I just finished the novel Speak and recommend it highly for those of you that have not read it. There is an art teacher in the novel who changes the way that Melinda (the main character) feels about communication and expression. The teacher has each student pull a topic from a globe and they have the entire year to sculpt, paint, draw, or use any other creative outlet to express what the topic is to them. Melinda draws the word "tree" and creates image after image after image of different types of trees until she finally comes up with a simple, slightly imperfect tree that encompasses what she wanted to create.
How do we give our students the ability to try and fail and try and fail and try again until they are happy with their creation, all the while not judging their failures but their effort? How can we give A's without the perfect "A work" to back our decision? I want my students to feel like they can take risks and not be punished for them. But how do I prove to administrators and parents that this IS learning?
I just love the book Speak (wish I could figure out how to underline or italicize on here:). I used to have it in my classroom library and I could not keep it on the shelf. In fact, I had to keep buying replacement copies. But onto your question...I think the portfolio offers a place for trying, failing, risk-taking, etc. You have to make a distinction between process and product, and you have to decide what your criteria for an "A" might be and articulate that to your students. I guess I've never had a problem with an administrator or parent when I am able to show them a portfolio of a student's work which to me is a collection of all of the things you list--risks, failures, triumphs, etc.
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting to me. After some of our class discussions about getting about from the five paragraph essay, and especially after looking at those rubrics last week, I've been thinking a lot about how to grade in just the way you're talking about. It's definitely a hard nut to crack, and all I've really come up with is that there's nothing to come up with; it's just one of those things that you have to deal with when you come to it. I hope I'm right about that!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad our group picked Speak to read, I loved it, too! I've always felt the same way...I wish there was a way to grade a student more heavily on their improvement and effort more-so than the final product. I had a physics teacher in high school that would put more weight on the work shown on each problem than the final answer. As long as you showed the process you took to get the answer you did, he would rarely take too many points off for a wrong answer. I really liked that type of grading system.
ReplyDeleteThe question you ask at the end is the most difficult part of this whole problem. In this age of standardized testing and accountability, we can't separate our classrooms from the demands of parents and administrators. Even though we may want to focus on rewarding the effort of growth over time, the reality is parents want to see test scores rise, administrators want to see test scores rise, and so we are charged with raising test scores.
ReplyDeleteFinding room in our classrooms to focus on something besides just this, I believe, takes a healthy amount of courage and faith; enough of both to believe that the methods we employ will make our students' abilities evident on the tests they must ultimately take.