Going “gradeless” is becoming a popular approach as educators work to provide more equitable and authentic assessment and feedback that support all students. This presentation shares the experiences of a collection of middle school, high school, and college teachers who implemented various approaches to equitable grading, including going gradeless/pointless (Guskey, 2015; Zerwin, 2020), ungrading (Blum, 2020), and labor-based grading (Inoue, 2019a). In this presentation, we will share our findings and experiences with an emphasis on gradeless assessment practices for writing and reading instruction.
Blog Archives
What is “real,” anyway? Creating a new 12th-grade ELA course to align with college composition
The co-presenters, a high school and a community college English teacher, collaborated to create a new 12th-grade ELA course under the state’s Transitional Instruction Initiative. The new course more intentionally aligns with first-year college composition. They will share information about the course, their work together as colleagues at neighboring institutions, and how they’ve created a curriculum, along with engaging instructional techniques, to make college a more realistic and tangible option for students that identify themselves as needing extra support in the areas of reading and writing.
Neurodivergent: Walking the Walk of Authenticity
Authenticity requires a careful balance of the teacher’s executive presence (Hewlett, 2014) the requirements of subject area, the needs of the students, the students’ individual situations, both biological and environmental. Neurodivergence, on the part of the teacher, the students, or both, adds a bit of spice to the experience. This presentation/discussion will explore using teacher authenticity as an important element of relationship-building as a foundation for learning, maneuvering as a neurodivergent (autistic) teacher to support that authenticity, and modifying strategies to encourage success and accessibility for all in the neurodiverse classroom.
Featured Author Session: Memoir Graphic Novel Workshop
Is your diary brimming with exciting stories? And do you love to read comics? Walter-Award-Honoree graphic novelist, Robin Ha will walk you through how you can transform your life into a graphic novel. You’ll learn a step-by-step process of selecting and refining your personal stories, planning out your graphic novel, and drawing the comic pages.