Venue
Solution Tree Iowa Training Center
611 5th Avenue Suite 100
Des Moines, IA 50309
WI-FI ACCESS: ST Iowa Training Center
PASSWORD: STIowaGuest
RESTROOM CODE: 1025#
Educators focus on the practices and processes that modernize grading and reporting systems to be more aligned to a standards-based instructional paradigm. By developing a standards-based mindset, participants see how a seamless relationship between the formative and summative purposes of assessment maximizes the potential success of each and every learner. Rather than being forced through a new policy, grading program, or report card template, long-term grading reform begins on the inside—how we rethink grading practices and processes—and works its way out.
Participants are encouraged to attend as a team. Widely held traditional beliefs about grading will be challenged as participants learn how to produce accurate grades and confident learners.
Team time will be made available to support collaborative action planning.
Learning Outcomes
Recognize why traditional grading practices are no longer relevant and how grading practices can be modernized in a standards-based instructional classroom.
Develop grading true north (accuracy and confidence), the essential overarching vision for sound assessment and grading practices.
Acquire a standards-based mindset and the specific strategies that begin to shape a rethinking of how grades are determined.
Gain protocols and practices to hold students more accountable for learning without compromising the accuracy of their proficiency grades.
Learn how to teach, assess, and report on student attributes, student growth, and cross-curricular competencies.
Understand why homework should be repurposed to be a formative assessment strategy, and obtain ways in which homework can become a more productive, learning-centered exercise.
Explore specific topics and practices, including reassessment, grade determination, the five myths of standards-based grading, and the differences between levels of proficiency and the traditional grading scale.
Tom Schimmer is an author and a speaker with expertise in assessment, grading, leadership, and behavioral support. An educator for more than 20 years, Tom is a former district-level leader, high school principal, school administrator, and teacher. As a district-level leader, he was a member of the senior management team responsible for overseeing the efforts to support and build the instructional capacities of teachers and administrators.
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Materials are copyrighted. Workshop participants may print these pages for personal use and note-taking during the event. Additionally, pages marked “Reproducible” can be reproduced freely without permission as long as they are not reprinted in a formal book that is published and sold; copyright lines on Reproducible pages must remain intact. Otherwise, no part of these materials may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of Solution Tree. Please contact pubs@SolutionTree.com for permission to duplicate any materials.
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On-site and continental US only.
You will receive a certificate of participation within six weeks after the event concludes.
Please check with your district office for CEU availability. For more information, click here.
