Going Gradeless Week 1: The Experiment Begins
I recently read the book Ungrading.
Susan Blum is credited as the author of this book. However… while she is clearly the one who organized it and submitted it for publishing, the book actually consists of several stories by various teachers reflecting on their experiences eliminating (or at least minimizing) grades in their classrooms.
The book doesn’t provide a lot of solid information or guidance on the practice, but the anecdotes were interesting and gave a general overview of different methods that might be used. Some resonated with me more than others.
On the whole, my takeaway was that it can be done.
It’s a concept that I’ve been toying with trying out my own room for some time, but I wasn’t sure just how practical it was. I’m a special education resource teacher. This means that I teach reading and math to small groups of students with learning disabilities.
Due to the population that I work with it’s pretty much a given that my students are going to struggle academically.
That’s why they’re with me.
They’re all working at least two grade levels below their peers.
Well, they’re at least two grade levels behind their peers when they begin in the resource room. The goal is always to help them get caught up and moved back to the general education class.
Then they won’t be with me anymore.
Since all of the students that I do work with are already struggling in the general curriculum, it’s never made sense to me to penalize them for wrong answers. They received enough failing grades before they came into my class. I don’t need to pile on more.
My job isn’t only to get them caught up. It’s to give them the confidence to know that they’re capable.
So instead of giving a lesson and then simply assigning work that I will grade, we begin by working through each concept together. In the beginning I explicitly explain new concepts as we work through problems, but as we progress I put more and more of the onus on the students to give the answers. If an answer is incorrect we work towards finding the correct one.
For these assignments, since they’re done together, there’s no reason for wrong answers.
We then move into independent practice, but even here I’ve never simply slapped a grade on assignments and called them done.
What I do is go through each student’s work, point out mistakes, and help them find the right answers. Work can be resubmitted as many times as necessary and students sometimes need to rework their problems multiple times.
Overall, as long as the student participates in lessons, completes the work, and makes all corrections he or she will get an A in the class. Most of my students get either very high grades (when they put in the effort) or they get very low grades (when they don’t do the work).
Why am I telling you this?
Well, as we enter the second half of the school year, I’ve decided to experiment with not putting grades on any of this work. My overall class structure is changing very little. We’ll still do assignments together. I’ll still review independent work, provide feedback and ask students to correct errors. The difference is that the final grade will be based solely on how many assignments they completed - and completed correctly.
I already meet with my students individually on a regular basis to check in on how well they are understanding concepts. (This is one of the benefits of having such a small group.) Now, at the middle and end of the quarter I will meet with each of them specifically for a grade check-in.
How many assignments are missing?
Are there any assignments that haven’t been corrected?
How well have they shown their mastery of the concepts?
The answers to these questions will determine what grade they are currently receiving in the class.
This past week was the first week of the experiment and, so far, I haven’t seen any changes in my students in terms of behavior or effort. My hard workers are still working hard. I have a few students who are either chronically absent or don’t complete their work (even when it is done together).
There is one particular student that has shown an increase in participation, but I can’t say for sure what the cause behind this may be.
I can’t yet say whether or not eliminating grades will lead to any difference in student understanding, participation or assignment completion.
The quarter is still young.
I plan to go through at the end of the quarter to see if work completion rates during this period have changed for each student or not. I’ll also be giving a review at the end of the quarter on the concepts that we’ve learned about to see how well they seem to be remembering the information and compare this with the previous quarters.
Next week we will be finishing the first units for this period, which means that there will be an increase in independent work and more of an opportunity for me to see what they know. This will be a good opportunity for me to observe whether student learning appears to be increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same.
Stay tuned.
