It's Not About the Points

While many math teachers have stopped giving points for practice/homework, I confess that I'm over here still giving points. This semester, I decided to at least challenge my own attachment to points . . . particularly the thought that students will not do an assignment if there are not points attached to it.

So I set a lofty goal: 100% of students completing 100% of assignments. Whenever I had time to walk around the classroom, I carried a clip board and asked students to show me their completed assignment(s). Not done? No problem. What questions do you have? What can I do to help you finish up?** I did some repeated asking and follow-up and asking again. Over time, it got easier as students realized that not completing the assignment was not an option.

I also discovered that, more frequently than I expected, lack of completion was really due to lack of understanding. Many times it came disguised as laziness, disinterest, and the like . . . but really the student just didn't know how to do the math.

When an assignment was complete (and correct!), I recorded the points on my clip board. I used circles to indicate assignments that were late and highlights for assignments that took more than two weeks to collect. I ended up with a sheet for each class that looked like this:

Notice fewer circles/highlights during the second half of the quarter?!

Since everyone ended up with all of the points for all of the assignments, it really brings one big question to mind . . . What's the point of the points?!

I'm finally believing that students don't complete assignments because of points. Students complete assignments because of accountability. I would argue that there are forms of accountability that are more affective than points. I never had 100% completion when I was only assigning points.

Another unexpected outcome (which shouldn't have been surprising), is that assessment scores were higher as a result of "Operation 100%". In the past, I spent a lot of time orchestrating/scheduling remediation and re-assessments. Since students ended up understanding the content better on the front side of assessments, I spent significantly less time on that type of thing this semester.

**My school has some structures in place that helped tremendously with follow-up here. I assigned many students to our school's tutoring room. It is held during the school day and staffed by a few teachers and lots of National Honor Society students. For students who understand the content but were just dragging their feet on completion, I had the option to assign them to academic lunch.

A Way to Make Their Day

One of my nephews is in my Algebra 2 class this year. Today is his birthday, and I gave him an assessment. Happy Birthday, Kale.

I wanted to make the day special for him, so I wrote some notes and drew some pictures on the inside of his assessment. Then I did a little magic as I was passing them out to make sure the "special" assessment landed on his desk.

He volunteers as a junior firefighter and carries a pager to alert him when help is needed. He's not supposed to leave school for fires, but oh how he would love to!

Kitty inspired by this post from Jonathan.

17!

I loved the grin on his face as he worked his way through the assessment. That's when I realized that I have lots of other students who celebrate birthdays on assessment day, or who just need a little extra encouragement . . . This is going to have to be my new thing.