Freshmen (a few Sophomores), Grades and SBG

To begin the year, I intentionally left my SBG system vague, mainly because I hadn't ironed out the fine details before the first day.  In the course outline, I included my four point rubric, the requirements for retakes and my basic philosophy of learning above points.  I left it at that.  I assigned the course outline as homework reading.  The only questions from the outline the next day surrounded how to label the dividers in their binders, which I was apparently remiss in not telling them.

No one asked a single question about the grading.  No one asked anything after the first one topic quizzes were administered, graded and returned.  No questions about the grades out of four points and my emphasis of what each score meant to me and should mean to them.

I should remember that these students are mostly 9th graders, but still, I was taken aback at the reaction from two of my four classes when I returned the first multi-concept quiz yesterday.  These students were clearly longing for the familiar.  "Why are there all of these numbers out of 4 on my paper?"  "How come I got 2 points off for this problem?"  "Why did I get a 3 and he [my neighbor] got a 3.5?"  "What is my grade!?!"

Here's what they were looking at, specifically the box at the top.  (I included this to help myself with grade entry into the computer:)

Geom Quiz#1

By the second class I realized I had made some major mistakes:

• Mistake #1:  Not spending enough time at the start of the course to prepare them for this moment.
• Mistake #2:  Forgetting that most of these kids are in their first year of high school and they have all of these preconceived notions about grades, competition and points in their head.  They got scared when I messed with what they thought they had figured out.
• Mistake #3:  Not leaving enough time at the end of class to answer question
• Mistake #4:  Not putting a letter grade on the top of the paper (though I am fine with this.)  I think this was what caused them the greatest angst.  Knowing how they did on individual concepts did not matter to them.  It's all about the bottom line.

Hopefully they will have settled down over the weekend, reviewed the course outline and we can have a sane discussion about LEARNING on Monday. 

Next year I will be more thorough up front, maybe with the @samjshah or @occam98 approach.