You’ll learn:
- How can growth and fixed mindsets affect assessment practices;
- How speed changes everything about assessment;
- How to focus on depth and not speed;
- How you can value growth in your classroom.
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Lesson 3: Assessment & Growth Mindset – Discussion
What was your big take away from this particular lesson?
What is something you are still wondering?
Share your thinking below.
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88 Replies
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I absolutely love Open Middle for Purposeful Practice.
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I just finished the course on mathematical mindset from Jo Boaler! A definite must for all!
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Couldn’t agree more! Absolutely changed my whole mindset around teaching math.
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I am anxious to show teachers the feedback/correction model without a grade. We’ve discussed holding back grades but I like the format of this for our formative tasks. Lots of good ideas.
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I love Malcom Gladwell and his Revisionist History podcast and had the same connection when I listened to that episode. I even discussed it with a parent of twins when she was telling me that one of her girls just wasn’t a “math brain” like the other one. Thanks for validating my thoughts on the subject.
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wow, this gave me lots to wonder about! Okay, I just learned why giving rewrites don’t work. Now I am looking at possibly giving assessments with no grades with feedback with the idea students will read the feedback, make corrections and resubmit. At what point do I enter a score? We need to enter marks regularly on Power School. I like what I am hearing and seeing and am wondering how to make this work within the culture where I teach. It is mark centered and sorting centered.
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I am wondering if you received any great ideas on how to work within the marking system of a PowerSchool building and still give feedback with no grade. I am going through the same issue and it appears you are further along than I am. Any information or advice that you have will be most appreciated.
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My big takeaway was that learning math is about depth, not speed.
I’m wondering how I can work this descriptive feedback into an already overloaded schedule, or how to make one-on-one time with students to show their improvements in my very needy class.
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My big takeaway is the statement that “removing time…proves we care about growth.” Also…that student use of feedback needs to be based on a trusting relationship. These ideas are huge for my struggling math learners.
How do I reconcile these with requirements of progress monitoring for students receiving Tier 2 or Tier 3 instruction? We are required to administer timed assessments to monitor their progress.
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My key take away was when giving students multiple opportunities to learn, this doesn’t mean multiple retakes, we can just have dialogue with students. Another thought that I had based on Jo Boaler’s presentation in the virtual summit was to maybe provide students with the diamond paper and allow them to explain problems through that process.
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I agree with this, when we give students multiple opportunities to learn, it won’t necessarily be retakes, it will be multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning. It will be giving multiple ways to demonstrate the learning.
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I agree with this as well. Reassessing a students learning does not have to be in the form of a test. If you are working with a student and they are able to show their understanding on a different problem but addressing the same skill, you can see their learning has grown. My only questions is how to put that in the gradebook…
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Something I have been struggling with is the idea of giving the students unlimited time to complete in-class assessments. I need ideas as to how to make this work. We have a limited amount of class time with material to be covered and cannot devote an entire period (plus, in some cases) to doing what are intended be short formative assessments. I try to give a little more time to students who need it (many times the need is because the student did not know the assessment was going to happen even when reminded), but other things need to be addressed during the class period, like the material for the course.
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I think that feedback is sometimes too rigid and that students only look for a number or a grade. Written or verbal feedback is so important for the students. On assessments, one of my friends will go through a student’s work and highlight their last correct step. Then she will hand back the paper and have students reflect on their efforts and try to correct their errors. I LOVE this method and wished I would have done it when I was in the classroom.
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Hello Kyle,
I agree that feedback is at times too rigid. Our math teacher this year is providing wonderful feedback which is letting our students know specifically what areas they did not quite master. The students are then able to work back through to see where their understanding fell short and be more aware the next time.
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Feedback without a set grade is a fabulous idea. My students are driven by the correct answer based on work they do outside of school. Changing this little thing in my classroom could create a big impact after building the rapport and expectation with students.
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Multiple opportunities to demonstrate feedback, giving students opportunity to re-address LO’s, descriptive feedback. All of these take more and more time out of our already constrictive schedule. I suppose with more experience and better time management, I will learn how to incorporate all of these great assessment strategies into my discipline.
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I love the comparison of growth learning vs. fixed learning. So often we get stuck in the pacing guide or report card list of skills that so much learning gets lost.
I hear nearly every teacher spend a few days at the beginning of each year promoting a growth mindset in their students. But, these same teachers will jump into activities like Kahoot because it’s neat. I love that you shared an alternative for timed activities like this! I’d really love to know more about the one you discussed in this session! Big idea today: Actions speak louder than words.
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It’s so easy to “talk the growth mindset talk”, but so much more difficult to “walk the walk.” Those activities don’t pay off if we don’t live the message in our classrooms. Thanks for sharing your reflection!
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I like the idea for retakes to be done through dialogue, which puts the responsibility back on the student, and doesn’t give the teacher tons more work to do. I look forward to learning more about “growth days”: what they look like, and the impact they might have on students.
I also appreciate the idea that we need both fast thinkers, and deep thinkers, but that we don’t necessarily need fast thinkers in math class.
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I recently heard the term re-engage vs re-teach this last year and feel it connects well with the idea of addressing specific parts of an assessment for student next steps. A group of teachers are using this strategy after each small assessement and giving students 2 star questions to re-engage their thinking (regardless of what was “missed”). All students then re-engage with the concept and turn in their star work before recieving a grade.
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I definitely agree with the ideas here. What I’m wondering is how to find opportunities for more conversations and coaching, as I feel that would be more impactful than written feedback for younger students. I really appreciated the reminder that learning about a concept doesn’t need to stop at an arbitrary point in the year just because that’s when the grading period ends.
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I love the idea of moving away from right or correct and towards next steps. Learning is a never ending journey and what better way to model that than celebrating the growth steps the students take and then setting the stage for modeling their thinking in different ways and looking forward to their next steps.
I am looking forward to hearing more about growth days and fresh grade in the next lesson.
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Providing multiple learning opportunities would be much easier if the curriculum is spriralled.
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I love the feedback/correction model and am looking forward to learning more about Mastery days. I like that FreshGrade allows for the showing of the progression, and am wondering if the items remain tied? We use Seesaw, which has some really great tools, but I like the way FreshGrade seems to be able to show progress towards a given learning target.
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Linking growth mindset into assessments is a wise move. Little did I realise that what some teachers like me have been doing is already a growth mindset. For me, it was still instilling the positivity in the students’ minds that maths is easy and they should embrace it with a positive mind.
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I LOVE timed games, I’m good at them. I often give timed quizzes because I’m concerned about using class time to learn new content as well. I need to remove the timing!
Test retakes don’t work… Instead, allow students to re-address specific struggles. Student initiated conversation or presentation to demonstrate their new learning.
“Is this correct?” – Don’t answer! Make them justify their answer. I love doing this.
Focus on Next Steps, NOT Correctness.
Give feedback without a grade! Then, allow them to use your feedback to make corrections.
I’m curious about the idea of simply assigning grades to students without a test or quiz at all, simply based on dialogue and prompts. Many students struggle with tests from the outset. It would be difficult for me to make a shift away from tests, but with the discussion of new ways for students to readdress struggles, would it make sense to simply skipping the test step altogether?
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Great reflections here, Daniel!
Your wonder is a great one. Before I went into my current role as a district consultant, I was still doing my weekly “check in” assessments, but I’d like to think that I’d be using “all work” each day for assessment AND evaluation (as we approach the end of the course). The key is refining your “during moves” of the lesson to ensure that you’re able to notice and name the learning. Where students are along their journey…
Maybe that is a goal for you this coming year?
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I need to structure assessments that emphasis progress and growth, not a label or grade.
I am trying to think through how to change this practice inside a traditionally grading system. I would love to move to standards based grading, but I currently cannot do that yet (working on it). So here is my question for the community…how can I modify the whole “retake test” to still promote growth within the traditional grading system? Is it possible?
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I think you can still do this within a traditional grading system. The hard part is just ensuring that both you and the student know where those areas for growth actually are… this is the trouble with a traditional “retake”… kids redo it and maybe snag a few extra points here and there, but do we know if there was any real significant growth?
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Rather than test re-take, re-addressing student learning by spiralling content, ensures success!!
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Couldn’t agree more!
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I have been trying to do this in my room and students thrive on knowing that they can have another opportunity to show me that they have mastered a skill. Many students go home and practice and then tell me when they are ready to show me their mastery.
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This is the kind of feedback I give with reading. It makes so much sense to do the same with math.
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The more we learn about mathematics, the more we learn how similar it is to learning language both reading and writing. Of course there are subtleties that are different like how the content continues to build on top of itself, but the process is much the same.
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I agree with timed games. I don’t want kids to get the wrong idea about math being about speed. I enjoy Malcome Gladwell’s talk. I am excited to see what is next.
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I loved the chess player example, it targets the main issue. I agree with all what was mentioned but let’s be realistic: What can we do when the time factor is a constraint for your course, at school ? When you are required to do quizzes & assessments & enter your grades on time on a system that does not allow you a margin for non formal evaluation other than grades, where graded copies should be documented?
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Salam, you’re right. We must enter grades at certain times. The key is that mark should reflect their understanding of the standards at that time. It’s a snap shot. I look forward to your thoughts on module 3.
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Thank you for mentioning Growing Success. I always go back to this document when discussing assessment with educators.
Growing success is very much about making the learning visible and providing learning goals and success criteria. Both LG and SC provide a platform for rich feedback — but, the feedback needs to be clear and concise with actionable next steps.
The idea that the initial work should be done for feedback purposes and not marks, is not a new concept – we do that all the time in the language curriculum, we just call it a rough copy.
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I have completed Mathematical Mindsets course and these ideas of course align with that. I am now going to look at the Knowledge Hook game without the timing.
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Fantastic. We are big fans of Jo Boaler and her work… so glad you can see the very clear connections!
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Kids ignore the feedback when they see the grade–YES!!! That makes perfect sense–esp when they ask “Why did I get a _____?” and you’re like ???!!! Didn’t you read the comments I left? (Which took me FOREVER!!) Also–love the visual example of feedback embedded within the test design–prob on the left and feedback/next steps on the right. Communicates that feedback will occur.
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Love it. Looking forward to hearing an update after you put some of these ideas into practice!
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I have always pride myself in the Growth Mindset culture of my class and am always looking to improve my teaching so that my actions do not imply fixed mindset. I have read Carol Dweck’s book and am a big fan of Jo Boaler and her Youcubed website. I have played Kahoot on occasion on a Friday afternoon or before a holiday as a treat. Like you said, it rewards speed. My winner is always the fastest to the answer. Fortunately, I have never taken the time to take content that my students are studying to create a Kahoot and when we play it is random topics that my students are interested in. I will try Knowledgehook Gameshow without a time limit next time students are asking to play a game.
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I absolutely plan to “go deeper” and not faster, but a question is how can I manage/grade/score this? Especially if I want the students working in mixed groups. What happens when one student wants to leave their group behind, or worse a group wants to leave another student behind?
Also, this is telling me that I really need to rethink my Learning goals for the course if they’re going to incorporate more in-depth thinking and representations of a topic/skill.
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Right & Correct vs, Next Steps: I have just enough info to be dangerous…I have learned that grades don’t help learning but ONLY 30% of feedback is EFFECTIVE????? Sweet jimminy; so take away: Going to try feedback with notices and wonders/next steps on our 5 question check in…let’s see what happens!
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@maryanna-biedermann I’m eager to hear how your journey goes. Keep us updated.
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I LOVE the format for the learning task with the opportunity for feedback and corrections. I especially appreciate the realization that best-intended feedback tied to a grade is counterproductive and that a student must believe and trust the teacher. I’m confident in being able to build relationships with students, but I feel like even with a positive relationship it is so hard to overcome some of the strongly engrained fixed-mindset beliefs students hold. I love to do “My Favorite No” with students to celebrate the great math that was done while learning even more from the mistakes made. What are other ways to build in the ideas that making mistakes in math is GOOD when we learn from them?
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I agree here. It’s hard to help students switch mindsets. Coming up we discuss how to “grade” and “grading what you value” For us this is what helps kids over the ledge. We need to prove to them that we value the growth and we will assess your growth.
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I never really gave thought to Kahoot having a negative effect on student mindset. Students would ask for Quizizz and ask I leave it untimed. My biggest take away is that often I created another retest and I would see grades get worse. I never thought of placing the task on the student to convince me they learned the material and giving them choice in how to present that growth. I wonder if there is a way to still give the traditional test my district requires but allow the retest to become this type of growth assessment.
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I’m sure you could find a way to make both work. Will your district allow you to use additional assessment data to impact the grade or are they stuck on a specific number of tests and weightings?
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It is a minimum of 3 tests each 9 weeks with the caveat that they are common assessments among all members on the grade level team. I don’t have the freedom to go rogue and create another assessment outside of the team but the team at least creates all of the tests. I am brand new to the district so there is a small chance to convince veterans about task-based instruction. I am hoping that I could at least determine how to retest students to show mastery.
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Testing weight is predetermined formative 40%, summative 60%.
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You could set up the portfolios (we show in upcoming modules/lessons) and the tests can be just one piece of evidence to demonstrate understanding on the learning goals. The portfolio can help show you and students where they need to improve.
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Essentially add questions to the test to incorporate the growth components. The district still has its data at the same time dilute the impact of a multiple-choice test. Okay, I think that could work thank you.
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Keep us posted!
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I definitely want students to have opportunities to readdress specific struggles. I’ve looked at so many student papers, homework, assessments – from my class and other teachers’ classes. You can see what students are great at and what they need to work on just a little more. My struggle is how to create the space for that to happen. Especially when other students need other interventions or need to just keep going. I can’t wait to learn more about this. I love the feedback and corrections columns too!
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@pamela.brock Sounds like your Wednesday’s might be a good time for this however, I’ve found better results when they have time to reflect and readdress learning goals with my support in the room.
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Hi Jon –
Can you elaborate a little for me. If I use those Wednesdays and meet with students individually or in small groups could that work?
Thanks –
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@pamela.brock did you find answers to this as you went through the course? I tend to float around the room and help students one-on-one.
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Big take away: Assessment vs Evaluation. We assess continuously – we don’t need to evaluate (or make a judgement) as often as we think we do.
I wonder about formats of the learning goal quiz you showed. I like the feedback section, but maybe instead of “corrections” writing “next steps” or “to improve.” My thinking is if the student gets the problem correct, are they done. Or can we give feedback prompting an extension. Hmmm… just thinking out loud 🙂
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I am interested in more information on how to give feedback that the students will actually pay attention to and take action on. I like the idea of not giving a grade to help with this, but I still struggle with getting students to read and take action on my feedback. I like your idea of the two columns on assessments (“feedback” and “corrections”). At what point do you put these assessments in the gradebook (if at all)?
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I will record what I think the student showed in my record book but not show the student. The student sees just the feedback. My record will show their growth over time. It’s consistency that I’m looking for to be put down in a grade book. We recommend the module in this course on standards based grading as it can help with thinking along this route.
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Biggest take-away: That when I was giving back my assessments for the kids to try over again, it wasn’t necessarily helping but actually hurting.
Knowledgehook looks WAY better than Kahoot. I definitely have not been a fan of Kahoot as this seems like a more relaxed way to obtain assessments.
Wonder: How do the conversations look like and sound like when you are re-addressing a student’s struggles? What are some examples of assessment that is feedback only?
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I believe in a growth mindset, but want to make my assessments more integrated with that idea instead of the fixed mindset. I love your idea of growth days and am excited to learn more about that.
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Biggest take away is using the 2 columns next to the assessment. One for Feedback and one for Corrections, instead of Re-tests.
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Let us know how this change in your assessments helps. We’d love to know!
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Biggest takeaway: take the focus off of the grade by not putting the grade on it…. Use the two columns on assessments to give students a chance to keep thinking and refine their thinking — so exciting. And a change I can make immediately.
Love the suggestion of non-Kahoots. I hate Kahoots — too much noise for too little return on real info. I always skipped through the leaderboard as fast as I could…. The five times I’ve used Kahoots in my twenty-whatever years of teaching. Can’t wait to explore an alternative.
Wondering what other fun things we can use as formative assessments…. Still wondering how we can translate all of this into grades, too…. I hate the students fixation on them, but grades are still here…
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I’ve found it helpful to always mention to students that their grade will be based not only on product but also observation and conversation. Takes the focus off the grade since they won’t “know” or “receive” a grade for conversations and observations. The mentality / mindset really shifts over time!
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I like that! Thanks! That also gives me freedom to do so…
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I wonder what would happen if quarterly report cards were actually used as progress reports and the gradebook remained open for that quarter so students still had an opportunity to demonstrate their learning? As it is right now, students and teachers basically close that chapter of the year at report card time, never to be visited again.
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This was a very good and insightful lesson. I loved how the relevance to chess players and whom they consider to be “better” makes this even more meaningful….especially with the tortoise and the hare story.
Although a lot of these tests are systemically wrong, but it is something most students go through in their professional learning and growth- so a part of me also wants to make sure that they know that some tests are timed and counted based on the fluency.
Sad but true- great lesson.
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My big takeaway from this is the importance of looking at depth rather than speed. So many children would do better in courses and feel more confident if they had more time to complete assignments rather than feeling inefficient when they are not able to figure out things as quickly as others.
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My big takeaway is to focus on next steps and not to give grades. I wonder how to best give feedback.
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Short and actionable….so that it’s manageable for you but meaningful for them.
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I’ve been doing knowledgehook gameshows and I honestly hate how they are not timed. It will take me the entire class to get through just a handful of questions. Maybe this is needed but, in this process, majority of the students have lost interest and are chatting or on snapchat.
How do you de-emphasize speed, but also not lose attention of the class?
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That’s definitely a balance. Having “part 2” of a question ready for those looking for a challenge can help here.
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I have been doing test retakes and it does take a lot of time and I wasn’t really sure if indeed it was useful. I have also been not giving scores/marks/grades on anything but I do make marks when they are incorrect. I find the clear feedback is also labor-intensive and I wonder by me telling them what they need to go back over or telling them what they did wrong is also not productive? Will they learn from their mistake if I tell them what it was or will they learn more if they find out what their mistake is? Or will this kill their confidence? I can foresee that many students will look at getting something wrong as more work and I’m seeing more and more that they do not want to put in more work than they have to. How do you get students to put in the effort?
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@philip-pittelli The time it takes a student’s mind to shift to a growth model will be different for each of them. Sometimes I don’t see it until I have them a few years later. I agree with you that those students who have not had their mindset shifted yet will see the feedback and corrections as “more work”, but that act also tells them that you believe in them and know they can achieve better.
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It took a little digging, but here is the statement that I found in my standards:
Standards define what students should understand (know) and be able to do at the
conclusion of a course or grade.Still trying to figure out how to make this work, but that is one more thing that allows me to be headed in the right direction.
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exactly! Keep digging here in this course!
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When you are giving feedback on an assessment that is being graded, do you hold off on grading it until they make corrections? We used standards based grading and I tend to put the initial grade in and then make an adjustment once they have make corrections so they see the effect if they were able to correct the mistake.
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@tara-militello That’s what I do as well, however I don’t show my students that grade. I just leave feedback.
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I really liked the format of the test, where there is a column for Feedback and a column for next steps for the students. I’m interested in the next module and learn how to build trust using these guidelines as a culture in my class.
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I hate timed tests! So many teachers in my building use timed tests for math facts, and it drives me crazy. I teach 5th & 6th grades but the kids still don’t have fact fluency by the time they get to me. They memorized the facts well enough to pass that teacher’s test and still don’t know them by the next year.
I also love the idea of feedback without grades.
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Things I want to work on for assessment in my class, and a rating from 1 (easy) to 5 (impossible) about how difficult I feel this will be for me to do in my current situation:
Eliminating speed: 2
Multiple opportunities: 3
Letting interviews have meaningful effect on student grades: 3
Moving from correctness to next steps: 2
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Building the foundation of learning is not a “race”. Depth over time is a fabulous way of viewing all learning.
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My big take away from this was actually at then end of the Lesson where it mentions feedback– I use that feedback and corrections format on my assessments, I think I saw it in another workshop that you guys did– BUT our district uses standards based grading– 3 is proficient, 2 is approaching standard, 4 is above, –we have proficiencies scales, etc….. and I’m putting those scores on the assessment and I think that may be actually distracting from the feedback I’m giving. I feel like I can make this system better so students focus on the comments and not just the “number” that is being given to them.
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