Non-continuous

That’s right! I have not put a grade on one piece of work so far this year.

Here are the pro’s:

• Students don’t ask what their grade is.
• Students don’t ask why their grade is what it is.
• Parents don’t e-mail me and complain ask about their student’s grade.
• My students are enjoying learning for the sake of learning.
• My students are revising their work and are showing gains in understanding.
• I can see students getting better and I actually feel like I’m developing talent in them.
• Students are evaluating their own work and justifying their evaluations – based on the work.
• I am communicating with parents about student work and their understanding of it.

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Here are the con’s:

• I have more work to do than “usual”.
• My friend and colleague Dave has a lot more and it may make him explode (or implode).
• I have to provide 2 progress grades per quarter and 1 final semester grade per administrative rules.  It is becoming difficult to provide a “final” letter grade when nothing is graded.
• Very concrete minded kids feel that if their work is not judged in a sort of right/wrong/ABCDF way they aren’t anchored to anything.

All in all I am really very happy with the results.  Especially my Juniors – I have never enjoyed my Juniors in Honors Precalculus more than I do this year.  I thought about if it was just the kids or how I am rolling now with grades.  I distinctly remember liking previous classes until the grades started rolling out on assessments.  Then it quickly became nit-picky, negative, and sometimes confrontational.  In short – we were having conversations about grades rather than having conversations about math.  That sucked and I hated every minute of it.  By the end of last year a lot of my kids would roll their eyes and go “Oh boy, here it comes” anytime someone brought up their “grade”.  Grades do not equal learning and in many ways I think they prevent it.  If kids don’t need them to learn and we don’t need them to teach, then why do it?

I’ve left a lot out of this story and if anyone is interested, I’ll share more of what I am doing in place of grades.  My challenge now is to figure out how I’m going to have the kids justify their quarter grades…