Category: No grades

alfie kohn, education, No grades, Student, Teacher

So You Want to Quit Letter Grades – A Practical Guide From Someone Who’s Done It and Survived

Pernille Ripp
Last year I made the decision to stop giving out letter grades as much as possible. This was not an easy decision or one that I made lightly. Only after research, deep reflection, and many conversations with peers did I decide that this was the best step for me within my educational philosophy. This post is not a debate of why I quit letter grades, but a how, so here goes.

  1. Do your research.  I knew that to do this right I had to have my philosophy and facts straight so I read Alfie Kohn’s work, as well as the numerous blogs, articles, and reflections on it available through a  Google search.  This strengthened my stance and gave me practical know-how.
  2. Think it through.  This is a bucking-the-system type of decision so you need to be clear on why you are doing this.  Providing students with more meaningful feedback: yes.  Less work and more free time: no.  
  3. Now think it through practically.  What is this going to look like in your room?  How will you take notes?  How will you assess their learning?  And then how will you compile that all into feedback, progress reports, and perhaps even a dictated grade on a district report card?  This was my biggest hurdle this year and something that I need to refine next year.
  4. Create your goals. All lessons have to have goals, otherwise you will have nothing to assess.  Sometimes we are not totally sure of that what those goals are since a curriculum has been prescribed to us.  Dig through it and find them or create your own within your standards and then make a list or some sort of report.  I was able to quickly assess through verbal Q&A whether a student was secure in something or not and then check off that goal, moving that student on to something else.
  5. Involve the higher ups.  I didn’t have to alert my principal to what I was planning on doing but it made my life a lot easier when I did.  Some districts will not support this without a proper discussion and it is important to have allies if someone questions your program or philosophy.
  6. Explain it to your families, and particularly your students.  The first few weeks we discussed what proper feedback was, what we could use it for, and how the feedback was just another step in our journey.  This made my students start to focus on the feedback rather than pine for a grade to be done with it.  Deadlines became more flexible and a product was seldom “done” but always a work in progress.
  7. Involve your students.  I had to still give letter grades on our report cards so I discussed with students what their grade should be.  More time consuming, absolutely, but it was wonderful to see their knowledge of the subject and understanding of what they should know.  Most of the time, their grades and mine lined up perfectly and in rare occasions were they much harder on themselves than I was.  Either way we figured it out together, through conversation and reflection, and they started to own their learning more.
  8. Plan for it.  Meaningful assessment does not just happen, it is planned and somehow noted.  If you think you are just going to remember, you are not.  So every day I had my trusty clipboard that I took notes on, checked off progress and goals accomplished on, and added anything else useful to.  This became my “grade book” and the days I didn’t use it, all of that information was lost.  
  9. Take Your Time.  Letter grades will always be easier to do because they most often are compiled from a piece of paper or a one-time presentation.  Deep feedback is not.  This happens through conversations, assignments, and lots and lots of formative assessment.  Give yourself time to take it all in, take your most important goals and give them enough time to be accomplished by your students, and then give yourself enough time to have the conversations.  The conversations are the most important tool here.
  10. Allow Yourself to Change.  This means both allowing yourself to try out not giving letter grades and then figuring out if it works for you.  This also means allowing yourself to know that this is a work in progress.  There were absolutely missed opportunities in my room this year concerning feedback, but I know what to work on now.  I also know what my goals are, how to engage students in meaningful conversation regarding their work, and also how to give better feedback.  Just like our students, we too, are learning.
  11. Most Importantly: Reach Out.  Through my PLN I was able to engage in meaningful conversations and iron out hurdles with the help of Joe Bower, Jeremy MacDonald, and Chris Wejr.  I even reached out to Alfie Kohn.  There are people who have done this before you, there are people who have gone through it before you, use them, ask them questions, and know that you are not alone.  I am always available to discuss this with anyone so reach out to me as well.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
alfie kohn, being a teacher, journey, No grades, students

So What Does a B+ Mean to You – Quitting Grades Does Not Mean You are Lazy

Pernille Ripp

Quitting grades to some means to quit expectations. I used to think that if I didn’t meticulously grade everything, I was inefficient, ineffective, and certainly lazy. And yet I have come to happily realize that quitting grades as much as I am allowed to do has become one of the great liberations of my young teaching experience. By quitting grades, I simply become able to better evaluate work, to in the end better “grade” my students.

When I quit putting letter grades on my papers, I did not lower my expectations for an excellent product, in fact quite the opposite happened. By removing letter grades from the final product it ceased being exactly that; final. When my students hand in an assignment now, they know it is is not done. No longer just an end product, but instead another stepping stone in our learning journey. If a test is mediocre, then they get a chance to fix it. As simple as that seems, I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed a student say “oh” only to then erase the incorrect answer and provide the right one.

So quitting letter grades did not make me weak, simpler or even more “granola.” I didn’t quit letter grades because I wanted to shelter all of my students from the “real” world. I quit letter grades on assignment because they did not work. A letter grade only ever sparked a discussion when it was below what a student or parent thought was deserved. If an A- was given, a student did not take the opportunity to ask what could be better or ask what was great about it in the first place. Instead the grade was received, glanced at and the product filed away, perhaps to be shared with a parent, at some point to be shared with a recycling bin. So I didn’t start to wear patchouli or run chants in my classroom, I didn’t let my students academics slide to fit in with my new philosophy. Instead I challenged myself to provide better feedback, a better pathway for my students to follow to academic success.

Giving letter grades would be less time consuming then the feedback I provide now. Sometimes on busy days I even yearn for those days of easy calculations, slap on of a grade, and done with it all. Now instead I ponder, I chart, I reflect back upon previous work and then I try to write meaningful, relatable feedback that is relevant to that student. No more “Nice try” comments, but instead “You are secure in paragraph setup but still developing in sentence fluency.” And that’s only after all of my students actually know what a paragraph and sentence fluency is. So call me weak, call me a rebel, but don’t call me a softie. Letter grades for my students has meant more work, more thought, and more academic challenge than ever before. And boy do I love my new, hippidippy ways.

being a teacher, education reform, grading moratorium, No grades, Student-centered

So How’s this Whole No Grading Thing Going for Ya?

Pernille Ripp

This year I threw out letter grades almost completely. Only almost because I am still required to give my fourth grade students a letter grade on their trimester report card. I thought I was crazy, doing this, and I am sure I wasn’t the only one. I thought I was going to regret it for sure, face uphill battles from confused parents and upset students, yet instead, nothing…

I have battled with grades my whole life myself, from being a student that never applied themselves enough to a staunch, anxious overachiever with a ridiculous GPA. I never quite found the balance. I just couldn’t get my grades to fit me, they never showed my interests, my smarts, my deficits. They were just an arbitrary number on a piece of paper, something that said nothing about my future or my past. Not even a snapshot in time.

So when I became a teacher, I fiddled, I muddled, and I tweaked. Those poor averages and grades I came up with never seemed to tell my students their story either. An A meant little but an F meant something,right? We finished a product, stamped a grade on it and end of discussion. So this year I stopped grading and I was terrified.

When you tell people you don’t believe in grades, they mostly think you are crazy and have no place in teaching. After all, life is one long file and rank and grades make us all fit in so nicely. And yet, my parents on orientation day believed in me. They seemed to get it because I explained to them what I would do instead. I promised to engage their child in discussions, to constantly evaluate and more importantly reevaluate what knowledge their child had secured. I promised to set up learning opportunities where their child could show off their skills in different ways than written work. I promised them to monitor, alert, refine and reteach whenever needed. I promised them that they would know what their child knew and what they were still working on. I add to these promises whenever I can.

So has it been perfect? Oh I wish. But neither were my letter grades before. Averages never told the full story, and often it was hard to fully explain why a child was a B or a C. Now I can talk about where the child stands, what they have secured, where they are developing. Now when I discuss strengths of my students, I have checklists, specific samples and conversations to refer to. The students are aware of their progress and they know what they need to work on. Getting rid of grades has meant more work for me focused on the student. It has meant more time spent talking to my students, more focus on our goals, more time to really prepare and think about my lessons instead of all that solitary grading. For me, it has meant I can hold my head up higher when in conferences with my students. For me, it has meant a new way of teaching, of preparing my students for a life that will try its best to label them somehow. A way for me to help them tell their story right now and perhaps even point them to their future story.

So that whole no grade thing, maybe not such a bad idea after all.

PS: I couldn’t have done this without support from Joe Bower (@Joe_bower), Jeremy MacDonald (@MrMacnology) and some wisdom from the guru that is Alfie Kohn.