How to read a Standards-Based Report

Since I've moved away from traditional grades in favor of assessing students purely on our classroom standards, I've had quite a few parents and students express their frustration in understanding how well students are doing. This is completely understandable - the scores and feedback on classroom work looks completely different than what most of us have experienced in school.

 To get a clear picture of how students are meeting the standards, you'll need to look some reports that are a little different than what you'd normally check in PowerSchool. To make this easier, I've attached a document that will help you access reports that are designed to show how well your student is meeting our standards in Social Studies and Literature. Click here to access the document to help you see a standards-based report.

When you check to see how well your student is doing, try to pay attention to a few things besides their overall score ... this will give you a MUCH BETTER idea of how your son / daughter is doing in class. Here are things to look for when looking at a standards-based report:

• How well is my son daughter doing in each individual standard? Look to see which standards your son / daughter understands really well, and which they need to focus on.
• How well are they behaving and working? The Life Skills standards will give you feedback on your son / daughter's behavior, work ethic, group work, and participation.
• Are they turning their work in on time? I've marked each assignment that is missing and/or late. Missing and/or late assignments don't affect their scores on each assignment, but it's still important to know if they get their work in on time.

Let me know if you have any other questions! I'd be happy to answer them.

Midterms and Standards-Based Assessment

You may have noticed that your son / daughter didn't receive a traditional letter grade for their Social Studies and/or Literature courses this quarter. In Social Studies, students received a number score and an abbreviation ( 03.00, PR). Here's what those numbers and letters mean:

• 04.00     AD     = Advanced at the classroom standards
• 03.00     PR     = Proficient at the classroom standards
• 02.00     PA     = Partial Proficient at the classroom standards
• 01.00     BG     = Beginning to understand the classroom standards
• 0.00       RA     = Refused to complete classroom assignments.

Many students have asked how to convert those numbers and letters to grades. I've heard a lot of students ask, "Mr. Hammond - what letter grade is a 3.00?" or, "If I'm proficient am I earning an A?"

The simple answer to those questions is no - standards don't translate into letter grades. Instead, they simply tell if students understand the standards that I'm expected to teach in the 6th grade.

If you have any questions, or you'd like a handout to show you how to access a standards report instead of a traditional progress report in PowerSchool, let me know.

You can leave a comment on this blog, call me at school, or send me an email at rhammond@jcsd1.us . I look forward to hearing from you!

Current Events Quiz on the Egyptian Revolution

Click here to take the quiz on Google Docs over the revolution in Egypt.

Parents - you're welcome to take the quiz as well! 

Current Events quiz on Google Docs

The Social Studies standards ask if students can "demonstrate an understanding of the people, events, problems, ideas, and cultures that were significant in the history of our community, state, nation, and world."

Whoa - if you're thinking what I'm thinking, that's a huge statement. The standards do narrow this idea down a bit in a sub-benchmark that asks them to "discuss current events to better understand the world in which they live."

That's still a lot, isn't it? We watch the news everyday, and we cover a ton of topics. I don't think it's reasonable to ask students to know every fact from every news story that we talk about. The more I think about it, the standard isn't that they KNOW current events - it's that they DISCUSS current events.

That's one thing that we do quite often in our Social Studies classes - we discuss what's going on around state, country, and world. If I could, I would use our discussions as a way to assess how well students comprehend the news. Unfortunately, that's not entirely possible. Some students are skilled at classroom discussion, but quite a few aren't. Some kids are shy. Some don't have the same background knowledge to understand what's happening. And some kids talk too much and don't let everyone have a fair say ...

That's why I created this quiz over the CNN Student News podcast that we watch in class. Instead of asking students to recite facts about all of the events we watch and discuss, the quiz asks them to pick one topic of their choice. They'll then answer 8 - 10 questions on that particular current event. Some of the questions are

•  factual knowledge (where is this country?), 
• some check to see if they understand the current event (why did this happen?), 
• and some go deeper to ask if they understand how the events around the world may impact their life (why does this matter to us in Buffalo, WY?).

So - while this quiz isn't a discussion, it comes close. It's not used to grade kids, score kids, or label kids - really, it's just a way for me to see what each individual student knows about the news, and how well they understand how these events impact their lives. Which, really, is what a discussion does - it allows to people to share ideas and learn from each other.

Enough said ... Click here to take the quiz on Google Docs. (BLUE DAY)
                       Click here to take the WHITE day quiz on Google Docs. (WHITE DAY)

Behavior Rubric

For those who could make it to Parent Teacher Conferences, it was great to visit with you. For those who didn't make it - we missed you. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

I wanted to take a minute to explain how I figure grades in my classroom, and how the behavior rubric that I use compliments your child(ren)'s grades to give a complete picture of their performance in my classroom.

To begin with, I feel that grades should show how well a student is meeting the standards in our classroom - and nothing more. I think grades should show if a student understands the material and skill in a class, or if they're struggling and need some extra assistance. Unfortunately, grades don't always do this. If a student has a few missing assignments and/or late assignments, it can greatly affect their grade - sometimes, as much as a letter grade or two. For example, a student who's done "B" work but who has missed a few assignments will often receive a "C" or a "D" on the report card.

To avoid this confusion, I don't take points off an assignment if a student turns in an assignment late. I don't give students zero points if they miss an assignment as well - instead, I make them do the assignment. If they don't do it, they receive an "Incomplete" grade on their report card until they complete all of the assignments.

It would be easy to think of this grading policy as being soft or too lenient ... to think of me as a pushover, or as a teacher who doesn't value classroom behaviors such as completing work and/or finishing work by a certain deadline. That's certainly not the case - I value these skills, sometimes more than the subject matter in my classes. Students do need to learn how to behave, how to work in groups, how to complete their work on time, etc. - I just choose to separate these behaviors from their grade.

As a result, I created the behavior rubric to show how I feel your child(ren) are performing in the areas of participation, behavior, work completion, and group work. Looking at your child(ren)'s grades, along with the behavior rubric, should give you a better picture of how well your child is learning AND behaving/working in school.

If you have any comments, please leave them in the "comments" section below - I value your input, and I think that it's good for others to hear opinions on my classroom as well.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Just a reminder - Parent / Teacher conferences are this week! We'll be open for conferences on:

• Thursday night from 5:00 - 8:00 pm, and
• Friday from 8:00 am - 12:00 pm. 

Remember, there's no school for students on Friday. You're free to come during anytime during these hours - you can meet with all of your child's teachers, or just some of them - it's your choice.

Understanding Political Differences

During the next few weeks, students in the 6th grade will be learning about the basic principles of the two major political parties in the United States - the Democratic and Republican parties. With the mid-term elections coming up next week and dominating our current event headlines, I thought it would be important for students to understand the basic differences between the "right" and "left", Republicans and Democrats, "liberals" and "conservatives," etc.

Once a student has demonstrated that they have a solid understanding of the differences between the two parties, they'll move along to another project (more on this in another post). Those that need extra help will continue working with me until they know the basic differences between the parties.

To judge how well the students understand these differences, they'll be taking an online quiz that I created. If you're curious on what the students will be quizzed on, or if you want to test your own knowledge, click on the link below or click on the link to the left to take the quiz!

https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/jcsd1.us/viewform?formkey=dFM5LURCN252UnJ4czVTMmRUREd2TWc6MQ

I'm Back!

I meant to post this before I left on my recent trip, but things were awful busy and I didn't get this posted - my apologies. I missed school last Friday (10.16) until yesterday (Thursday, 10.22) - my wife and I are adopting a child from Africa, and we were able to make a quick trip to Ethiopia to meet our newest son for the first time.

This wasn't the best time for a teacher to miss school - this week was the last week of the quarter, and many students and parents are stressed out as the first quarter grading period comes to an end. If you (or your son / daughter) is worried about their first quarter grades, please contact me - we'll figure out what we need to do. I won't let my absences affect a student's grade - it's not their fault that I was gone.

So, sorry for the late notice. If it matters, I'm back!

Google Docs

Last week, our district gave our students Google Docs. In my opinion, Google Docs is the most useful piece of technology that has been offered to students and teachers.

Google Docs isn't a flashy piece of technology - it's really just a web-based version of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. This doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it is - students are now able to open and access their documents from any computer. This means that students won't have to worry about printing assignments at home, bringing documents on a "jump-drive" or disk to school, emailing their assignments to teachers, etc. Using their Google Docs account, students can access their computer files anywhere that they can get on the internet. (Click here to see a short video on how Google Docs works.)

Google Docs is also a collaborative tool - this means that students can work together on the same documents at the same time. Teachers can also "share" files with students - teachers can give students copies of school assignments, lecture notes, presentations, etc.

Students can access Google Docs to the link on the right. To login, they use their Powerschool ID and password.

Current Events

A big part of the 6th grade Social Studies curriculum is studying current events. It's more important than ever for our students to understand what's happening in the world, and for them to see how events around the world affect their lives right now and into the future.

To study the current events, we start each Social Studies class by watching CNN Student News. CNN Student News is a 10 minute, commercial-free newscast designed for students. It's a non-biased newscast, making sure to show opinions of both the "Left" and the "Right." We always follow the news with a class discussion, where students can test out their ideas and express their opinions with others.

To assess students' understanding of the news, every two weeks the students analyze a political cartoon based on the news stories we've watched. When analyzing the cartoon, students are asked three questions:

1. Which current event is the cartoon referring to?
2. What is the meaning of the cartoon?
3. What is the artist trying to say in the cartoon? What is his/her agenda for drawing this cartoon?

The last question is the most important question for students to answer - it's a critical thinking skill that teaches students to carefully analyze the media, to see how others use bias and propaganda to try to influence others.

Note: To see a broadcast of CNN Student News, click on one of the links to the right. You can watch the most recent episode of the news, and read other stories as reported by the crew at CNN Student News.

Map and Globe Skills

The 6th graders have been working really hard on learning how to read and use maps. During the past two weeks, students have been learning:

• the continents, oceans, hemispheres, and time zones,
• the cardinal and intermediate directions,
• how to use a scale to find distances on a map,
• how to use latitude and longitude to find cities and countries on a map,
• how to use cardinal and intermediate directions to find places on a map, and
• how to find the time anywhere in the world using a timezone map.

Each student has been working at his/her own pace keeping track of their own learning progress. Once they have demonstrated that they know / can do all of these things, then they can take the final test. Once a student passes the final test, they're able to work on a project where they use the internet to plan a world wide trip that uses the skills we've learned in class.