Workshop Overview

Educators focus on the practices and processes that modernize grading and reporting systems to be more aligned to a standards-based instructional paradigm. By developing a standards-based mindset, participants see how a seamless relationship between the formative and summative purposes of assessment maximizes the potential success of each and every learner. Rather than being forced through a new policy, grading program, or report card template, long-term grading reform begins on the inside—how we rethink grading practices and processes—and works its way out.

Participants are encouraged to attend as a team. Widely held traditional beliefs about grading will be challenged as participants learn how to produce accurate grades and confident learners.

Team time will be made available to support collaborative action planning.

Learning Outcomes

• Recognize why traditional grading practices are no longer relevant and how grading practices can be modernized in a standards-based instructional classroom.

• Develop grading true north (accuracy and confidence), the essential overarching vision for sound assessment and grading practices.

• Acquire a standards-based mindset and the specific strategies that begin to shape a rethinking of how grades are determined.

• Gain protocols and practices to hold students more accountable for learning without compromising the accuracy of their proficiency grades.

• Learn how to teach, assess, and report on student attributes, student growth, and cross-curricular competencies.

• Understand why homework should be repurposed to be a formative assessment strategy, and obtain ways in which homework can become a more productive, learning-centered exercise.

• Explore specific topics and practices, including reassessment, grade determination, the five myths of standards-based grading, and the differences between levels of proficiency and the traditional grading scale.

Supporting Documents

• Download the agenda

• Download the slides

• Download the handout

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