Learning Target Assessments (SBG)

I've been feeling very welcomed back into the MTBoS and I can't believe how much collaboration I've been missing over the past few years! I still haven't read Chapter 8 of Make it Stick although I plan to as soon as possible. In the mean time, here are my plans for assessment in AP Statistics. I'm planning on two types of quizzes and then chapter tests.  Today I'll post about Learning Target assessments, and then tomorrow I'll try to post my plan for FRQ quizzes.

Learning Target Quizzes

I've been doing the SBG thing in AP Statistics for a while now, in fact, I don't really remember teaching AP Statistics without SBG.  I have unpacked the AP Statistics topics into 67 Learning Targets which are not completely finalized since I always try to improve things a bit each year.  Here's my draft for the 15-16 school year:
The textbook sections that are referenced are from the fourth edition of The Practice of Statistics.  Once I get to inference though, I follow the order that the BVD book uses, introducing everything about proportions first, and then moving on to all things means.

My plan is to give kids small learning target quizzes about twice a week.  I've highlighted learning target quizzes in blue on my pacing guide for the first three weeks of school (the items highlighted in yellow are activities - I'm trying to make sure I'm doing plenty of hands on activities with the kids - more about that in another post!)

The assessments are pretty short and sweet - I'm trying... TRYING to limit them to 15-20 minutes so that I'm not losing a ton of instructional time on quizzes.  I have a tendency though to grossly underestimate how long an assessment will take.

The top of each quiz looks like this:

and this is where I give students their SBG scores.  I try to use holistic scoring, modeling my language and numerical scores after the AP Statistics exam:

I do sometimes give 3.5 and 2.5's as needed, when kids are kind of in the middle.  A 3.5 is usually a computational error but conceptual correctness.  In addition, if I've mixed the learning targets into the quiz, I grade each LT in a different color so kids can keep track of which part of the overall quiz assesses that LT.

I used to allow infinite retakes of any particular learning target, but I am going to change that policy this year for two reasons:

1) Often, kids would show up without preparing.  How do I know this? "Hey Mrs. Secor, what do I need to retake?  Can you look it up on your computer for me? Just tell me whatever I got the lowest grade on."  And then they would want to immediately retake that learning target.  Which, of course, makes me want to die.  Kids didn't mind "winging it" because they felt like they had nothing to lose.  That's not the type of reflection and growth that I want from my students.

2) I have 120 AP Stats kids this year.

In addition, I really want kids to be reflective and look for ways to improve their understanding and performance.  I'm going to steal to Mr. Bowman's reassessment request google form.  I already have mine made and pretty much ready to go on my site, here.  It's not done yet, but at least it's up there and pretty much ready to go.

I use Active Grade just to keep track of my SBG data.  I also end up converting everything into a 10 point scale in Power Teacher Gradebook which we are required to use here in Baltimore City.  Active Grade is really just for my own reference so I can see how classes are doing as a whole on individual learning targets.  I can also track improvement and whether or not students have attempted any reassessments.  Here's a screenshot of my Active Gradebook.  It gives me a nice visual on what learning targets I need to work on since I have it set up to show green for any scores 3-4, yellow for 2 and 2.5, and red for 1.5 or below.

Finally, students are supposed to keep track of their own individual learning target scores in their notebooks.  At the beginning of each chapter I hand out a chapter overview sheet for the students' Interactive Notebooks.  In addition to important vocabulary for the chapter, it includes all of the learning targets:

This year I will do the same thing except there will only be 2 columns for SBG scores (since they can only do one reassessment).    I also want to take a page out of @druinok's book and include problems from the book that are applicable to each learning target . . . if I have textbooks (which is looking probable right now!)

I think that's everything for my learning target quizzes. They get better every year!