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Ditching Traditional Grades & My Online Gradebook

Catlin Tucker

This summer I read Starr Stackstein’s book Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School. In her book, Stackstein chronicles her journey ditching grades in a traditional school setting and offers some excellent strategies a teacher can use to go gradeless.

Tradition 168
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3 Problems with Traditional Grades

Catlin Tucker

For this blog post I will focus on the top three problems with the traditional approach to giving grades: Grades happened to students. Traditional Grades Happen To Students. Like too many aspects of education, students play a very passive role in the traditional grading system.

Tradition 168
educators

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Ongoing Self-Assessments: Students Reflect On and Document Their Progress

Catlin Tucker

For the last two years, I have published several blogs detailing my journey away from traditional grading and assessment practices. My co-teachers and I designed an ongoing self-assessment document that we share with our students each grading period to guide their reflections on their progress and skill development.

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Trading in Traditional Notebooks for Multimedia Blogs

Catlin Tucker

School traded in their traditional notebooks for multimedia digital blogs using Blogger. My goal was to get them using their devices to document their work in class–taking pictures and recording video. Then take that documentation and weave it into their notes, reflections, lab reports, etc. This year, students in N.E.W.

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How Digital Tools Improve Teaching and Learning

A Principal's Reflections

A piece of student writing can become a diverse and substantive document when it is the basis for a step-by-step exchange of ideas and questions between teacher, peers, authors, and mentors. This is true for both online classrooms as well as “blended” classrooms, those integrating online and digital tools into a traditional learning setting.

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The Role of a Leader in Building Capacity

A Principal's Reflections

As you come across research that supports the types of effective pedagogical techniques you wish to see in your classrooms, archive it in a document that you can refer to when writing up observations. To complement traditional means of professional learning, work to create or further develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN).

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Plants and People of Borneo: A Cultural and Ecological Connection

Anthropology.net

A new biocultural database, developed by researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), reveals the profound connections between Borneo’s rich plant life and the survival, traditions, and identity of its people. Marks on this trunk reveal traces of wooden plugs used in traditional honey harvesting.