Confidence

We had the first night of spring conferences last night and things went fairly well. Parents were for the most part supportive of the changes I have made in my classroom for a variety of reasons including: their child was enjoying the classes, they were learning a lot without having to do tons of useless busywork and they are achieving good grades without the stress associated with test after test after test.

Some parents are still concerned that their children will not be prepared for high school. I assured them that I am still covering the same content that I have in the past. The difference is that I am no longer demanding that the "get it perfect" the first time they do it. Late in the first trimester they turned in their first lab report. I had them self evaluate it and ask a peer to evaluate it prior to my evaluation of it based on the targets we determined were important to demonstrate understanding of the Science Inquiry Standards. Most labs fell short of the targets. I gave students the option of revising the lab and resubmitting it, or using the comments and suggestions I made to make the next lab write up even better. Most of the students chose the latter option, which is fine since the ultimate goal is mastery of the standards and not a grade. Had this been last year, each student would have gotten a score and grade based on my assessment of how well they did or didn't do on the different parts of the lab. This could have been potentially damaging for many of my students....There are 7 different parts to the lab write up, if they really bomb 2 of those 7 areas, the best grade they could achieve would be a B-...that is assuming every other part is absolutely perfect. Imagine if they bombed 3 parts, they would have completely failed the assignment. What motivation would they have to do better the next time....Most students put forth good effort when writing a lab, if they really tried and failed, I'm not sure I could convince them that they should really try again.

By simply writing suggestions, asking questions and guiding them through the hardest parts of the lab, I have found that their second lab write up is much better than the first. They were willing to try again because they know that I want them to achieve the standards and will do whatever I can to help them. They also know that if they still don't quite get it, its not the end of the world and their trimester grade in Science won't be a D or F. I really believe I would rather have them continue to try than give up because it is just too hard or they just don't get it. I don't believe that anyone can do something perfectly the first time they try it, yet by assigning grades to everything we ask students to do, we send them the message that they have to to it right the first time and every time there after if they want good grades....WOW!!! that's a lot of pressure on students.....