The best lesson I've ever taught? (Part 1)

I started this post back at the end of October on a real high, right after teaching the lesson to some really receptive students, then just got bummed out frustrated (with the reactions of some other classes and some other things) and never finished it up. Here's part 1, and I'll do my best to finish soon.

Using student feedback, problem solving, and modeling to come to a better understanding of assessment.

I ended my last post noticing how valuable being challenged by my students is turning out to be, especially as I go through this process of changing how I do everything. This is continuing to be the case.

We just finished up our first quarter here. I had a bit of a mad rush to squeeze some assessments in, so I was grading up to the last minute, and was really disappointed with the results, pretty much across the board. Also, every slacker in the class was emailing me to take care of practice work zeros in the gradebook, so I'd go look at the assignments, and half of them still weren't done... OK, my blood pressure is going up, so I'll stop, but you get the picture. 

Anyway, got the grades in, then had a little time to reflect about practices so far. There were a couple of things that were bothering me:

1. I was spending too much time recording homework: Even though I only do a completion grade, I let kids complete it later and get credit. This means I have to go BACK to the assignment page (I use Khan Academy for homework), find the assignment, and make sure the student got something other than 0% (yes, there are many students who were shocked that I didn't count 0% as complete), then change their grade in the gradebook. So, I'm spending a lot of time doing things for students who aren't doing their job! That's crazy and it has to stop!!  My first thought was just to stop grading homework at all, but my wife thought that might be a bit much, and helped me come to the idea of giving one simple warm-up question, taken directly from the homework, at the beginning of every class. I do this with a Google form quiz, so it's pretty manageable. ​<added in January: I've since started using Delta Math to keep students from just copying each other>
2. There's too much room between proficient and exemplary if I need to translate my grades into percents. I instituted a "proficient plus" for students who were showing some exemplary understanding, but not across the board.
3. Some students are gaming my system. I break my units into topics based on CCSS clusters, and my tests consist of 3 or 4 topics at a time. I assess everything at least twice; If the second grade is higher, I use that. If it's lower, I take 5% off the higher score. It sucks, but there was some pretty clear evidence of a couple of students saying, "Hey, if I get I get an 85 on the first test, then I'm OK getting an 80 overall if it means I don't have to try at all the second time!" So, I increased the penalty to 5% per level of difference (so 3-->0 incurs a 15% penalty).

I spent the first classes of the week in each section  going over these changes with the students.

• They really like #2
• they're fine with #3
• but #1 was a different story...

Starting the conversation
I started these classes by asking everyone, "what do you think would happen if I stopped grading homework?" Most immediate reactions to this question are, "well, no one would do it." We talked about whether or not that was true, and I gave them my answer: I think the students who do it now understand the purpose of practicing and would keep doing it, and nothing I've ever done has had much of an effect on the others. 
Then, I tell them about the new plan and have them do a practice warm-up.

A tale of two attitudes
Now, my first two classes, which I have been known to refer to as my "easy" classes, are very compliant, and just sort of say, "ok," and go on about their business.

My third class (22 juniors and seniors, last period of the day) is my most challenging group. After my first test, they told on me to the principal (who sat through my class on how to read test scores and improve, and totally backed me up). We've had a couple of breakdowns, where I just stop the class and lecture them about how useless they're being (they have a really hard time starting problems and staying focused). They complain about my teaching methods (they want more direct instruction) regularly, and are completely grade (percentage) focused. This class freaked out about #1: 

• What if I'm absent? (Do it at home!)
• What if I typed the wrong thing? (Be more careful next time)
• What if I don't understand the problem? (Should have gotten help before now)
• What if my computer doesn't start up in time? (Do it at the end of class)

Etc. So I brought the conversation back to my original question: What if I don't grade it at all? One of the things they kept coming back to was "we need those extra points". So I asked "Really? How many extra points is it? Does it always help you?" From their blank "yes", I realized that these kids don't understand how weighting works at all!
​<picking up here in January>
So, It's been awhile, and I don't remember exactly, but I'm sure I went home from that class frustrated and burned out, as usual. But somewhere in the night, it started coming to me (inspired, I'm sure by a recent workshop with Erma Anderson)...

And I made a math problem out of it.

​To be continued...