Thursday, May 31, 2012

Mastery grade book


As I've accepted that the data entity I work with is now uniform and ever evolving it seems new ideas come up on a regular basis of how I can use it to inform instruction with the individual students in front of me in the classroom. The latest development has been the mastery grade book page.

Students initially take a pretest on the unit, becoming their current mastery level snapshot. As students begin the course work they submit future snapshots of their learning that replace the pretest score. I can choose what assignments to include or exclude at any given time as part of the grade percentage and any that are coded as 'Retake' replace the score that preceded it automatically in the calculation. I also have score column that reports an overall percentage of the work a student has completed that is independent of the exclude/include category.

If using the 'Final' category for an assessment, the 'Include' assignments work more as formative assessments where their scores are replaced after completion of a 'Final' (summative) unit assessment (In this scenario, a Retake following a Final would not replace the score however).

What this doesn't capture and what I can assure you is still happening in my classroom is higher level collaboration, problem-based learning and rich math discussions. This is simply a tool to give me another outside look at some of the data related to my students' learning.

2 comments:

  1. Andy . . . I am planning on really sitting down one day this summer and see if I can get a better grasp of all the subtleties of your templates. Really feel if I can get a system that it will help me and my students in a big way overall.
    Thanks again!
    Kieron

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  2. Thanks Kieron. I totally get how from an outside perspective it can be tough to dive into--that's a lot of the reason why I went out and made what I needed for my own classroom rather than trying to find it elsewhere. I'm hoping to get some updated tutorials on the blog soon that reflect the changes that have come about.

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