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In June 2020, I was home, finishing up my year-end grades, and nervously awaiting the outcome of the school year as my school system spent its third month on lock-down. 

Full of anxiety and itching for something to do, I obsessively turned to online training programs, and took numerous free online courses to become officially certified in a number of software programs, such as Peardeck Assessment (formerly known as Edulastic), EdPuzzle, Google for Teachers, the Modern Classroom Project, and Peardeck Learning. One key aspect that each of these programs shared was continuing a student’s educational process through a self-led, asynchronous mechanism, such as the creation of interactive note-sets and the use of videos with built-in questions. With the support of my supervisor, I decided to dive into this new paradigm.

When I returned to in-person learning, however, I discovered that my teaching approach didn’t entirely work for my students. It required the use of public-facing trackers of student work, allowing students to re-do classwork and labs, re-testing until they got everything near perfect, and documenting grades only for the summative assessments.

When my students took their state-wide exams in the spring, they did not perform as well as we had hoped for: approximately 18.5% did not meet expectations based on the state indicator data, compared to the 15% we had anticipated. Therefore, the following year, I implemented a teaching strategy that utilized just those teaching strategies that I felt worked best and graded all the class work as well as the summative assessments. The outcome on the state-based exams was substantially better, with only 11.5% not meeting expectations. Even though not all of the strategies I employed originally worked for my in-person students, some of them did!

This article will look at the core ideas that worked (and continue to work) in my classroom, focusing on flexible grading practices in my inclusion and honors classrooms as well as providing immediate feedback on student work. I’ll also reflect on how these ideas impact student self-reflection, the importance of sensemaking and how it impacts the social and emotional skills of self-management, self-awareness, and responsible decision-making.

Figure 1. Demographic makeup of the author’s school population (percentages)..

My school and classroom setting

I work at Greater Lowell Technical School located in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. It is a public, vocational high school and serves the nearby communities of Lowell, Dracut, Tyngsboro, and Dunstable. It is considered an urban school since most of the students we serve are from Lowell, the fifth largest city in Massachusetts. As shown in Figure 1, our student population is fairly diverse. Approximately 16% of our students are in the Special Education program and have an IEP, while 24% of Multilingual students are performing on the WIDA scale between levels 1 and 4. In addition, 7% of our students have a 504 plan, approximately 49% are low income, and a total of 61% are described as “high needs.” Of the student population, 48% is female, 51% is male, and approximately 1% identify as nonbinary.¹

As a science teacher at Greater Lowell Tech, I have taught both Biology and Chemistry. In my mixed chemistry classes, I teach 10^th through 12^th grade students, who are with me every other week. The class periods are 90 minutes long, and class size ranges from 17 to 26 students. The expectation is that the students are learning the 2016 Massachusetts Frameworks for Science and Engineering/Technology,² which are similar to the NGSS Frameworks. The students must be capable of demonstrating their proficiency in the MA state standards in Chemistry via their work on their classroom summative assessments. The honors students are also required to participate in our schoolwide science fair, which meets the statewide Massachusetts science fair standards,³ and we are hopeful that some students will participate in the statewide fair in this coming year.

A student-friendly environment

My classroom environment features two-person lab tables, generally grouped into quads. Electrical outlets around the classroom make it easy to use chargers for Chromebooks and laboratory equipment that needs to be plugged in, such as hot plates. Students can choose to sit and work in comfortable chairs off to the side near the teacher’s desk, including moon chairs and armchairs (see Figure 2). The classroom also features an art corner, filled with pencils, pens, markers, an assortment of papers, as well as fidget toys and jigsaw puzzles. The intent is to create a comfortable learning environment for any student, including those with excellent self-regulatory skills, those with anxiety or ADHD, and those who just need to take a break for a few minutes.

I start my class with a daily agenda (Figure 3) that is posted on my large interactive smart board screen. The focus of activities might be a series of rebus puzzles to solve, a short video I want them to discuss (such as the large Crystal Cave of Mexico), a content-related matching activity, or a “Spot the Difference” activity. The activities are selected randomly, and are only sometimes aligned specifically to our curriculum, for several reasons:

1. It helps ease the students into the day.
2. It often focuses on skills I want the students to continue perfecting, such as abstract reasoning, numbers sense, observation, etc.
3. It almost always forces the students to immediately begin class with an academically-oriented discussion.
4. It often helps make connections for students that demonstrate how science (and math) is in everything.

Students sit and do the activity listed in the agenda (often giggling if it is especially silly). Most importantly, they engage in academic discussion and argument. This often means that just five minutes into class, the students have already demonstrated several skills from the CASEL framework: self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship skills.⁴ My school has begun using these frameworks in the last few years to help our students develop socially, as we have noticed a decrease in emotional maturity in recent years. There has also been some concern about students’ college and work readiness. There is some scientific data that indicates that students who are intentionally exposed to the CASEL frameworks, which promote emotional intelligence, generally perform better in their future adult lives. As stated in a 2023 journal article:

Secondary school students are living through a period of transition and development, so having emotional intelligence can prepare them to successfully navigate the complexities of adolescence. It can also help students foster better relationships with their peers, teachers, and family members, which can lead to increased academic success.⁵

Each Monday, I post the upcoming week’s student assignments and due dates to my Google Classroom (see Figure 4). While assignment lengths and types vary, the goal is for students to see what the week has in store for them and determine when they need to complete their work.

Once students have completed the activator, I describe how this day fits into the other days of the week. I may even scroll through my agendas to visually depict it for them. By doing this, the students can determine their mode of attack for that day. Do they want to complete as much as they can on that day? Do they want to take home some homework? They can also choose to work with partners or choose to work alone.

The expectation is that students spend class time working on their assignments, using their classmates and myself as resources. However, if they really need to, or are having a particularly bad day, they can discuss with me a work schedule that addresses their other classes first. For example, Do they want to study for their next class and do twice as much chemistry tomorrow? Or, Is today a lab day and they know they need to get the work done, because the lab materials will not be out again?

In short, most assignments are flexible. The exceptions are lab days and quiz/test days, which are rigid (they occur when indicated on our weekly schedule posted to the Google Classroom). Additionally, I strongly encourage the students to submit their classwork on the same day as the class to ensure they can ask questions in a timely manner, as well as be prepared for their labs and quizzes. The assigning of mostly self-paced work also leaves me available for students. Since I am not lecturing, I can provide one-on-one assistance to any student who asks for it, as well as assistance to small groups of students who choose to work in their table groups.

One of the keys to making this approach work is that my due dates are not set in stone. Rather, students may turn in their work late without a point penalty, because I do not just engage in flexible assignments, but also in flexible grading.

The flexible grading process

Flexible grading requires that students turn in their work in a timely manner — but on a timeline that works for them and without a point penalty. It works extremely well with students in a variety of categories: those who need extended time on assignments; acutely anxious students who may need to prioritize another class to reduce their anxiety; students with ADHD who need deadlines but also know if they “mess up” they will not face a penalty for it; and even for that kid who is simply having a bad day.^6,7As stated by Amherst College Professor Ellen Boucher:

I used to have a pretty typical policy on late assignments. Students would lose a third of a grade for each day they handed in a paper late… The problem with a rigid policy on lateness is that it compounds students’ stress at a time when they are already overwhelmed. It’s tailor-made to produce the sort of behavior that has frustrated professors for generations: shoddy work (submitted just to get something in), panicked cheating, or disappearing students (from the course, or worse, from the university altogether).

So, I reworded my lateness policy…The results have been amazing. Since changing my policy, I’ve seen higher-quality work, less anxiety, and fewer cases of burnout.⁸

Additionally, my strategy allows the students to re-submit work for a higher grade. This strategy is supported by the work of Bloom⁹, Mallette¹⁰, Guskey¹¹,and others. As a core teacher in inclusion classrooms, I have found that allowing for late submissions without a point penalty made the kids more likely to get the work done. For my students who like to do everything as soon as possible, it gives them a sense of relief that their main tasks of the week could be accomplished early. For these early finishers, I also have a free-floating choice-board of assignments titled, “I’m Done, Now What?,” which they can choose to do for extra points. Meanwhile, for the students who struggle to get assignments right the first time, as well as those with various forms of anxiety, knowing that they can resubmit their self-corrected assignments for higher grades makes them more willing to engage in completing their assignments and deepening their learning of the content.

I am lucky in that I work at a school where each of my students has a Chromebook. This has saved me a lot of time because, with almost all of my assignments being online, I no longer need to spend time deciphering handwriting; I can just read. With approximately 125–145 students per year, the use of Chromebooks has given me the ability to not only allow students to submit work late, but also to grade those assignments, as well as re-submitted assignments. In fact, I am usually able to give typed feedback within 24 hours.

I also mix up how I give my assignments. For example, instead of giving students a worksheet to review concepts, I give them a self-grading Google Form (see Figure 5) or a piece of pixel art, a type of digital art where if a student answers questions correctly, a piece of artwork gradually appears on their screen. These activities allow the students to keep trying until they get the correct answer.

Likewise, if I want to give students a crossword puzzle, I make it a digital one, with boxes that light up to tell students if they got it right. This gives me a diverse set of assignments that are very easy to grade. As a result, I only need to actively grade essays, labs, projects, and interactive note-sets (as shown in Figures 6 through 9), where the students read and fill in tables, graphs, answer questions, or move draggables.

I’ve found it fairly easy to get most of my grading tasks completed within 24 hours. This is thanks to a mixture of careful reading (which I now have time for thanks to the self-grading assignments), the ability to copy and paste my feedback, since students often get the same or similar things wrong, and the use of rubrics (see an example). The example shows a typical rubric I use to grade lab activities, which I compose and insert into the Google Classroom for my students to refer to (and for me to use while grading).

Re-doing assignments

I believe that it is very important for students to be able to re-do assignments as often as necessary to get the right answer. I find my students learn better when they get things wrong the first time, and can correct them. I often see this when I use Google Forms to make a review sheet with similar (but not the same) questions as a test. The questions which the students really struggle with during practice are often the ones they do best on the actual exam.

Additionally, for my students to get a “perfect” score, they do not actually need to perform with 100% accuracy. I generally score classwork assignments on a four-point scale that focuses not just on accuracy, but also on effort. Therefore, a student who scores an 88% or better on an assignment will often get full credit. If they score between 78% and 87%, I often give them a 3.5 (see Figure 10). I find that while the kids really do love the ability to get a perfect score (which they can by repeating the assignments), my grading approach encourages those low-achieving students to continue trying until they get a passing grade.

Naturally, some kids may cheat and copy their friend’s already completed and corrected work. However, these kids also struggle on their lab activities and quizzes. They often learn quickly that they will have low-to-middling grades in the class, and need to actually do their own work.

Of course, doing their own work does not mean they need to work alone! As mentioned, I strongly encourage the students to work together on their assignments when in class. In the real world, scientists and engineers often work in teams, so I encourage similar behavior in the classroom. I function as a facilitator in the classroom and am available for questions or one-on-one instruction for topics that are difficult for a particular student or set of students. I generally do not lecture (except a few times a year), so I can provide feedback during class time.

My facilitator role also allows me to overhear students assisting one another — and they really do engage in great conversations. Regardless, between students working together and the occasional cheating, it makes it easier for me to return comments, such as, “You need to recalculate your percent error. The formula should be first the error divided by the accepted value and then that whole thing times 100,” or “Please correct slide 6. I have deleted and/or removed to the starting place the answers that were incorrectly placed.”

When to stop collecting grades

I tell my students that they should aim to have all the assignments completed and turned in before a quiz or test. I test whenever I feel that the content requires it, which works out to roughly once every week or week-and-a-half. I also provide projects, but these do not function as end-points for a content piece, but rather extensions of the learning. As such, they can occur at any time during a unit. Naturally, the students who do not get their work done prior to a quiz or test earn low grades. Although my grades are based on 50% classwork, 25% labs, and 25% tests/quizzes/projects, the tests are designed based on what class work was done.

Therefore, a poor working knowledge of the classwork ultimately leads to a poor score on the tests or quizzes. My real cut-off point for work collection is the end of the term. While there are always those students turning in assignments at the last minute, my commitment to a 24-hour turnaround on their grades, coupled with the testing schedule, tends to keep most students on track. In short, I’ve noticed that if students know at any given minute how they are actually doing in a class, they’ll work to keep their grades decent.

The outcome

Since I have switched to a flexible grading strategy, I have had very few students who’ve needed to go to summer school. Figure 11 compares data from 2020, the last school year in which I did not teach using a flexible grading strategy, with data from the past three years in which I have implemented this strategy. Note that the data for SY 2020 is based on Terms 1 through 3 (since this was also the year Covid-19 broke out). In addition, SY 21 is missing, because I had to take the year off to care for my children. Related data, not shown in the chart, demonstrates a trend of decline in students attending summer school, with an initial 10.7% of my students going to summer school (n = 130) to 0 students attending summer school this past summer (n=144).

Another outcome from my change in grading approach is that I have lots of students who tell me they used to hate science, but now find it their favorite class. I have others who tell me they still hate science, but love my class (this one always confuses me!). I also have students who tell me I am their favorite teacher, even though I know they have better teachers than me in the school.

These outcomes are the result of creating a classroom environment where making mistakes while learning is okay, and where everyone is learning, socializing, and unafraid to ask for help. When I ask the class a question, all the kids know they can answer without fear.

When we did our schoolwide science fair, the kids were super-interested in winning, versus just getting a good grade from me for their projects. They felt empowered, knowledgeable, and willing to continue their learning. We were all tired by the end of the school year, but I know after summer break is over, the students will be open to learning their new science next year and will carry over their chemistry skills.

References

¹ Massachusetts School and District Profiles web page. https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/gis/sped_map.aspx?orgcode=08280000& (accessed Aug 20, 2024).

² Sagan, P.; et al. Massachusetts Curriculum Framework - 2016: Science and Technology/Engineering Framework. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. https://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/scitech/2016-04.pdf (accessed Aug 20, 2024).

³ Massachusetts Science and Engineering Fair: 2024-2025 High School Manual. Massachusetts Science & Engineering Fair, Inc., Cambridge, MA. https://scifair.com/wp-content/uploads/MSEF-HS-Manual-2024-25.pdf (accessed Aug 20, 2024).

⁴ “What Is the CASEL Framework?” web page. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/ (accessed Aug 20, 2024).

⁵ Baby, G.; et al. Enhancing Emotional Intelligence among Secondary School Students: Needs and Strategies. EPRA International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. 2023, 9 (1).

⁶ Segal, J.; Smith, M. Teaching students with ADHD web page on HelpGuide.org. https://www.helpguide.org/articles/add-adhd/teaching-students-with-adhd-attention-deficit-disorder.htm. (accessed Aug 20, 2024).

⁷ Zacarian, D. Transforming Schools for English Learners: A Comprehensive Framework for School Leaders; Corwin: Thousand Oaks, California, 2011.

⁸ Boucher, E. It’s Time to Ditch Our Deadlines. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2016, September 16 edition, pp 8–10.

⁹ Bloom, Benjamin S.1971. "Mastery learning". In J. H. Block (Ed.), Mastery learning: Theory and practice, p. 47–63. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

¹⁰ Mallette, J. “Rethink your late work policies.” Weekly Teaching Note on New York Institute of Technology Center for Teaching and Learning web page (n.d.) https://site.nyit.edu/ctl/blog/rethink_your_late_work_policies (accessed Aug 20, 2024).

¹¹ Guskey, T. “Giving Retakes Their Best Chance to Improve Learning.” April 24, 2023 post on ASCD website. https://ascd.org/el/articles/giving-retakes-their-best-chance-to-improve-learning (accessed Aug 20, 2024).