The final grades for the final quarter of my “no-grades classroom” are due tonight, so for the past few days, I have been holding grade conferences with reading students. This final quarter, we studied spoken word, poetry, and speeches. We learned how to use the rhetorical triangle to analyze and then write speeches. There was a rather formal speech analysis test, and then a formal speech presentation where student-activists used images to clarify and emphasize their social justice messages. All along, students continued their independent reading and blogging. Thus, for the final conference, we had a lot to celebrate.
In my first year of only talking about grades at the end of each term, I can say that each quarter, the final grade conference looked different. In the beginning, we were learning how to talk about learning without numbers or letters. Now, we are just talking about evidence and learning. I think I have worked out some effective and efficient routines to confer for final reading grades, so I thought I would share five routines that have helped make this final conference with my seventh graders the most honest, positive conversation we’ve had about learning.
Five Routines to Support a No-Grades Classroom
1.Keep a standards-based log of student learning. My school is not set up for standards-based learning, so when students complete an assignment or project that demonstrates their learning, I have to create a separate “assignment” for each skill. I use a combination of the Common Core State Standards language and more informal language so that students, parents, administrators, and I can easily see the skills or concepts that a student can demonstrate and which need remediation.
2. Give yourself a week after a final assignment or project to confer with students. I have between 28 and 32 students in a class, and I can make it through the conferences in a couple days.
3. Print out or make time in class for students to look at their standards log to see if there are any errors or revisions needed before conferences. Students can point to evidence (e.g., notebooks, blogs, Google drive, tests, etc.). They can bring this evidence to the conference. This also makes students aware of the need to revise.
4. Ask students to practice the conference with their peers. I ask students to prepare three questions (see blue graphic) and decide which grade they’ve earned. The final grade is not the focus of the conference, but because of the standards log and remediation time, students know where they stand for the most part (and I do, too). These are very basic descriptors of the final grade that start the conversation. I ask a lot of “tell me about that” or “what most impacted this” as we work through these arbitrary letter grades: A: I have evidence that I have met on all the standards (all 2’s), and I can point to places where I have stretched the standard into deeper analysis and elaboration; B: I have evidence that I have met on all the standards; C: I have evidence that I have attempted all the standards — some I’ve met, some I need still remediation (mostly 1’s); D: I have some evidence, but I need remediation on most/all the standards (1’s and 0’s); and F: I am missing most/all the evidence.
5. Meet with students in need of remediation first so that they can have the rest of the week to revise work or come in for reteaching. Okay, so it is not a “final” conference if students are still revising at this point, but we are focusing on learning, and if students need a few more days and one more opportunity, give it to them. For students who do not need remediation, set up an activity for students to do during conferences. I have had students read each other’s blogs or projects or ask students to bring snacks for a documentary viewing (ones they made or one related to content you’ve been studying).
6. And one more, keep the conversation focused on the student’s strengths, and don’t get caught up in the letter grade. Give the student the benefit of the doubt if she can point to the evidence. At one point, a student and I were negotiating the difference between an A- and a B+ because I thought her evidence was inconsistent. She said, “Yeah, I mean, I didn’t get a couple blogs done to show my close reading, but I think there is evidence in my speech test that I know how to use text support, and remember the book groups? I was always referring back to the text for deeper meaning” Right, and that got me thinking about her leadership in small groups and how important she was to her group members. I recall noting how she helped quite a few students with their reading during group work. “Thank you for noticing,” she said. We went with the A-.
The conferences went smoothly this final quarter. Students had folders with their hand-written assessments, blogs and Google drive held their typed or visual assessments, and hand-written feedback for their presentation assessments provided evidence of their oral assessments. Students knew their evidence, and they, above all, knew what they learned and what they were still stretching into.
I began each conference by asking students to choose which conference question they wanted to talk about (which was typically a strength) and then I brought that strength into our conversation about the final grade, focusing on what the student did well above all. I talked about what I learned about how they learn, too.
I ended our short conversation (about 3 minutes) by saying some version of “thank you.” Each student has, indeed, taught me a thing or two about how to be his or her teacher. In some cases, I learned the lessons early; in other cases, I was still learning how to be a “good” teacher for that student in the final weeks; still, I’m the one in need remediation for several students.
In case you were wondering, overwhelmingly, students said that the rhetorical triangle was a concept that helped them not only make sense of what they are reading but to organize their ideas when they talked about what they read. They said that rhetoric helped them to think about the speaker and how the author is using logos and pathos to get us to think and feel (sometimes in unethical ways).
As a parent, I love how this no grades/final conference approach empowers students to take charge and responsibility for their own learning, through analyzing what the expectations are and analyzing how well they met them and presenting such to a teacher as a persuasive argument. This truly teaches a life skill that can be generalized to other areas in life where goals are set and reflection is done and then a presentation is made.
I do have a question though – I’m not familiar with the “rhetoric triangle’ to which is referred in the article. Can you explain?
Thank you for sharing your parent perspective. I actually have not heard much from parents about what they think of the grade conferences or more standards/evidenced based evaluations.
The rhetorical triangle is a framework for analyzing messages (texts,speeches, even ads). It is taught in different ways, but essentially there are three parts: ethos, pathos, and logos. For the ethos, we analyze the speaker’s credibility, expertise, bias, and interests in the matter. For pathos, we think about who the audience might be and how the speaker is appealing to the audience’s emotions (sad story, powerful images). For logos, we look at the logic and reasoning the speaker is using to communicate the message and also appeal to the audience (facts, statistics, data, cause, effect, etc). This framework works well when analyzing informational texts, speeches, and even poetry, but we can also use it when reading literature .