Grading for Growth

Too often, grades are the period at the end of any conversation on learning. Turn these numbers and letters into meaningful measures of mastery by looking for ways to amplify formative feedback, treating failures as beneficial to learning, and giving students opportunities to revise their work. Read on for more ways to create a learning-centered approach to assessment.

Features

Growing Skilled Peer Reviewers

Susan Golab, Melissa Graham Meeks, and Derek Miller

To enact the benefits of Grant Wiggins's maxim, "less teaching, more feedback," an English language arts teacher focuses on improving the skills of peer reviewers. The result is a rubric that describes a progression of feedback skills and the instruction that enables these abilities to grow.

Developing Reflective Learners: Grit, Growth, and Improvement

Matthew L. Johnson

How do you lead the paradigm shift away from grades and toward personalized success and individual growth? Sample ideas for assessing writing projects and quizzes in ways that emphasize refined effort.

Classroom Quizzes as Practice, Not Assessment

Jaclyn Maass

Frequent, low-stakes quizzes provide timely feedback on student learning and take some of the hype and hysteria out of weightier assessments. Learn four must-haves for applying this approach in your classroom, and gather fodder for the types of questions to ask.

Five Steps to Motivate Students to Mastery

Roy Sovis

This five-point plan for overhauling assignments will help you eliminate grade-grubbing and busy work, strengthen connections between learning and assessment, and confer choice and accountability to your students.

Columns

Field Notes: Pursuing Social Justice in the Gradebook

Alex Carpenter and Alberto Oros

Evidence suggests that grading policies disproportionately disadvantage students in poverty. Two teachers reflect on the complexities of mastery, equity, and compassion in assessment practices.

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