A New Way To Think About Grading

This past Tuesday I got the chance to hear Lance P. give a presentation about his grading system. Lance is a teacher based here in New England who teaches exclusively with comprehensible input (CI). The system he has created is designed to reduce the amount of time teachers spend assessing and grading.

Lance started his presentation by sharing a surprising statistic, namely that teachers in most classrooms spend 20% of their classroom time assessing students. This works out to be about two out of the ten months that classes are in session. In addition, most assessments are obtrusive assessments, meaning that no instruction, and subsequently no language acquisition, is happening while students complete the assessment (even when they’re done early, they either do homework for another class, read, or cause trouble). Considering how much time can be lost due to assessments, Lance said that second language teachers should try to limit the amount of assessing they do so they have more time to deliver input. He continued by saying that constant assessment would do nothing to further student language proficiency. As the saying goes, “Weighing the pig doesn’t make it fatter.”

A typical assessment in Lance’s class is a 4-point, true/false quiz given orally based on a reading that is projected in front of the class. For example, if one of the Latin sentences in the reading says that a boy likes coffee, his true/false question might be, “The boy likes tea.” This quiz takes only five minutes or so to administer. When he is done giving the quiz, he has students correct their papers while he reviews the answers to the quiz in the target language (TL), which in his case is Latin. By reviewing answers in the TL, students receive more input and hear more repetitions of high frequency words that Lance wants his students to acquire. Once students are done grading the quizzes, he collects them and puts them in PowerSchool, which is the grading program he uses.

Here is where things get interesting. Lance puts all those assessment scores into his grade book, but they carry ZERO WEIGHT. Let me say that again. They have NO EFFECT on a student’s average. Since they don’t affect a student’s class grade, he does not obligate them to make the quizzes up if they are absent. He marks that student as exempt in PowerSchool for that assessment. Homework assignments also carry zero weight, so instead of chasing students who don’t turn in work, he simply marks the assignment as “Missing” in PowerSchool.

After reading the previous paragraph, you are undoubtedly wondering, “Well then how do students earn grades in his class?” They earn grades by self-assessing using what Lance calls an Input Expectations Rubric. Students self-evaluate their behavior, attitude, class attendance, and work habits in class (I am unclear if he does this once or twice a quarter). Lance then reviews the student evaluations and, if necessary, adjusts the grades based on the homework and assessment scores he has in PowerSchool. So if an exemplary student tries to be humble and give herself a low score on the Input Expectations Rubric, Lance will increase the student’s score and will explain why. That final score on the Input Expectations Rubric, whether adjusted or not, becomes the student’s grade for the quarter (If he has students self-assess twice a quarter, I assume he averages those grades together).

After reading this, you may be wondering, “What about language proficiency? Why isn’t he grading that?” Lance’s answer to this is pretty simple. He says, “students who receive input that they understand (CI) will—WILL—acquire the language.” In other words, we don’t need to measure whether or not students are acquiring language because if they meet classroom expectations, they just naturally are. It’s that simple (He does include an estimated proficiency chart on his Input Expectations Rubric, but that is just to inform the student and parents and does not factor into the student’s grade).

This grading system seems very fair to me. Students who do what they are supposed to do will get a good grade and will acquire language. Those that don’t do what they are supposed to do will not get a good grade and will not acquire language. And by not expecting all students to reach a certain proficiency level or master a certain language component in the same amount of time, the weak processor/slow acquirer will not be penalized for something that s/he has no control over.

Check out Lance’s website for more information about his grading system and his thoughts on CI in general. Could you make this grading system work in your second language classes?

 

 

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