Zach Diamond 0:03 Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. Each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other. So this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the Modern Classrooms Project podcast podcast. Monte Woodard 0:28 Hi, everyone, and welcome to episode 158 of the modern classrooms project podcast. My name is MontE, a modern classrooms mentor, and middle school science teacher. And today I'm joined by Sarah Hower, who is a high school science teacher and also an MCP mentor. How are you today, Sarah? Sarah Hower 0:45 I'm great. Thanks for having me. Monte Woodard 0:48 It's so exciting to be in a space with you. And thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast. We are always super appreciative of those people that you know, come on and talk to us about their area of expertise. So tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got started on your MCP journey. Sarah Hower 1:03 Sure. So I've been implementing MCP, this is my third year now. I found MCP during the pandemic, I had read Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman. And it really liked the ideas and the policies in terms of like equitable grading. And it's also a very kind of like, theory based book. And so I was trying to find a way to make it really functional for me within our kind of school system, and happened upon MCP, I can't remember how I came across it. But that was like the click for me of like, this is how I can actually kind of like live the values that I want in education. So yeah, I've I've been doing it for almost three years now. And it's really changed my life as an educator. So I'm, I'm excited to talk more. Monte Woodard 1:56 Yeah, I agree. I think MCP definitely is part of the reason why I'm still a teacher today. I don't think I would still be a teacher if not for MCP. So I'm also just grateful that I happen to be in the right place, right time. You know, when learning about modern classroom, you know, shifting a bit to blended and self paced mastery based learning. This can be extremely overwhelming and time consuming in the beginning, how do you strike a balance between teacher graded and automated grading methods in your classroom to have a better work life balance? Sarah Hower 2:29 Yes, I can, I found that switching can be a ton of front loading. And it can be a lot of work to like set up the videos and, and plan out lessons and units. So in terms of the grading piece, I had already found, like I said, I kind of started this during the pandemic and we had kind of drastically reduced what we were grading already because we're worried about cheating, and just access and all that kind of stuff. So when I actually started implementing MCP, and it had like the mastery check format. And that was a big piece of it. For me, it was just reducing the amount of grading so that I could focus on giving more valuable and like informative feedback to my students. I found that when I was grading less of their like notes, and homeworks and stuff like that, and focusing on the mastery checks in the formative assessments along the way, and then the summative one, it made my life easier because I didn't have to grade as much. And to I found that when I was giving feedback, the students actually wanted to listen to me more because it was not coming as often like for me specifically. And so that was always really nice. Like, it was always a pain when I would go back to like a traditional class that I hadn't switched yet. And I was like grading and it was like nobody's gonna read my feedback that I'm giving because they just care about the numbers and all that kind of stuff. So switching to having like conferences and getting to talk to kids about their feedback was super valuable for me. And then I think on the other side of like the automated piece. I use Google form like self graded warm ups to give kids quick checks for understanding every day on the content. And then like their play posits have the embedded interactive questions that give them checks on that. So I think kind of automating the like knowledge or fact based, like checks for understanding can help so that I have the time and space to give them more in depth feedback about the understanding and the concepts and like have those conversations around mastery checks and that sort of thing. Monte Woodard 4:31 And so what would you say the key advantages are of using automation for grading and where do you see limitations? Sarah Hower 4:38 I think kind of like I was saying so advantages being that I'm able to give students really quick feedback, and they don't necessarily need me during the self pacing for that. Like they don't have to wait on me to read notes or homework. Like their warm ups. They're able to just really quickly see if they are getting something or not. And then obviously like it's less work for To me, if I'm not having to sit down and grade outside of class, I found that with switching to MCP, I am able to do almost all of my grading in class, which is really awesome, because I'm doing that one on one with kids. And then I think limitations is that you're not getting eyes on the students progress necessarily, if you're automating it and uses, like using formative or Google Forms or kind of programs to grade. But I also think that there's a, you can balance it pretty easily of like, kind of, like I mentioned before having the the automated grading for the facts, and kind of like easy quick checks, and then being able to spend more time with students and like, actually get data on them, or focus on the content that isn't just vocab based, maybe so like things that actually need my teacher expertise to, to understand if a student is really understanding. But I also think to kind of turn that into a pro, like, depending on how you track the data, right, like, so if you're really good at using the Google Form Data, or you can export it into the cool like AI tools that there are now you could probably still turn a lot of that like not having eyes on the student data into a pro if you're able to use it and track it correctly and stuff. Monte Woodard 6:13 Definitely. I think, for me, one of my greatest limitations is just, you know, sometimes in science, I feel like automation definitely lends itself more to, you know, close and questions that are, you know, easy for the Google Forms, or formative or whatever the platform is to graded. And so sometimes I find that I want to go a little bit deeper than our use those open ended questions. And so those tend to just be a little bit harder to do it. Automation. And so sometimes finding the balance between like, alright, I'll let the system grade these versus, you know, maybe asking this type of question, I find that I'm definitely still struggling trying to find that true balance there. Sarah Hower 6:50 Yeah. 100% agree. Monte Woodard 6:52 Yeah. So outside of us, you mentioned that you use, you know, Google Forms and whatnot. Um, can you share, you know, other examples of how automation has enhanced or, you know, streamline the grading process for you as an educator? Sarah Hower 7:05 Yeah. So like I said, I kind of only grade my mastery checks, and the my summative tests, which are typically multiple choice for me. I teach anatomy and physiology right now. And so I also do like lab practicals, and stuff like that. But on the test side, I do like to use formative for my tests, and they're, they're like, original test is multiple choice. And so using formative helps me one be able to turn that around really quickly, so that I have more opportunities for students to be able to do revisions and retakes on their tests. And they have the opportunity to continue learning from it and show their mastery out after the test to, but I also liked it formative, not a plug for formative I just like it. Monte Woodard 7:49 We did. We did a whole episode on formative back in May. So it's okay. Sarah Hower 7:55 Um, yeah, I like that it has the like live tracking features. So I can kind of like if I have students who need a little bit of extra support, I can kind of like, give them those those tips on questions. And it's not visible to everybody. And I can kind of help break things down that way. And then, like I said, since it's like faster to turn around with a multiple choice grading, I actually do my retake tests, short answer. So I feel like that gives me the time to like, unless students typically retake them take their original test, hopefully, if I'm doing my job, right. So I think that gives me the time to actually focus and give students opportunities to continue. They're demonstrating their mastery after the summative tests as well, where I maybe wouldn't if I was trying to grade short answer tests constantly in, you know, not getting that first test done quickly. Monte Woodard 8:44 Yeah, and foreign formative is a is a great tool, just overall, even if you're not doing multiple choice. And if you're curious and want to learn more about formative, we actually did do an episode back in May, on formative, so feel free to listen to that, because it really is a great tool, and it really can help you know, with grading in the classroom. So yeah, thank you so much for mentioning formative. It's always nice to hear when people are using it. Yeah. Um, so in what situations do you believe that teacher grading is, you know, actually essential, and that, you know, maybe we shouldn't be replacing it with automation. Sarah Hower 9:21 I was thinking about this. And I think it's kind of a hard balance, because it's kind of like how you use the automated grading and the data that you get from it. Like, my gut instinct is to say, like, oh, kind of, like you mentioned before, like, if it's like short answer, or if it's more like conceptual, like, I want to have eyes on that and be giving feedback because I feel like I'm the expert. But I was also thinking about it earlier that like, if I'm getting data and if I'm using, like tracking it and actually like understanding it, maybe it is like still short answer informative or something like that. I think it can still be really useful. Um, I definitely personally like to grade myself the summative and like my mastery checks, I do all one on one conferences with students because I feel like I need to do that in order to understand where my students are at. But I think there's a lot of room for like teacher discretion here of like, what data is most valuable to the teacher and how like your brain works in terms of tracking student progress and stuff. Monte Woodard 10:24 I think too, sometimes with automation, it's like really easy for, you know, kids in our class to just become a number, you know, we're letting the system do all this stuff. And I think it goes back to what you said earlier about, you're not necessarily tracking their progress. You know, we're always letting the Google Form or the formative, you know, grade the work, I get the score, yes. But I feel like sometimes when I'm actually myself taking the time to like, look at their work, and look at the wording of their work and things like that, I actually can learn a lot more sometimes about them and what they know, more than the correct answer that they give me. So Sarah Hower 10:58 yeah, totally. I feel like you just made me think of like, the, the automated grading can kind of check like accuracy. And like, oh, did you use the right vocab word or whatnot. But I feel like, when I'm grading short answers and stuff, there's so much more than just the correct answer and the student response, like based on how they phrase something, I can tell like, Oh, like that looks like you got that answer off of Google or like, this one looks like exactly like your friends, like, are you relying on other resources? Because you're not understanding or I feel like I can get a lot more about their progress than whether it's just Yes, you know it or no, you don't? Monte Woodard 11:29 Yeah, I agree. So listeners, we're gonna take a quick break announcement with all the opportunities we have for you this upcoming week. And we will be right back to learn a little bit more about Sarah's experiences. Zach Diamond 11:44 Hey, there listeners, it's Zach, we have three learning experiences happening this coming week to tell you about on Monday, September 25, our Shades of Excellence meeting is at 7pm. Eastern time. If you identify as an educator of color, and want to connect with other educators of color, you can join. On Tuesday, September 26, one of our expert mentors is hosting a webinar on the science of reading and MCP at 6pm. Eastern time. On Thursday, September 28, at 6pm, Eastern, we've partnered up with Kami, and we will be hosting a webinar to learn more about how to use kami in your modern classroom. And you can register for all three of these events using the links that we've provided in the show notes. Alright, let's get back into it. Monte Woodard 12:35 So Sarah, earlier, you mentioned a little bit about, you know, how you used feedback in the classroom. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how you get students to receive your feedback and you know, use it in a way that doesn't just feel like you're wasting your time writing words on a sheet of paper? Sarah Hower 12:53 Yeah. So I kind of split my feedback into the automated stuff. So like I said, there are Google form, you know, checks for understanding warmups, play pause a interactive questions, and then for my lessons and like their notes, there must do is I don't actually give them grades for that in the gradebook, but I post keys, so I have resources available for them to like self access feedback, I guess, and be checking. And I think that that gives them an opportunity to, if I'm teaching them to use it correctly, like prompt for questions and see if their understanding, so that they can engage in the learning. And then the other way that I like to give feedback is really the mastery checks. And when I do my master checks, I do it in class, and I kind of like it go sit next to the kid. And I read through it with them. And I ask a lot of questions. And I use that as an opportunity to give oral feedback. And then if they like can add on information all ascribe for them on the mastery check so that I can kind of document what they're telling me. And I think just one being able to have a conversation with my kids is huge for relationships, especially for kids who don't love coming to school, just knowing that I'm there to like, talk to them, and I can be like, Hey, how's your day going before we dive into content is super powerful. But I also really think that by not just immediately putting a number on the page, they're actually listening to me and want to learn, hopefully. So they're not just like, Oh, I got a four out of five like, check done next. And so it kind of forces them to like pay attention to how they're doing. And I find that super valuable as a teacher and I think that just even doing it in small pieces with mastery makes them want to get that same type of feedback on say like a test where they are getting a number but I have more kids than ever who are like I want to see the test or like I just want to know what I got wrong or for example with the retake process with my tests. I have a lot of ask them because I wondered like are you doing retakes because you want a better grade or like, does it actually help you learn and a lot of the kids are honest. And they're like, Well, part of it's that I want a better grade. But I also think I learned a lot in the process that I wouldn't have if I didn't engage in that or like, if we didn't have that kind of community of feedback in the class. And I think the mastery based part of modern classrooms is what allows for a lot of that feedback in that format. Monte Woodard 15:21 And so what recommendations would you give to teachers that are, you know, that might struggle with the feedback piece of things? You know, how can they, you know, do this, you know, outside of knowing their students, what are some other actionable things that they might be able to do to, you know, be a little bit better about giving feedback to their kids and having their kids receive said feedback? Sarah Hower 15:45 Yeah, I was listening, I think it was actually a previous podcast that talked about feedback, and I'm gonna just totally pull from that. But I think they said that, like good feedback is timely and quick. And then it gives kids like actions or things to improve on. And I'm sure there's lots of research on like, what makes good feedback. But that's kind of what I try to do in terms of giving feedback is, like, I feel like the more busy I get, and if I get behind on grading, mastery checks, it's not as valuable to kids. So I try really hard to do that quickly. And for me, like, at some point, sometimes I had to reduce the size of my mastery check. So I was doing like, finding the most important questions to ask to see if they were understanding instead of trying to do you know, five smaller ones, like I was, okay, if I didn't hit every single little vocab word if they were able to explain a big idea to me. And then I think also, like, when I have those conversations, I try to be really intentional, during mastery chat conversations about like, Hey, you did a really good job. We're learning about the skeletal system right now. So I'm gonna give that example, you did a really good job listing the different types of bone cells, but you haven't really connected to, you know, the overall function of the skeletal system. And so I tried to have that balance of like positives, what they're doing, and then like, where they can go to for growth. And also, I feel like, it's important not to just like leave them hanging with the self paced aspect of the model. Like, I don't want to just be like, Hey, you got that wrong, like, go check your notes. So I try to be really intentional about circling back to kids and being like, Hey, did you find that to use or like, Do you need a little reteach now? And then I think kind of, also, with your question about giving feedback on, I'm taking it as on mastery checks, I found that it wasn't easy at first, I'm definitely not an expert on it now, still. But I think as you kind of get used to giving feedback in that way, like orally and conversations, if that's what you choose to do with the model, you kind of get better at like figuring out what those misconceptions are. And then what questions you can ask to get at those misconceptions and see if kids are really getting things. So I haven't like written out formal questions that I use. But I do kind of have like a mental bank of questions that I can rely on to prompt kids and dig deeper to see if they're understanding things. Monte Woodard 18:05 So even with, you know, the automated grading, like Google Forms might be automatically grading your master checks, you still take the time to sit down and talk to the students to get them to kind of understand what the score means. Or can you talk a little bit more about that? Like how you use the feedback with the automated grading? Which kind of seems like inverses of each other? Honestly. Sarah Hower 18:27 Yeah, so my mastery checks are short answer and on paper, so they're, they're writing out their answers, and I'm giving them feedback orally just in class. But I think where that what you're kind of question gets out is comes in with my, like, how I do my multiple choice tests a little bit more. Okay, so that process, they're taking the multiple choice test on formative they get a score back. And then the feedback on their test is they have to do a revision sheet. And it's basically just like, What question did you get wrong? What did you say? What's the correct answer? And then have them explain why. And like, they have to say what notes they found it from. And so a lot of times when they come in to do that process with me, I think the the automated grading helps get that feedback to them quickly. And like we kind of talked about the advantages of it. So that I have then a time to sit down with them and be like, Okay, let's focus on why or like you said that you knew what that word meant, but like, you still got this question wrong. So were you trying to go too fast? Or, you know, did you not know another word, so it kind of helps me, like gives me that quick feedback so that I can help dig deeper into the why they got things wrong, or give them more, I don't know, deeper feedback, if that kind of makes sense. Monte Woodard 19:40 And so how do you communicate the value of you know, this approach that you're using to grading to students and parents to ensure transparency and that parents especially more than anything as the people not in the room, they they're also understanding, you know, how their students greatest determined. Sarah Hower 19:59 I think it's super important that parents understand what's going on in the classroom, especially because this can be a really different model than what most parents have probably experienced in school. And I would say that, just like, right off the bat, I think my students in general have a better understanding of their progress and their grade per se, in class. And so they're actually able to communicate that better with their parents, because they have more control over their grades and what they're doing. Like, they can be like, Oh, hey, like, I need to take that mastery check still. So that's going to be a missing in the gradebook for now, or, you know, I did on acid recheck, but we wouldn't we talked about it today, and I'm going to go retake it tomorrow. So I feel like I actually feel less questions from parents about grades. Now that I've switched to this model, which is really nice. Um, and I also, I don't know that I communicate necessarily about the difference between how I grade versus what is like automated grading, but I definitely have like back to school night and stuff like that, where I get to explain the mastery based piece of things. And I think just explaining why I'm doing it to parents that I'm trying to give students an opportunity to learn from their mistakes, and that the revision process isn't just like, oh, you get a second chance, like, there's actually some work built into learning from the mistakes and showing that like proof of understanding before they get to retry. I've always found that parents are pretty receptive to that once you kind of sit down and talk to them about it. And their kids feel confident talking about it, too. Monte Woodard 21:30 Have you seen any changes in you know, student success rate with, you know, teacher graded tests versus automation graded tests. Sarah Hower 21:37 So I haven't, like done a study or anything, I'm comparing grades. And I think there's also a big shift with mastery based in terms of just like overall grades. But I would say that I feel like my grades now are more accurate of what students actually know. And I think that reducing the grading of like lessons and practice reduces the opportunity, or like maybe the need for kids to feel like they have to cheat just to get something done. And I think it kind of allows students to learn and build that kind of intrinsic motivation for learning of like, hey, my, my lessons, and my notes aren't graded, but I didn't do so hot on the mastery checker the test. And so I think like next unit, I'm going to go back and do more practices. And so it might not be like immediate success, but I think overall, it helps teach them those like executive functioning skills and kind of like helps them build those real world skills that I hope they can transfer outside of my class. And I think just like feedback, in general, whether it's teacher graded or automated graded, helps, helps students build their confidence and gets them more engaged in their learning. And I think that's, that's really success to me, more than just like what the number in the gradebook is. Monte Woodard 22:56 And okay, so I know what automated grading they're like, lots of options that you can do, you know, when students, you know, complete the work, you can add feedback to questions, you can also have it where like, when they turn it in, it shows them all the answers, it will or it'll show you can have it turned on where it shows them what they got wrong, but it doesn't show them what the actual answer is. What is your philosophy on this? Do you show them the answers? Do you have them? You know, figure out the answers. I know you said you're doing a lot of the automated for tests and whatnot. But in other cases, are you providing answers to students, I'm just curious to know kind of what your method is, when it comes to like automating. So for, Sarah Hower 23:33 like my Google Form warm ups, those are just like the self graded Google Form quizzes. And those I do provide the correct answers for them. Because it's like earlier in their learning, and I want them to be able to know what the correct answer is. So they can like fix it as they go. And then same thing with my like, Play, pause the interactive questions during videos. If I'm on top of my planning, and I have extra time, I try to add the correct answers in there. But sometimes just workload that doesn't always happen. But I think even just having like I try to add feedback in is what I'm saying. But I don't always get to that. But I think just even having the correct answer is marked is really important. So during the like formative learning process, they're able to see what they got wrong. And then what the correct answer is. I don't know if this is actually true, but I feel like I read a study that testing and like multiple choice, like recall, is really good for that sort of thing, but only if you do give the correct answer afterwards. Because if you don't like give kids the opportunity to get the correct answer, they they actually like build more misconceptions, because they think that they got the right answer or something. So I don't know again, if that's true, I might just be like making things up right now. But I think I do think it's important to make sure that kids know what the correct answer is for that like during the learning process. And then on like the testing and like the retake side that's when I require for them to go back to their notes, or have conversations with me, I want them to be more engaged in finding that answer. So I don't give them the correct answer for like the summative VHS. They have to find that in their notes and make the connections to like, Oh, I got that one wrong. And that was from Lesson Seven. But oh, I didn't do Lesson Seven fully. So like, maybe that's why I didn't understand it. And that sort of thing, if that makes sense. Monte Woodard 25:22 So what what do you hope to see in the future? Or what goals do you have? Sarah Hower 25:27 In terms of grading? Just kind of cool things that I want to try. I know this is super, maybe trendy, but chat. GPT has a lot of really cool resources and things that it can do for teachers. I was talking to a colleague the other day, who put in a rubric that she had created for chat into chat, GBT and told her that she was going to put in a bunch of student responses. And then she did. And for every student response that she put in chat, TPT had like, graded it on the rubric, and then give like a areas of growth, like feedback area. Whoa. Which is just like insanely crazy, if that works to me. And I think kind of like we mentioned earlier, it's like, Yes, I still want to get eyes on a lot of things. But if maybe students could use that, right, like, they paste in the rubric, and then they paste in their writing. And it has they give feedback from chat GBT to like, I think there's a lot of really cool AI things coming to help kids get feedback, and to help us give more effective feedback. So that's not something I've done yet. But I'm really excited to start playing with that. Monte Woodard 26:35 Chat. GBT is very interesting. Um, it actually yeah, it like we practice at work. The other day, we had a whole professional development about the use of chat GPT and how we handled it with kids. But I say all that to say we did some, like playing around with it. And I wrote a whole lesson plan for me. I literally say, please write me a lesson plan. Like make me a project, you know, for sixth graders about birding and using the scientific method. And it made a whole lesson plan. And it wasn't bad. It was a pretty good lesson plans, like, my goodness. So I say all that to say your dream of using chat GPT and giving feedback. Tell me you it is on the horizon. And so a little freaky, but yeah, you should definitely play around with it. I'm always fascinated with what chat GP team put together. It's pretty cool. I Sarah Hower 27:21 agree. Definitely. Definitely freaky, but really cool. If it if it works, I feel like Monte Woodard 27:25 Yeah, I think I think check check check. GBT will definitely take automation to the next level for sure. As it gets smarter. We'll see what's on the horizon. How can our listeners connect with you? Should they want to be in contact? Sarah Hower 27:40 Sure. Um, I'm kind of not super active on social media. But if anybody wants to contact me, they're very welcome to email me. My email is Sarah with an H dot Hauer h o w e r at modern classrooms.org. Yeah, I'm happy to chat if anybody has questions. Monte Woodard 28:05 Well, thank you so much, Sarah, for sharing your experiences and expertise. listeners. Remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org. And you can find the show notes for this episode at podcast.modernclassrooms.org/158. We'll have this episode's recap and transcript uploaded to the modern classrooms blog on Friday. So be sure to check there or check back here in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. Thank you all for listening. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday. Zach Diamond 28:36 Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org. And you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at learn.modernclassrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @modernclassproj. That's p r o j we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the modern classrooms project podcast.