During the fall, I invite the sixth grade to join me at my lunch table. As we break bread, we chat about how the year is going: what is going well, what is challenging, and what could be changed to make the start of sixth grade even better. The vast majority of students report that they were off to a great beginning, and that the additional freedom with responsibility the Middle School offers is being thoroughly enjoyed.

 

New students often mention how welcoming other students are, and that it did not take long to feel at home at CA. Many students also accurately note that the expectation for homework has risen and that in Middle School, there are more and different types of assessments. While it was not mentioned directly during my lunch conversations, students might have also mentioned that sixth grade is the first time that their cumulative performance would be represented as a letter grade at the end of the trimester. Because assessment and reporting are of the assessment are important to learning, I would like to shine a spotlight on these twin aspects of the Middle School experience.

 

Put most simply, we assess students’ work and give feedback because we believe it is an important part of the learning cycle. Learning how to prepare for a wide variety of different types of classroom and “real world” assessments gives students practice at consolidating their understanding while developing the ability to demonstrate what they have learned. Some of these demonstrations are pencil and paper (essays, multiple choice, answering word problems, extrapolating and constructing meaning), some are presentations or performance tasks, which allow students to show what they learned through problem solving. In all cases, teachers work with students to help them learn a wide variety of strategies designed to help each assimilate the concepts, skills and information. Without question, there is a trial and error aspect to this process for students. Each subject and each type of assessment invites students to use a different set of strategies. Most often, students discover the match (or mismatch) between their chosen study tools when they look at their achievement.

 

This cycle of “give it your best effort, see how it turns out and try again” works splendidly when coupled with thoughtful teacher feedback and mentoring. Middle School teachers know that it will take much iteration before a student is able to match strategies chosen with his or her learning style and the nature mutations, and studying is not a one size fits all proposition. Our hope, though, is that our constructive feedback goes far helping students feel that they have an ally in each classroom, someone truly interested in helping them develop the study skills needed to find increasing success over time.

 

We also do our best to try to help Middle Schoolers understand why we give grades on assignments as well as why we give descriptive feedback about what can be improved.

 

Receiving a B or a C or even an A is not helpful, except in the context of over time moving toward a closer approximation of expert performance. As students and learners, we are ALL “under construction.” The best that I can do today is not, I hope, the best that I will be able to do tomorrow or the next day. The way I improve, however, is closely tied to my ability to learn from my mistakes, internalize feedback on past performance, and apply newly acquired skills and learning to my next iteration. We may not realize it, but the road from novice to expert is paved by making lots and lots of mistakes and painstakingly correcting our misunderstandings until our performance more closely resembles that of experts in the field.

 

Unfortunately, when you are first experiencing this “learning curve” in middle school, it is easy to confuse getting a C on an assignment and being a C student or person. These are totally different things. There is gulf between demonstrating a C understanding on an assignment and being a C student! This is why our teachers throughout Middle School, not just in sixth grade, discuss grades, feedback and next chances with students from the perspective of having a GROWTH mindset.

 

Students who have a growth mindset know that progress is based upon effort and practice and that the only way to improve is to make mistakes, get feedback and get back on the horse and try again.

 

When it comes to cumulatively reporting our observations at the end of a trimester, we follow Grant Wiggins’ advice, “assess what you value and value what you assess.” This is why you will soon receive academic, athletic and artistic comments from your child’s teachers describing the first term’s efforts. It is also why we share about what we are teaching students in our advisory lessons and through character progress updates. Students, like adults, are quick to notice whether what we say we care about shows up in what we assess and report. In this sense, if we want students to practice and improve how they problem solve, we need to both carefully teach and then consistently evaluate and comment upon problem solving. Similarly, if we value courage and kindness as a community, progress towards being courageous and kind must also find its place in what is reported at the end of the trimester.

 

My hope when you review your son’s or daughter’s trimester report is that you will gain insight into the strengths your child brings to her studies as well as those areas that will benefit from increased attention and practice. In the box below this article, I offer a few thoughts on how to make the conversation with your child about his progress as productive as possible.

 

Ultimately, we hope that the assessment and reporting we do each trimester plays a constructive role in helping your child take small steps toward becoming an increasingly successful learner. If you have any questions or if I can be helpful in any way, please do not hesitate to contact me.