from that assessment on a sheet. See the design at http://bit.ly/2jMf7iW. The most recent score is always the active score in the online grade book. When we take the second assessment, I make the first assessment score inactive. 

If students are still not where they need to be with the second assessment score, they can have a third assessment (on the condition that they’ve completed all the required independent practice). Once the student is satisfied with his or her score on that standard, that number becomes the final score on the standard. All standards are weighted equally in the grade book.

The following are snippets of some conversations I had with students when we started: 

Student: What if I get my desired score on the first assessment? Do I still have to take the second assessment?

Me: Yes, we are looking at your progress on the standard over time. It’s not about learning it once; it’s about retaining that learning.

Student (after the first assessment score was not what he or she wanted): When can I retake this standard?

Me: You won’t retake this assessment right now. We will always assess each standard twice. So you will retake when we take the second assessment.

Student: So the first time is kind of like a practice run at the standard?

Me: Yes, that is definitely one way to look at it. 

It was a bit of a hurdle to get my students to realize that the retake was built in to the assessment process. Once students completed a few retakes, they understood the situation, and conversations started to change.

The following is a typical conversation after students take a formative or a first assessment for a particular standard: 

Student: Clearly, I have not learned what I need to know about the tangent ratio. Can I get more help with this?

Me (after a formative assessment): Yes. On Wednesday we will have tiered activities based on the formative results. Be sure to pick the correct tier for what you need.

Me (after the first assessment): Yes. I’m not available during FLEX next week because I’m targeting algebra students, but [two other teachers] are both offering extra practice sessions for this skill. Be sure to sign up for their sessions when you sign up for FLEX. 

Note: Our Geometry PLC creates responses to formative assessments in tiered formats based on formative results. We try to have these ready a day or two after the formative assessment so that it is an immediate response, but since it’s determined by the formative assessment, we are flexible with it. In addition, our school offers FLEX 4 days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday) for the last 35 minutes of the day. Our Geometry PLC offers extra practice that is specific to a skill based on formative data. 

Notice in the previous conversation that I give students the responsibility of choosing their level of help. There are definite times when my response is to put the students into their groups for the tiered activities. Because we have transitioned into the process, I have given that decision to the students. 

With this new process, I hear students discussing how they’re going to get extra practice for the next assessment. They are using math language to talk about what they need to learn. Instead of “I’m going to study for chapter 4,” they say, “I need more practice with trig ratios.” 

I am encouraged with this assessment process. The focus is the work on the standards, not the grade in the class.

Megan Heine, meganheine@gmail.com, is an 8/9 math teacher at Southview Middle School in Ankeny, Iowa, where she teaches algebra 1 and geometry in a 1:1 Chromebook environment. She blogs at https://peacelovemath.wordpress.com/ and Tweets from @PeaceLoveMHeine. She is the co-moderator of a local Twitter ed chat, #ankedchat. Heine has recently completed her master’s degree in Educational Technology from Boise State University and is passionate about transforming her classroom into a student-centered learning environment by using EdTech tools that motivate and inspire students to embrace and explore mathematics.