Going Gradeless: A Work in Progress

Going Gradeless:

Last summer, a colleague, KR, and I made the decision to ‘go gradeless’ in our Grade 10 classes. KR, the Grade 10 lead approached me about this idea at the beginning of summer 2020. Seeing as many of my students were so grade hungry, I was all for this! Not exactly knowing how to go about it, we decided to do some research and used, Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School by Starr Sackstien as our primary resource for our project.

Here was our rationale and explanation to students, parents, and our admin.

What is gradeless learning? A gradeless classroom is kind of what it sounds like, as strange as that is. As an oversimplification, there are no grades. However, students will end up with a final grade that is based on their execution of the skills laid out by the Ontario curriculum, rather than as a cumulation of prior grades allotted during the learning process. The key principles are to shift the focus of learning from the number on an assignment to the feedback, from the end result to the process itself. As Marcus Schultz-Bergin says, “Grades tend to put an end to the student caring about the assignment, whereas feedback continues a conversation” (Edutopia). We are going gradeless but are not anti-grade, rather, we are pro-feedback, which will initially mean there are no grades.

In the first half of the year, we will not be assigning grades to each assignment. There will still be assignments with clear criteria for success, there will still be feedback, and we will conference regularly to discuss each student’s progress.
At frequent opportunities, including after each assignment, students will track their progress based on curriculum expectations using the chart of expectation mastery (<–find the link here). This will give both teachers and students tangible things to talk about during each conference and provide a visible road map to each student’s learning.
Before report card grades are out, there will be a bigger conference where students and their teacher will assign the number grade best fits their progress so far. So, students will finish their first term with a grade that will be visible on the report card.

In the last half of the year, we will be reintroducing grades. Assignments will still include feedback and we will still be using the chart of expectation mastery (as the expectations haven’t changed!). The hope is that students will understand the expectations, will be able to use feedback more readily, and so the grades will make sense.

 

Rationale for Learning 

“The best reason to go gradeless is to unleash intrinsic motivation. Authentic learning doesn’t happen when we coerce students with rewards and consequences. Authentic learning comes from an innate desire to understand. Eliminating grades can be a step towards activating intrinsic motivation. When we eliminate grades, we may find we have to fill the gap with something else” (Teachers Going Gradeless)

Why Go Gradeless in English?

The benefit of going gradeless in an English class is that we are primarily founded on a base set of skills that we spend years returning to and refining (e.g. essay writing). These skills will be graded eventually, but now the grade will be applied to a skill that has been more thoroughly practiced, reviewed, and refined. Therefore, students will have low-risk opportunities to try new skills and to make mistakes, which will result in stronger skills in the end.

The Covid Effect

Our students have not had a regular school year in a while as Covid-19 and various quarantine protocols closed schools and pushed students into vastly different contexts. Not grading in the first few weeks of this course is our acknowledgement that students will need time to reacclimate and to readjust. Offering more learning opportunities and more time to practice a skill will help us bring all students together before we move on to grading anything.

Resources:

The Chart of Expectation Mastery

Teachers Going Gradeless

6 Tips for Going Gradeless

An Article from the Atlantic

4 Reasons to Go Gradeless

 

Thus begins our journey….

Although we started this project last year, I will reflect on this year so far.

We had the students fill out surveys so that we were constantly aware of how this project was turning out:

We ask that students fill in the introductory student survey before beginning the course. During the term, students will be asked to fill in the midpoint student survey. We will reassess at the end of the term, having made adjustments throughout, to make sure that the program is as effective as it can be. At this point, we will ask for the students to fill in the student reflection survey. 

Some, but very few, students were hesitant at first about going gradeless because most of them felt that grades kept them motivated and on track of their learning. Most of the students, however, were happy to have some of the pressure to achieve certain marks taken away.

At the beginning of the term, the students were presented with the following lesson structure (taken from Penny Kittle):

1. Read (for 10 or 15 minutes)
2. Write: prompt based on the text (5-8 minutes)
3. Discuss (either the writing prompt or the class topic
4. Mini-lesson
5. Worktime

Before working on any assessment, we eased them into the school year with some review on literary devices and short stories. Then we introduced our text, Dear Evan Hansen. Along with lessons on short stories and devices, we wanted them to get started on the text. During their reading time, I would conference with each student and we discussed the following (or something like this):

• How are you enjoying the book? Do you like Evan? What did you think when….
• Do you like reading? What else have you read that you enjoyed? OR Why do you not like reading?
• Looking at previous years, has English been a subject you enjoy or find you are good at?
• What were some struggles you have had in English in the past?
• What were some strategies that have helped you in English before?
• Is there anything you would like to tell me that could assist me in helping you learn?

Once these conferences were complete (it took about a week and a half to get through 20 students during the reading time), I had a good understanding of where each student was and we could begin on an assessment.

For the Grade 10’s first assignment, they were tasked with writing a paragraph on the text, Dear Evan Hansen, and were required to either defend or condemn the protagonist and his lie. We scaffolded the assignment by having the following lesson topics:

1. Brainstorming
2. Topic sentence
3. Finding evidence and integrating it
4. The analysis
5. Editing and Revising – peer review day
6. MLA: in-text citations and Works Cited

I wasn’t able to conference much during these lessons but tried to look over their work during class time. Our school has academic assistance time and I found this group did not take advantage of it, feeling they were getting their work done in class. Once the paragraphs were complete, I went through them and tried to provide as much specific feedback as I could. We used the following as our rubric (I would love some feedback on what we could do better here).

What was great! (This time, you….)		What needs work (Next time, you should…)
	Effective evidence is chosen from the text Shows thorough knowledge and in-depth insight into the text and topic		K/U
	persuasive points that differ from the evidence All evidence is analyzed thoroughly and thoughtfully in order to support the argument		T
	written in fluent English in the present tense virtually no grammatical and spelling errors.  The writing is clear and easy to read.		Comm.
	clear, logical structure. PEA format is used flawlessly There is a persuasive topic sentence that relates to the thesis well Quotations and evidence are incorporated fluently		App.

The students were then tasked with reading through the specific comments throughout their paragraph and the comments on the rubric. They then went through the expectations on their the chart of expectation mastery and assessed themselves to see if they were: 1) in progress, 2) on track, 3) near mastery, or 4) mastery. They had to add notes to each expectation to explain why they felt they deserved to be in the category they chose.

Once they did this, I began conferencing with them. During this time, I had a number of activities to keep them busy, and in between each conference, I’d check in to see how they were doing.

The conversations were very similar: The students provided evidence (from their assignment) as to why they think they should score a certain way. We talked about each expectation individually and the paragraph as a whole. About 95% of the students were either exactly aligned with my thinking on where they should be on the expectation chart OR they scored themselves lower than I did. After our conference, each student had a list (so to speak) of the skills they were mastering and the skills they needed to focus on more.

When it came to discussing the grade for the report card, students had to fill out THIS chart. They had to provide evidence to back up the grade they thought should appear on the report card, and again, their projected grade aligned with mine.

Overall, it has been a great experience and the students end up having a very clear idea of the expectations that they have mastered and the ones they need to improve.

Any advice or suggestions are welcome as we are still developing this.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Laura Baragar