Tag: Growth Oriented

Sophia Thomas, teacher, explains how peer grading is used as a strategy to deepen learning. Students use a rubric to grade their own and others’ work.

Transcript:

Interviewer: Can you talk about grading? I noticed that students can grade their own, then peer grade, then you.
Teacher (Sophia Thomas): Yeah. That’s for the note taking and the writing task. As I did with how to set your weekly goals, when we started out, we modeled that. First, there was a whole lesson on the different categories in the rubric and what it meant. There was another lesson where we looked at two exemplars for a writing task. I went through and graded the writing task under the dot cam. Then I made comments manually. Then there was a screencast video that showed them how to do that online. It showed how to make a copy of the document, how to comment, how to share it with each other. Watch the _____, and if you’re commenting, how you should use the language of the rubric to comment on your peer’s product. Also, how to use the language after rubric to determine what score do they actually deserve. I wouldn’t say they’re perfect at it but sometimes it’s really cool to see the kind of comment that they’re leaving on each other’s document. The other thing about that is it forces at least another person to see your product and engage with you about that. They may have questions. What do you mean by this? It makes you be a little bit more reflective about the kind of product that you’re producing.

Sophia Thomas, teacher, explains how peers can be a source of support and motivation for students in setting and attaining goals.

Transcript: Sophia Thomas: One cool thing I saw happening really early was that there was this really nice peer pressure that was happening when students weren’t picking goals that were going to really push them or weren’t really good goals. I clearly remember one week a student decided he was going to only do three assessments for the entire week. When, in fact, you’re expected to do at least two per day. Immediately, because the recorder was writing stuff down, they’re like how many – because they do that on a weekly basis and they do it on a daily basis. They are checking in. When he said three, immediately a student said come on. You can do better than that. How about five? Another one said, no, no, no. Seven, he can do seven. He was like no. And it was like come on, man. You can do seven. Eventually, he was like, okay, I guess. He went ahead and changed his goal. That pressure would be such a more difficult conversation when it’s coming from the teacher. But to have your peers actually say you need to set higher expectations for yourself and have them do that. That is really cool

Sophia Thomas, teacher, explains how class competitions are used to motivate students.

Transcript: Sophia Thomas: I can set competitions for however long I choose. I started out with two week competitions. Then I switched to three week competitions. On a daily basis to earn points for your team, whenever you complete an assignment, on your dashboard you have to indicate complete. You have to put the score in, whatever score you’re self-reporting. This is how much I got. You’ve got to put that in. You’ve also got to select the date. Every time you do that in one day you add a point to your team. That extends to homework too.