Reply To: Michael Rubin – How I Spiraled For the First Time

[Michael Rubin]

Hi Brian!

In my district, we are on a semester system with three 6-week marking periods each. We have district-wide benchmark assessments at week 10 of each semester and the semester finals. Our contract changed for this school year so that we have to update grades every 3 weeks.

My #1 goal is to send the message to students that I value growth and mathematical thinking. I plan to assign grades when required and never to individual assignments. I will also provide time for students to work on unmet assessment questions. Assessment questions will reflect the type of work we’re doing in class: require problem solving, provide context, be open-middled, and have space for reflection.

I’m stealing Kyle’s <i>Show Me What You Know!</i> assessment idea. I will put 2-3 problems on them—each problem numbered with 1 of the 13 primary objectives. As students spiral deeper into content, these will naturally become more challenging (skill wise and concept-understanding wise). <font face=”inherit”>These SMWYK problems will be completed to my satisfaction or not. If not, students will have class time (or our school’s flex time) to revise their work and resubmit (or in some cases re-take another version of) assessments. When the questions have been completed, I will have them submit a photo of their work via google classroom and will give them credit for completing the question. This will create a sort of </font>digital<font face=”inherit”> record (portfolio?) that requires minimal upkeep.</font>

I will grade students holistically based on their completion of the questions on the SMWYK assignments. If you’re interested, this is the grading policy I’ve been working on.

I’m setting up a google sheet (since our online system won’t work for this), where student names are in the column on the left. I’ve reserved 4 (but I can insert more later) columns for each of the 13 objectives. As we go through the year, I will populate these with SMWYK questions. I’ll probably title them: SMWYK #7 Q.1. Under the description I’ll write the primary skill or understanding that questions assessed.

For example: SMWYK # 7 Q. 1 Description: understand constant rate of change/write linear equation from two points to solve problem. 

At least every 3 weeks I will assign students an overall grade, and update our online grade-book program to show students which SMWYK questions they’ve completed and which they still need to work on.

To account for the benchmark assessments, I’m emphasizing certain topics at different times of the year (see the highlighted part of my spiraling spreadsheet). 

Please let me know if you have any suggestions/warnings/comments or other questions (I’m not sure I was very clear in my explanation here). 

Thanks, 

Mike

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