This year we were asked to adopt the idea of Growth Mindset, an idea from Carol Dweck, an author and leading researcher in the field of motivation. The main idea behind growth mindset is that we don’t have a fixed intelligence and we can all get better at something if we put in enough work. (I’m trying to get better at blogging and marketing right now!!😉 )This was presented to us during a staff meeting and coupled with the idea of grading. Some of my coworkers and I started talking after the meeting “Does this mean we have to allow unlimited retakes? Won’t kids just choose not to study so they can see what’s on the test and then ask to do a retake?” There’s a lot of sticky questions to navigate, but I thought I’d give it a try in a small way.
My students do periodic listening comprehension activities where they answer questions based on a recording. Before the wonderful world of 1:1 devices, I would play the recording twice for the class. It was brutal for the kids who got it on the first time and stressful for others. Eventually, I started allowing students to complete the activities with headphones on their own device and listen as many times as they wanted. This helped alleviate the first problem, but created the new problem of having to wait for everyone to be done in order to move on. Finally, I started assigning them almost entirely for homework. This way, nobody feels like their time is being wasted and it works great!
So how does this apply to grading for growth? Most of the listening activities come with the online textbook, so students can see their score upon completion of an activity. I have them record their first try score on their paper, and then they have the choice to redo it until they are satisfied with their score. They need to record their best score and the number of retries they took. In my online grade book, I write a note in the comment section like “Bobby took advantage of the retake option and grew from 25 to 35.” Using the word “grew” shows my kids that I value hard work and improvement while also indicating to both me and their parents that they didn’t quite get it the first time around and so yes, they are being appropriately challenged and do not need to move into a harder class 😉. It also gives me information to show parents if their child never does the retake and could be putting in more effort.
Have you used any strategies in your classroom that promote growth or mastery? Please share below so we can learn from each other!
