Bio
Patrick Hemmingsen has been a high school science teacher since 2004. He has taught all content levels in urban, suburban and rural communities. In 2010, he received extensive training in Standards-Based Grading from Bea McGarvey with the Marzano Research Laboratory. He collaborated with Kansas City Metro school districts to design and implement the scoring system he uses today to effectively evaluate his students while providing meaningful feedback to them and their parents.
Patrick has presented on formative assessment and standards-based grading at the Missouri Professional Learning Community (PLC) Powerful Learning Conference and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) High Schools that Work National Conference. Success from those presentations has given him the opportunity to share his journey in standards-based grading with several other school districts across Missouri. Patrick was also a 2012 Raymore-Peculiar Teacher of the Year finalist.
Reinventing the Broken Wheel
A conversation about formative assessment and standards-based grading.Grading is a small part of teacher responsibilities, but has become a major focus in education. State and federal legislation has placed increased importance on reporting student mastery, but does our current system accurately convey that information? Inconsistencies in assigned letter grades occur at the local, state and national levels, making traditional grading practices subjective and forcing post-secondary institutions to rely on standardized exams, like the ACT and SAT, rather than high school transcripts as a true communication of learning.
Standards-based grading has become a popular objective-based approach in reporting student mastery and guaranteeing grading consistency between teachers within and amongst school districts. This practice uses unambiguous criteria derived from specific learning standards and evaluated on evidence that best reflects achievement for those standards (Guskey, Swam & Jung, 2011). This presentation will discuss how identifying student strengths and areas for improvement through low-risk formative assessments will help them perform better on class objectives and high stakes course assessments.
Tier 1 – Starting with Why
What is the purpose of grades? Most educators would say they are used to communicate student understanding over required course material. Despite this admission, teachers continue to grade their students on participation, neatness, organization and other non-academic factors that blur the edges of accurate reporting. This session will discuss current teaching misconceptions alongside the fundamentals of formative assessment and standards-based grading.
Tier 2 – Quality over Quantity
A guaranteed and viable curriculum rests on the foundation of significant and aligned assessments. Formative and summative activities should be written to evaluate student performance, deemed as “on-target” learning, centered on a specific objective while evaluating prior knowledge and challenging current understanding. This session will discuss how to write meaningful learning targets and essential questions to better examine student performance and how to evaluate understanding.
Tier 3 – Scores to Grades
Standards-based grading requires a conversion scale to translate demonstrated learning into a traditional letter grade for college transcripts, grade point averages and parent communication. A proficient understanding of learning targets and essential questions is required to accurately transition from assessment scores to the fitting letter grades. This session will evaluate sample data to discuss how to switch formative and summative scores into a percentile range next to advanced theories like grade trends and mass centralized learning.
Mix-N-Match: Combine any tier to create the tailored conversation your group needs.
Patrick Hemmingsen has been a high school science teacher since 2004. He has taught all content levels in urban, suburban and rural communities. In 2010, he received extensive training in Standards-Based Grading from Bea McGarvey with the Marzano Research Laboratory. He collaborated with Kansas City Metro school districts to design and implement the scoring system he uses today to effectively evaluate his students while providing meaningful feedback to them and their parents.
Patrick has presented on formative assessment and standards-based grading at the Missouri Professional Learning Community (PLC) Powerful Learning Conference and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) High Schools that Work National Conference. Success from those presentations has given him the opportunity to share his journey in standards-based grading with several other school districts across Missouri. Patrick was also a 2012 Raymore-Peculiar Teacher of the Year finalist.
Reinventing the Broken Wheel
A conversation about formative assessment and standards-based grading.Grading is a small part of teacher responsibilities, but has become a major focus in education. State and federal legislation has placed increased importance on reporting student mastery, but does our current system accurately convey that information? Inconsistencies in assigned letter grades occur at the local, state and national levels, making traditional grading practices subjective and forcing post-secondary institutions to rely on standardized exams, like the ACT and SAT, rather than high school transcripts as a true communication of learning.
Standards-based grading has become a popular objective-based approach in reporting student mastery and guaranteeing grading consistency between teachers within and amongst school districts. This practice uses unambiguous criteria derived from specific learning standards and evaluated on evidence that best reflects achievement for those standards (Guskey, Swam & Jung, 2011). This presentation will discuss how identifying student strengths and areas for improvement through low-risk formative assessments will help them perform better on class objectives and high stakes course assessments.
Tier 1 – Starting with Why
What is the purpose of grades? Most educators would say they are used to communicate student understanding over required course material. Despite this admission, teachers continue to grade their students on participation, neatness, organization and other non-academic factors that blur the edges of accurate reporting. This session will discuss current teaching misconceptions alongside the fundamentals of formative assessment and standards-based grading.
Tier 2 – Quality over Quantity
A guaranteed and viable curriculum rests on the foundation of significant and aligned assessments. Formative and summative activities should be written to evaluate student performance, deemed as “on-target” learning, centered on a specific objective while evaluating prior knowledge and challenging current understanding. This session will discuss how to write meaningful learning targets and essential questions to better examine student performance and how to evaluate understanding.
Tier 3 – Scores to Grades
Standards-based grading requires a conversion scale to translate demonstrated learning into a traditional letter grade for college transcripts, grade point averages and parent communication. A proficient understanding of learning targets and essential questions is required to accurately transition from assessment scores to the fitting letter grades. This session will evaluate sample data to discuss how to switch formative and summative scores into a percentile range next to advanced theories like grade trends and mass centralized learning.
Mix-N-Match: Combine any tier to create the tailored conversation your group needs.
