Traditional gradebooks are good at showing student performance on total individual assignments. With this information, teachers and students may try to draw conclusions about strengths and weaknesses by looking at the overall performance or grade for an assessment or grading period. But getting more specific than an assignment score is challenging. There are a number of reasons a student might not perform well on a specific assignment. For these reasons, K-12 schools are implementing standards-based grading.
The traditional gradebook isn’t good at showing a more holistic, cumulative, and easy-to-read description of which standards and skills a student is exceeding at and which they are struggling with. A well-designed standard gradebook can provide this insight. At Otus, we’ve been working hard to achieve the best standards-based gradebook solution and it is now available within the Otus Student Performance Platform.
Tagging assignments with standards
While assigning work in Otus, teachers can easily attach specific Common Core, state, and custom standards to resources, lessons, and assessments. Every time a student completes an activity tagged with a standard and is graded within Otus, the performance will automatically be tracked in the Standards Gradebook. {Note: Otus has a traditional gradebook option too.}
Viewing student mastery
Once activities have been tagged with standards, completed by students, and graded, teachers can view the information in the digital gradebook built specifically for standards. Measured standards appear as columns on the y-axis. Drilling down into a specific standard and student shows the teacher how many times the standard has been measured and how the student performed each time.
Identifying and acting on learning gaps
The more assessments, or measurements of learning, linked with standards, the better educators can visualize and understand a student’s growth. Teachers are then able to determine students’ specific skill strengths and skill deficits. Once these are determined, the opportunity for informed and authentic differentiation becomes possible and teachers can act on the identified learning gaps.
