Comments for Point of Inflection

Comment on Flunecy (Part 3 of 3) by Julia

Julia — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:28:56 +0000

Ugh. I had a horrible class today where it felt I did everything right, and it went so wrong. I built relevance for inverse functions by introducing a “find the inverse” problem in the homework on composite functions from previoud class – some students solved it, explained it, and the class seemed to agree and understand. The rest should have been a breeze but I think I stumbled on the flunecy thing you’re talking about. They had a really hard time understanding the concept of inverse function, and I pushed them into exercises without heeding the warning signs. It felt like a mental car crash. Now I’m wondering how to recover. Any tips?

Comment on Specificity is Good. Right? by gasstationwithoutpum

gasstationwithoutpum — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:56:41 +0000

The approach used in most test design is to randomly choose a subset of the possible topics, to get an estimate of how well the student would have done on the whole set, had the test been long enough to test them all.

Telling the student ahead of time exactly which topics are assessed restricts their learning to just the assessed topics.

Comment on Specificity is Good. Right? by Riley Lark

Riley Lark — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:54:32 +0000

But you’ll have to determine what you’re going to teach at some point, right? Whether you have separate skill areas (standards) or a general area (US History) or something more organic (“What’s interesting to you?”), at some point you’ll have to make the conscious decision to teach a set of topics.

Please don’t think of yourself as a peabrain in this – thanks for your contributions!

Comment on Specificity is Good. Right? by Riley Lark

Riley Lark — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:49:45 +0000

1) I would love to test all 400 standards, but haven’t found a way to do it effectively. The limitation to 30 is a matter of necessity, because there’s not enough time to do 400, and the students can’t focus on 400 things in a semester.

2) For me, deadlines are for communicating, not teaching. That is, my deadlines tell students when I need their work, but they do not teach them to plan. I use several other methods to teach them to plan.

2.1) If a student can’t plan and can’t get his work in on Monday, are you willing to fail him even though he clearly shows that he’s an expert on Tuesday?

3) I expect a lot from my students, and many of them find their classes with me to be difficult. Your level of expectation can be orthogonal to the way you organize grades.

Comment on Specificity is Good. Right? by Julia Tsygan

Julia Tsygan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:59:52 +0000

Isn’t the point of standards that kids should know and master them all, and isn’t the point of deadlines that kids learn to plan their workand face the challenge of working efficiently? I’m concerned that by accepting 30 of 400 standards as sufficient and lowering time pressure almost indefinitely we’re doing the students a disservice by expecting too little from them.

Comment on A Selected Disagreement: Ranking Students by gasstationwithoutpum

gasstationwithoutpum — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:58:53 +0000

In the class for which I’m considering SBG this fall, I currently grade the students on 9 assignments: 6 computer programs and 3 papers. The three papers are a fellowship application, a report on building molecular models (where the correct construction of the models is the goal), and a library/bioinformatic research paper, which requires both library research and use of bioinformatic tools.

Each of the programs tests 3 things: programming skill, documentation skill, and the bioinformatic concepts and algorithms being implemented. I’ve always provided feedback on all three (to the extent that I can—bad documentation skill can make it impossible to determine the other two), but I’ve used a letter grade to summarize my overall impression of the program. I’ve been trying to decide whether splitting the grade would be beneficial to the students.

Comment on The Argument for SBG by Julia

Julia — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:14:50 +0000

I think a distinction between the ol’ formative and summative assessments would be good. Also, some references to how teachers may solve the problems of lack of time for frequent assessment, etc. I think that’s the main reason people are still basing their grades on homework etc, that it’s just easier that way.

By the way, I’m a little concerned that formative assessment may in fact perhaps better be based on things like attendance and homework – which by themselves do not show student understanding, but which help build it.
And SBG may let students do things in their own pace so much that keeping the class together may become an issue.
Addressing these issues would make your argument more convincing, though I don’t know how to do so within a Socratic dialogue.

Comment on A Selected Disagreement: Ranking Students by Jason Buell

Jason Buell — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:38:20 +0000

That’s a course problem not a grading problem. If you have a kid who mastered all the stuff in the first month of class, they shouldn’t be in the class. If they have to be in your class, that doesn’t mean you make them the A and move everyone down.

“If two students do end up with…etc” No, it’s not reasonable because you’re assessing students on their mastery of course content/standards/proficiency levels of whatever you want to call it. You’re going back to norm based if you establish your highest achiever as your top score.

If you’ve got kids who are going above and beyond, congratulations, you’re a good teacher. I have yet to see anywhere on this blog that says you should hold back the faster students so other students can catch up. If “A” means above and beyond (which I agree with) then all students who are above and beyond get the A. There is no Super Duper A or whatever. Ranking kids in K-12 is crap and doesn’t need to be done.

Comment on A Selected Disagreement: Ranking Students by Riley Lark

Riley Lark — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:54:39 +0000

Oof. You’re right. I’m just not prepared to call that “education.”

Comment on A Selected Disagreement: Ranking Students by Riley Lark

Riley Lark — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:53:06 +0000

How does a student in your class earn his grade? I ask because it seems like the difficulty of attaining the top grade in SBG could be adjusted just like the difficulty of attaining the top grade in a conventional class. For example, on a five point scale, you could use 4 to mean “master of expected skill level” and 5 to mean “went further than I expected.” Or just grade each standard out of 100 and do your grading in precisely the same way – just lump the grades together by topic instead of by assignment type.