Teaching History with Mrs. Byars

Over the past several years I have read a lot of books and articles on grading practices and while I have written a lot about what I am doing in my classroom I feel the need to share some of the books that inspired me and still help me on the path to more equitable grading practices that encourage learning over points. So today, here are three books that helped me establish my grading practices.  Rethinking Grading by Cathy Vatterott  This book remains one of my favorites. It is published by ASCD which is an organization that has tons of resources on grading practices and assessment. Vatterott does an incredible job of addressing the culture, why, and how of grading practices and has the research and examples to back her claims. This book does an excellent job of explaining how going standards-based means you don't just shift how you grade, you also have to shift how you teach.  "Standards-based grading is not just about changing grading—...

I love the new C3 Framework from the NCSS . I think building a history class around 1. Developing questions and planning inquiries; 2 Applying disciplinary concepts and tools; 3 Evaluating sources and using evidence; and 4 Communicating conclusions and taking informed action is a fantastic way to make the learning real and engaging for students. Each step in the C3 Framework  provides meaningful opportunities for students that are applicable outside of the history classroom. What I am not a fan of is how California took the idea of questioning and inquiry and created questions for their framework that were anything BUT compelling or engaging. So when working with the new framework for California , I needed more help and guidance on how to develop questions for the inquiry process. Leave it to the awesomeness of Twitter to give me guidance: Have you looked at this book? https://t.co/lzgKcaAgE3 It simplified the compelling question process for me. #casocstu...

Why I Picked up the Book How do you grade? What is the purpose of grades? And what do grades actually mean? These are questions that plague me as I stare at stacks of work to grade and wonder if the grades I give truly serve me students the way I want them to. I've already read on the subject but still had more questions so I decided to focus my next reading on a book about Standards-Based Grading.  The Review Rethinking Assessment by Cathy Vatterott  clearly explains what standards based grading is, how it can help our students and change our classrooms, and how to practically implement both on the classroom level and school wide. Throughout this book, she raised the exact questions I have been facing in my classroom and made clear and solid arguments for how adopting a Standards Based Grading practice could address those issues.  The most compelling case made in this book is that we need to move away from compliance only classrooms. That by teaching comp...

Why I Picked Up This Book:  It is only my third year teaching and being fresh out of a credential program and having two-years of BTSA/Induction you would think that I would be relatively confident in my grading methods. When I taught at a Middle School I thought the issue with grades was "the system" and not me. Students would move onto the next year even if they failed and I thought this was the problem that made grades seem so irrelevant in my classroom. Then I moved to a high school and I truly wanted to believe that things would be different because students now had real consequence if they failed but I found the same issues and concerns in my high school classrooms and it got me thinking about the purpose of grades and how they can best serve our students. It is a hard conversation to have, and a hard one to inspire in others because grading is such a personal part of how a teacher runs their classroom. So I was incredibly grateful when a colleague of mine c...