Several years ago, as our state moved to a proficiency-based (competency-based) system, I began thinking pretty deeply about how assessment needed to look different if there were no grades attached. There seemed to be some pretty big questions about motivation, engagement, and the need for learners to be more self-directed than we were confident they could be during the transition from being passive learners to a more student-centered system.

I was convinced that this change was a valuable one and could see what it looked like at the end but the “how” of the shift seemed very fuzzy. I read and researched. I was actively attempting shifts in my own classroom and taking notes. I was solving problems with teachers who were building the plane in the air. I was working with administrators and consultants on figuring out how to coordinate it and manage all the different stakeholder needs. Then I stumbled on a book called Proficiency-Based Assessment: Process, Not Product by a group of administrators from Adlai Stevenson High School in Illinois (Eric, Twadell, Mark Onuscheck, Anthony T. Rebel, and Troy Gobble). There was one idea in this book that at first didn’t make sense to me but it made me wonder so much that I was thinking about it all the time. The idea was that a learning scale should use the same verb at each level. I liken the transformation that began to occur because of this one idea to Teen Wolf’s transition for the first time. Check it out on Youtube if you aren’t familiar with this eighties classic.

My transition was equally ugly. I’ll skip to the one shift that took me years to get to from this single idea of the consistent verb learning scale. I needed to be designing assessments around that final action throughout instruction. If I used Bloom’s taxonomy scaffolded method of designing instruction, kids weren’t ready for the assessment. In addition, all of the instruction along the way had to be focused on that final verb, not the lower-level cognitive verbs that might also be present in the learning process. I know you are all probably making that same face Teen Wolf was making right now but I’m telling you it’s a game-changer. 

The strategy

The current strategy I am using is to identify what skill and knowledge I want kids to demonstrate at the end of the learning, about the length of a unit. Then, I scale that down and have students practice before they have learned too much; this might even be on day one. They measure their current state against the learning scale that has a consistent verb. Everything I teach from that point on is focused on improving their skills on that scale. 

My first attempt at this in action was using the scale above. The final event was a pitch to the local business association of a real business idea that each student had developed over the course of the semester. The very first task I asked students to do was to write down their business idea. I asked them to scrutinize their idea with the learning scale above. I asked them to reflect on what they thought about their pitches in comparison to the learning scale. I got the best reflections that I had ever seen. These learners were able to identify not only what was missing from their work but also what their next steps in learning needed to be. They could even ask for specific instructional needs. 

There are a lot of manageable entry points for single verb scales. Try and think of assessments that already have clear endpoints. Some that have come up as easy examples are persuasive speeches, end of the season music or chorus concerts, end of unit projects, and papers. Instruction for these can all be transformed by asking what does it look like if that product shows the learning well? If you are careful not to begin listing the necessary elements of the product, you’ll get there. So, for example, persuasive speeches are convincing; that’s what it looks like. To be convincing you might teach students about gathering good evidence. A non-example would be “neatness” as a quality of a project or paper. Neatness is not related to the learning that you want to see so it wouldn’t be part of the learning scale. 

The reason this one shift has been so transformative is that with this one small change learners had become more motivated, more engaged, and more self-directed all at once. It was amazingly efficient and time is a precious commodity for teachers and learners alike right now. Don’t get me wrong, getting good at writing scales in this way is a special skill and took time. This particular scale went through a lot of iterations and I could keep changing it. Keeping the verb the same is only the first step. Identifying how to describe what it looks like to do that verb well is another task. Then designing instruction around this scale also takes some work but if the scale is solid, this piece gets easy. When Teen Wolf is all sweaty and grabbing at his face, that is what it feels like.