SBG | Step 3 – Creating Assessments

Hi! I’m Kim Strobel with Strobel  Education and I’ve been discussing Standards-Based Grading and the three pieces of implementing a Standards-Based Grading system. 

Step 1: You have to prioritize standards. 

Step 2:  That we covered in the last video is taking those priority standards and turning them into a proficiency scale.

Step 3: Is creating assessments that are aligned to the proficiency scale 

Once we have unpacked each of the priority standards and we truly understand all of the skills that are necessary for a student to be able to master that particular standard then what we can do is plug those into an assessment.

For example, if we’re going back to the telling time example, one of the simple skills of students being able to tell time to the nearest five minutes using AM and PM is “can they count by fives?” So of course I would want to include some items on the assessment where I’m assessing students whether or not they can count by fives. I would want to also assess them to know if they know the difference between the hour hand and the minute hand. I would want to assess them to know if they know the difference between an analog clock and a digital clock. These are some of the simple skills of that standard, but I would also want to include on the assessment some clocks where they actually have to tell time to the nearest five minutes because that’s more complex, correct. 

And so when we’re creating assessments, we want to make sure they’re completely aligned to the proficiency scales which are completely aligned to the priority standards. It’s these three pieces when they’re put in place, [that] can actually change student achievement within a school. 

It takes time. It takes work. It takes coaching. But I will tell you, I have never met a teacher yet who transitioned to Standards-Based Grading and wanted to go back to the old way of grading and assessing students. 

If you’d love to learn more about how we can do this work in your school, simply look below and click on the link or feel free to shoot me an email at kstrobel@strobeleducation.com.