Preparing students for high school in a standards-based setting.

This is a concept I have been mentally wrestling with for a few months now. For context, I just finished my first year of teaching. I teach middle school advanced math, and I'm returning to fulfill the same position next year.

We are a standards-based school. If you aren't familiar with standards based grading, here's a brief rundown. Instead of earning a single letter grade for a class at the end of each grading period, students earn an array of number grades, one per priority standard. 4 means advanced (these are rarely given out, the target for students is a 3, I only gave one 4 this entire year), 3 means proficient, 2 means on the right track but room for improvement, and 1 means the student is still pretty lost. The idea behind this grading system is that a single letter grade does not give enough information. A grade of 'B' could mean the student showed B-level work on every single assessment, or maybe they showed A-level work on all but one assessment and failed that one assessment. Giving an array of scores is more informative. I like this philosophy a lot, but in practice, this grading system kinda sucks.

There is no points system. Homework and quizzes do not count as grades. Luckily since I have advanced classes they usually do the work anyway, but I could not imagine having students that are disinterested in math that realize there's no incentive to taking formatives seriously (aside from being prepared for the assessment, but we're talking about middle schoolers here). When it comes to grading for a standard, we grade the assessment for that standard on a right/wrong basis (we look at the work too and see if students were on the right track with a problem), and assign a 3, a 2, or a 1 for that standard. Or a 4 in rare cases, if the student was able to go "above and beyond" somehow. (If you can't tell, I hate the fact that 4s exist)

Here's where I'm looking for advice. None of the high schools we send kids to use standards-based grading. They are all the traditional points-based, letter grade system. I am concerned that students are not being prepared sufficiently for high school. Since their work now is graded on a very general basis, they are going to be surprised when every ounce of work they have to do for a class counts for credit. They need a different set of test-taking skills in this setting and we are not teaching these skills at all.

So, that's my dilemma. We're required to use standards-based grading, but within standards-based grading, I want to make sure students won't be shocked at the change in grading system when they reach their first year of high school. Any advice is appreciated.

Submitted July 06, 2021 at 03:00PM by emboar11 https://ift.tt/2V5xa7w