During my first year teaching 6th grade, Stacey taught me a lesson I will never forget. She came to me after class and said, “I don't understand why I got this grade.” I glanced at the paper, and two responses came to mind—she hadn't written very much, and her responses weren't as complete as those of some of the other students. But I realized that those answers weren't very helpful. Stacey needed to understand exactly why she'd gotten the grade, or she would have no idea how to do better next time. As a teacher, I was repeating a pattern I had experienced as a student: guess what the teacher wants and if you guess right, you'll get a good grade.
I promised myself I would be a lot clearer with my class about what I expected, but Stacey's question was pushed aside until I was faced with grading a stack of projects on immigration. I had designed the projects carefully so that students could choose a way to show what they had learned using different learning styles. They had submitted journals, maps, videotapes, and other projects, all about the immigration experience. Sitting in my basement with the projects spread out around me, I realized that I had no idea how to evaluate them. Finally, I decided to write one compliment and one suggestion for each. It took forever, and I still wasn't sure if my grades provided the feedback that would lead to improvement.
The summer after that first year of teaching, I took the Foxfire class offered at the University of Washington with the other members of our teaching team. We grappled with Foxfire's core practices and evaluated our teaching in light of them. I shared my struggle with assessing student work, and our instructor's suggestion triggered a whole new way for me to look at evaluation: “Maybe you could get the kids involved in deciding how projects are graded.”
Creating Standards Together
When it was time for the immigration projects the next fall, I handed out a list of topics and asked the students to select one. The next day, students who had chosen the same project formed groups that would write a grading standard by which their projects would be evaluated. I explained that a project completed as described on the project sheet would receive a C. Each group was to decide what they would need to add to my criteria in order to receive a B or an A. As an example, we set a grading standard together for a writing project. That gave me a chance to discourage responses that were too ambitious: everyone's journal did not have to be typed, but more than a half page of writing on each sheet would be required, and so on.
After writing the journal grading standard as a class, each group decided what projects would have to include to receive a B or an A. I took all their suggestions and typed one grading standard for each project. The next day, I handed each person his or her group's grading standard sheet. Now, before students even began the project, they knew how it would be evaluated.
This time, when I took the projects home, each one had a grading standard attached to it. And what a difference that made: because my students didn't have to guess what to do to get a high grade, they were more successful; our high standards resulted in better projects; and although I still made comments, evaluation was easier. Parents could also see exactly how the evaluation had been done. The process was open to all, and the students had had a part in creating it.
Expanding the Idea
If the process worked for big projects, why not for smaller ones? Last fall each student made a sports poster that demonstrated the use of math in a sport. Before they began the poster, I listed requirements for the project and created a grading standard. Later, when we wrote letters to pen pals in Colorado, the class generated the grading standards. Based on the letters they had received from their pen pals, they decided what made a good letter.
Most grading standards include yes or no questions about required elements. Each element is assigned a set point value—if an element is included, the student gets the points; if not, no points. We also included points for more complicated elements that couldn't be answered yes or no. For each of these type of questions, we created a rating scale (for example, 1–5 or 5–25 points). We also began including a rating scale for effort on each grading standard (see fig. 1 for an example of a grading standard). The students also have a simplified version of the school district's core learnings in their binders, and we sometimes include them in our standards to see whether we are on track with the expectations for 6th graders.
Figure 1. An Example of a Student-Developed Grading Standard
Name __________________________________________
Pen Pal Letter
For 1–5, circle yes or no. For each yes circled, give yourself 5 points on the line at the right margin.
Address at the top right-hand corner. yes / no _____
Date underneath address. yes / no _____
Salutation (starts Dear _____). yes / no _____
Signature at the end. yes / no _____
Indented or skipped lines to show paragraphs. yes / no _____
Printed, used cursive, or word processed your very best and neatest.sloppy 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 neat
You told your pen pal interesting details about yourself.just a few 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 lots of details
You put a lot of effort into your letter and you are proud of it.not much effort 5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 lots of effort
Add your scores for questions 1–5, then add the numbers you circled for questions 6–8. Put your total score here: __________.
At first, I filled in the grading standards. Then, for the pen pal letter, students filled in their own. For some projects, students completed the grading scale first, and then I went over their scale to make sure I agreed. In most cases, I did. A few times, students were too hard on themselves, and I adjusted scores up. Only occasionally did students rate themselves higher than I would have. Scores for effort were left up to the individual who did the work and were never changed by me.
Recently, each student wrote a short biography of a leader in the women's suffrage movement. On the due date, the students turned in their biographies, along with five blank grading standards. After discussing the seriousness of evaluation and the importance of being objective, each student chose four more biographies to read and completed an evaluation form for each. The fifth evaluation sheet was for me to fill in. I was pleased with how close my evaluation was to those of the four students who looked at the same piece of work.
These days, whenever possible, we work as a class to write grading standards. A common question for any assignment has become, “Are we writing a grading standard for this?”
To Stacey: I'm sorry. You really wanted to do a better job on your schoolwork, and sometimes the feedback I gave you didn't tell you what you needed to know. But thank you. You were brave to ask your question, and it has influenced my teaching ever since.
