Our grades are based on summative marks

-
Borgia's new gradebook policy states that our grades shall be composed of summative marks. Today, I would like to address what that means and why we have chosen to comprise our grades this way.

In education, we have two different types of assignments: "formative" and "summative." In his book "Fair Isn't Always Equal," educational researcher Rick Wormeli best defines these terms with a medical metaphor. He writes that a formative assignment is an assignment "for learning," while a summative assignment is an assessment "of learning"...so a formative assignment is like going to the doctor for a physical, and a summative assignment is like an autopsy. Meaning, all of the formative assignments we give are meant to be opportunities to realize our current state of understanding (just as a physical allows us to know our current state of health), but the summative mark in the gradebook is the final mark: the learning is finished and it's time to note the state it finished in (the autopsy).

I am a strong believer in NOT allowing a grade to represent all of the "physcials" along the way. 

Many of you know, I am an avid swimmer. I swam in college, and I love to get in the water as often as possible to swim a few thousand yards. When I began at Borgia, it was mid-summer and I was in great shape. However, as the school year progressed, I had a lot to do at school! Swimming was an activity I was doing less and less. By Thanksgiving, I had gained 25 pounds. While I attribute this to my lack of swimming, I also attribute it to the delicious Borgia lunches and Borgia cookies! However, by the end of the school year, I had lost 35 pounds. My decline in weight began with a physical. I went to the doctor, they weighed me, and I was the heaviest I had ever been. However, I recommitted to swimming. I made time to do it. By the end of the year, I was in better shape than I had been in years!

What if my "grade" for the year was based on my weight? I might have had the following weight scores:

July: 210
August: 215
September: 220
October: 225
November: 235
December: 230
January: 225
February: 220
March: 215
April: 210
May: 200

These marks are pretty close to real! However, if averaged together, my weight is 218. That is far from the truth! I ended the year at 200! My physicals along the way may have indicated that I wasn't in the pristine shape that I wanted to be in. But, while it wasn't an autopsy (thank goodness!), my summative result was outstanding!

At Borgia, we want grades to work this way. We don't want to punish students for not being "in shape"  during the learning stage. We want our final grades to indicate where they were in the end. After all, what is a grade supposed to do? We like to think it communicates to students, parents, and others (like colleges) how well the student understood the material. And if in the end, he or she understood it, we want that grade to say so!

The result of this philosophy may mean fewer grades in the gradebook; there will potentially be one summative grade for each piece of knowledge or skill learned in the class. However, we hope our grades serve as more accurate representations of what our students truly know and can do!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Build Culture, One "Pin" at a Time

-
This year, our principal came up with a fun way for the administrative team to appreciate teachers. She purchased three different types of "pins" that principals can distribute to faculty or staff. We have pins to give teachers who make notable contributions to our PLC teams and we have pins for adults who go above and beyond for our students. In addition, we have an "apple" pin to give to teachers following a good lesson. We didn't make an official announcement about these pins. We just started distributing them, here and there, in November. As a result, faculty and staff have been pleasantly surprised when we have had something to share, aside from some positive words.  Earlier this month, I put an inordinate amount of time into a presentation. It was the type of presentation that did not require extensive preparation. In short, we had decided that students weren't taking our district writing prompt seriously. The sophomores who had to participate did
Read more

Leaving "The Rope" on the Ground is Easy with Powerful Practice

-
Among the messages featured in the CPI family of posters, the reminder not to “pick up the rope” is among the most-appreciated. The poster, which reads “Don’t Pick Up the Rope” features a boy holding a rope in a tug-of-war; he sports an intense look on his face. Unseen is the person on the other end of the rope, deciding whether or not to engage in the tug-of-war with this young man. Unit Five in the CPI Nonviolent Crisis Intervention course really focuses in on this idea of avoiding “picking up the rope.” It’s easier said than done! Unfortunately, our clients (and even our colleagues) can put us in situations where we have a hard time leaving “the rope” on the ground. When a person is confronting us, demonstrating defensive-level behaviors, it is a challenge to keep our composure. However, this unit gives us some perspective and some helpful advice. First, this unit covers “precipitating factors,” defined by CPI as “factors that influence behavior.” I teach this topic with the
Read more

Pro-Life Allows 600,000 to become 1 Team

-
One of the great things about going to high school is the opportunity to be part of a team. Whether a student chooses to play a sport or not, he or she has the opportunity to show up and root for the team. When Borgia wins "State," we all win State. Especially at Borgia, team spirit is plentiful.  Sometimes, we have the opportunity to rally around other causes much like we rally around our teams. And in the case of the Pro-Life trip, the team is much bigger than our students experience with the other teams they support. The Pro-Life Trip experience, however, begins with Borgia rallying together as a team. This past fall, our campus minister Andy Halaz put extra energy into helping students to recognize that the Pro-Life trip is an opportunity to come together spiritually. We wanted to fill a bus with Borgia students going to Washington D.C. to march for this worthy cause. We succeeded! This was our first victory as a team.  In doing so, we had to remind students that a trip t
Read more