Welcome to the All Star Planning podcast. My name is Kelsey, and this is the place where I talk all things teacher lesson plans. Today I am talking about why you should not, I repeat, should not be grading everything that your students do.
Chemistry is Harder Than Physics
I want to like set the stage here. So I am a chemistry teacher, which I think is the toughest science. At the high school level anyway, um, I think physics is tougher as you go up at, at the collegiate level. But I think chemistry is certainly the toughest at the high school level um, if you’re comparing chemistry to algebra based physics. There are going to be people who disagree with me. Let’s agree to disagree. Chemistry is harder than physics.
And then I am teaching sophomores for the most part 15 year olds. Cute little angel babies. But they are not necessarily focused on the long term. They are, in my opinion usually not thinking about college just yet. Had I been teaching 11th graders. I think this would have been very different. But my sophomores usually don’t have that foresight just yet.
Is This The Class with the Potions?
Then also in my area where I am, how the kids are particularly scheduled, they usually do not need to pass chemistry in order to graduate. In addition to that. A bunch of them don’t know what chemistry is before they get there. I have had kids ask like multiple times this has happened to me. They ask, “is this the class with the potions?”
I think it’s the cutest thing. It’s really sweet. Um, but no, it’s not the class with the potions. It’s the class with the chemicals. So all of these factors mushing together can create a place where my kids aren’t necessarily excited in chemistry or the content coming at them. Um, so it’s my job to make it fun and interesting. Because there’s not always an intrinsic desire to be there.
Okay. Um, That’s not always the case. I have a lot of kids, a lot of kids that are super interested in chemistry. Um, a bunch of them move on to AP chem or advanced chemistry. They are interested in engineering like the number of kids actually that I’ve taught that have told me that they are very interested in engineering either like a physics based engineer or a chemistry based engineer. I’m excited for it.
Grades are not for Motivating Students
There are kids who need a little boost of motivation, right? So this for me, and I think for a lot of other people creates, not a need, but. It feels like a need to use grades to motivate kids. But that’s not what grades are for. Grades are not for motivating kids to do stuff. Grades are for grading knowledge, assessing knowledge, judging knowledge, quantifying knowledge. We can say. Difficult to do. I’m not in love with the whole concept, but whatever, this is what we have, this is what we deal with.
What Do Grades Really Mean?
So if a kid has an 80 on their report card, it should be safe to assume that they know roughly 80% of the chemistry content that they have been taught. That is a safe assumption. The idea that there could possibly be a genius child who simply does not do homework or doesn’t turn things in on time and knows everything, but winds up with a 22 on their report card. Just because they don’t. Turn in homework assignments to me is like a crime. It’s not really a crime, but it’s terrible. It’s terrible to me.
And I understand that there is a balance, um, a kid who’s really, really smart, but does nothing is not productive and is probably going to struggle when they become an adult and get a, you know, like a big boy or a big girl job. I get that, I know that that’s going to happen. I know that some kids need a little you know, fire under their tush to get them moving like. Oh, I’m smarter than a 22 on my report card. I should be able to do this.” I understand that concept. Uh, I don’t think that the way to motivate that kid is with a failing grade. I think the way to motivate that kid is with love. Call me crazy.
Motivating Students with Love
Tell me, I’m a hippie. I am the furthest person from a hippie. I can tell you that. Um, I really think that the answer to that is love. You tell the kid, “Hey, knucklehead. What’s with this 22, you’re better than a 22. You’re smarter than a 22. Let’s go. You can do this.” It’s it’s a personal motivation thing, right?
But when your class is geared to hurt these kinds of kids, you run into this problem. Of “this kid’s really smart. They just don’t do anything.” Or, uh, “this kid is really not that bright or not that great at the subject, but they work really hard. So they wound up with a 98 on their report card.” How is it possible that a kid could get a 98 on their report card? But then somehow completely face plant on the final exam that to me just, it hurts my brain. It really hurts my brain.
So what I do to fix this. We’ve already spoken about it. My homework is optional. And I allow unlimited retakes on my tests. I don’t think you have to do both of these or especially unlimited retakes because that becomes kind of crazy. Um, but I do think that there should be something to your class that allows kids to showcase their learning. Rather than their behavior. Because grades are not for behavior. Grades are supposed to, “supposed to” quantify the amount of knowledge that a kid has in a particular subject. So for me, I don’t care when my kids learn. I just care that they are learning.
Growth Mindset and Learning Pace
So. If a kid gets. Uh, 42 on a first test and they just need a few, few more days a week or two to really digest that information. And then they can come back and say, “ah, I got it. Now, let me, let me retry.” That 42 can turn into an 85. And, um, so here for that, because that grade is not going to show me their behavior. It’s not going to show me their work ethic. It’s that grade of a 42 is going to tell me that, um, this kid wasn’t ready.
This kid got sick and missed five days of school. This kid couldn’t come to extra help because they had to babysit or had to get their little brother off the school bus, or they had to work or whatever it is. There’s a lot of reasons why kids can’t learn stuff at the same pace as the course, there’s a lot of external factors. It’s not just blanket statement. This kid’s not bright.
And that drives me crazy. That there is a possibility. That a kid gets a not so great grade or a grade that they are not proud of and they don’t have the opportunity to fix it or come back and say, “wait, no, I know it now.” So part of that is my unlimited test retakes. Another thing is that I don’t grade everything that my students do. I make my grades that go in my grade book, they are exclusively there to show me the kid’s level of understanding. Aside from my vocabulary assignments. That is there to nitpick at their brains and get them to learn stuff.
Getting Your Students’ Opinions
There is a possibility that those are moving to be optional. I haven’t thought about it yet. Um, the kids actually recommended it to me at the end of this past school year. I gave them a survey. My end of the year school survey is free at plan.kelseyreavy.com. It’s both printable and digital. You can give it at the end of a semester or the end of a quarter, the end of the school year, whatever you like. I gave them this end of the year survey and a bunch of kids asked if the vocabulary could be optional. And I’ve been thinking about it. I haven’t decided yet.
But every other assignment in my grade book strictly shows me if the kid is understanding chemistry or not. I can look at any grade in my grade book and say, okay, they understand chemistry X percent because that’s the grade that they have. And part of that is not grading everything that they do as crazy as that sounds. So hear me out.
Why You Shouldn’t Grade Everything: Especially Exit Tickets
When my kids do a do now or an exit ticket, those typically I don’t grade them. I look at them, um, and it helps to guide my teaching and the questions I need to ask kids the following day or in class, whatever it is. I don’t grade them. Because an exit ticket by its nature is showing you what the kids learned that day.
I am always afraid that – You know, that, that movie 50 first dates, um, where the girl has like a brain injury or something and nothing that happens to her sticks in her memory? Um, that’s the way I feel some days with teaching. And is that I’ll teach something on Monday and the kids come in on Tuesday and it’s like, they completely forgot everything that they told me they learned yesterday. So I am not a person who’s down with short term learning. If you can remember it for three days, you have a good memory. It’s not necessarily a fact that you learned it.
You Should Only Grade Assignments that Actually Measure Learning
Like I know y=mx+b that slope intercept form. That’s the equation for a straight line. But if you ask me the equation for a parabola, I could not tell you. Because I just remembered that for a short time. I didn’t actually learn it. So my grade book is trying at its hardest at its core to just judge things that are in kids, long term memory that they have actually learned. And I do this by not grading. Every single thing that they do.
The kids appreciate it because I’m not grading everything that they do. Um, they’re allowed to have bad days, slow days, absent days. There are some kids that it really bothers. And I think that’s because they have developed this attitude over the years, that “why am I doing it if it’s not graded?” And the answer is “to learn, knucklehead.”
You’re doing it to learn. It’s a practice method. It’s a way for me to figure out how well you’re learning. Just visually. Um, it’s a way for you to figure out how well you are learning. So I have kids self-assess a lot. One, that means I don’t have to grade anything. But two, because I have all of these options that push responsibility on the kids for their grades when they are self-assessing, they are immediately seeing their own progress.
Student Self Assessment in Place of Teacher Grading
So on my do nows and exit tickets, pretty much every single day, the kids are self-assessing. They are going to tell me either with checks and X’s with numbers of fingers, by raising a hand, uh, they’re going to tell me if they’re understanding or not. They are going to tell me if they are understanding or not.
I will give them a few questions. Give them time to think about it, go over it. Sometimes we talk with a partner, sometimes it’s all individual. Then I give them the answers and I say, you should have gotten X, Y, or Z. This is the most common wrong answer. Lots of options here. And the kids can immediately look at it with their own thoughts in their head.
Immediate Benefits of Student Self Assessment
So let’s say, um, Bob does a question. He has a thought process in his brain on how he asks, how he answers this question. Within three minutes he will know the correct answer. And he still has this thought process running through his brain. So he can go in and immediately fix this thought process. As opposed to having this thought, writing the answer, throwing it in the turn in bin I’ll grade it. I don’t grade the stuff immediately. I mean, The last few years, I’ve had less than a hundred students, but my first year of teaching, I had 160 students.
If I gave one assignment a day, I was still grading like 800 assignments a week. That’s outrageous. Because he’s learned so much stuff between the time he initially wrote it. And the time that he gets it back and graded. I, as often as I can try to get the kids to self-assess. Because I don’t have to grade anything. It puts responsibility on them and then they’re getting usually immediate feedback. So I very much appreciate that. It also, ah, My favorite part. It also allows the kids to ask questions immediately. As opposed to “wait, why did I get this wrong?” And I go, “I don’t know, this is completely busted. What were you thinking?” And the kid goes “I don’t really know.”
Student Self Assessment = Student Responsibility
This has happened to me as a student, so many times, which is why. I wish my teachers had me self-assess because I think it’s fantastic. Another reason I love it is because it tells the kids. “Oh, man.I have no idea what I’m doing here. I should come to extra help, I should make sure I do those optional homework assignments. I should get on Ms Reavy’s Google classroom and watch those videos and make sure that I am caught up. Oh my goodness. This test is going to be really hard. I should work really hard to study. And then possibly make time in my schedule for a retake, because I’m not sure that this is going to go over well.”
When the kids are self-assessing, their responsibility is on them. And then when I have optional homework assignments, responsibility is on them. And when I have unlimited retakes, the responsibility is on them. So I’m not grading everything that they do. They are here to learn and learning is their responsibility. I’m just going to give them every tool that I possibly can to help them learn. But ultimately the learning is up to them.
I do not let the kids think that somehow my gra, the grade that I give them is something that I created. It’s not. The grade on the report card that they get is a grade that they created. And I give them every opportunity that I can for them to demonstrate the things that they are learning, how they’re learning, and then they can see their progress as they go.
You Should Grade Stuff Though…
This does not mean that you should never grade anything. There are times where I will, uh, collect an assignment and I will go through it with a fine toothed comb and really nitpick at it and give them a grade. It happens. Not often. I grade all of their lab reports. Which I think is important because there is some subjectivity to assessing a lab report. The reason for this is because my lab reports. And in a conclusion paragraph. So the kids have thoughts in their brain like, “Oh yeah. I explained that really well.” But then I’ll read it and think “what on earth does this even mean?”
So I’m able to you know, look at it, read it. Ask the kid, “what do you mean by this sentence here?” And then I can more or less assess how well they’re learning the lab material. But, uh, kids can usually with me, uh, edit labs and turn them in again. I’ve offered that opportunity. Uh, I plan to do more of that. I think in the past I hadn’t done enough of that. Um, I do have a template sentence starter type thing for the kids to kind of prompt their brains into the correct path of thinking. So that they can properly explain themselves. Uh, I make my conclusion paragraphs on the lab, eight sentences and the kids hate it. But they do have kind of a formula to help guide their thinking so that they can really explain to me what they learned. Cause, you know, you know, teenagers.
Grading Everything is a Ridiculous Time Sucker
So when it comes to grading everything. Grading everything is ridiculous and it is a complete time sucker. And two, grading things doesn’t always necessarily give you the best sight, the best picture of how well kids are learning a particular topic. Because it may be something that they just learned five or 10 minutes ago. It could be something that um, hasn’t really cemented in their brains yet. I was going to say, fermented, that’s gross. Uh, it may not be something that is fully cemented in their brains yet. It’s not something that they have learned long term. It’s just something that’s floating around in their brain right now. And then three, you want to make sure that everything that you’re grading is giving you a valid picture as to what the kids are learning overall. So if it’s one tiny little thing you want to make sure that, uh, it’s not being used in a way that hurts them.
And then finally, grades are not behavior management. They are not. Grades are not for behavior management. Grades are supposed to tell you how much a kid is learning. School is for learning and grades are supposed to judge learning. And if grades are being used for anything else than they are not being used properly. How you get kids to do stuff is with love. You motivate kids to do stuff with love.
Motivate Students with Love, Not Bad Grades
I have had so many conferences with kids just pulling them out of class. Leave everybody else inside and just have a heart to heart with this one kid. And tell them, “hey, you are smarter than what you’re producing right now. You’re falling behind. Um, you’re not learning what you should. You need the skills in the real world. You’re going to need to know logic and problem solving and how to communicate with others and how to look at data and determine if it’s reliable. And these are skills that you need for the real world. You gotta, you gotta learn this.” And usually just that along with, uh, “I believe in you, I’m here to help you. Uh, if there’s things going on in your life and I can’t help you, I will find somebody who can help you and get you the resources that you need.” And that usually we’ll just get a kid where they need to be. It’ll give them the little bit of motivation that they need.
Kids just need a little bit of love. Sometimes I just give a kid a hug. I mean. I ask, “would you like a hug?” And then I give the kid a hug. And I just tell them, I believe in you, and then that’s it. That’s all the motivation that my kids need. So I know it’s different everywhere and every kid is different and maybe this kid just. Doesn’t like you, it happens. I’ve had kids, who’ve just not liked me. And I think I’m a pretty likable person. It’s funny. I have kids who absolutely, “Mrs. Reavy you’re my favorite teacher in the whole world.” And then I have some kids that ignore me in the hallways. And it’s okay. I get it. I’m not everybody’s cup of tea, but. That’s where it comes in, where you say I’m willing to find somebody who can help you with whatever you’re feeling and that’s it. You just let them know that you’re there for them. In a variety of ways and that’s that.
Be Purposeful in Deciding What Assignments You Actually Grade
That was a big circular way to say. Um, don’t grade everything, let the kids grade it themselves. It’s silly to grade things. It’s not silly to great things, it’s silly to grade everything. For a lot of reasons. It’s a lot of work and it doesn’t necessarily give you the best picture. So that’s that.
You can find out more about my curriculum planning methods and you can get that end of the year student survey at plan.kelseyreavy.com. Also, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you don’t miss anything episodes come out every Tuesday and I will see you in the next one. Bye for now.
