The EduGals Podcast

This week, we are talking all about how to build buy-in for ungrading in your school community. We'll discuss ungrading buy-in strategies for various different stakeholders such as teachers, admin, parents, and most importantly, students. Let's start talking about ungrading!

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/97**
Teachers/Admin:

• Start with conversations about grading and grading practices
• Why aren't traditional grading practices working? 
• Leverage opportunities informally in your workroom, more formally in department meetings
• Keep in mind - slow and deliberate changes towards ungrading (it's a spectrum)
• Many ways to ungrade (mastery, standards-based, feedback, etc)
• Focus on the feedback and learning over grades
• Look at printouts of marks for students, rubrics we're using (single point vs 4-level), success criteria, moderated marking
• Try to find common ground, team dynamics matter
• Rethinking Letter Grades - Conversation Cards
• Grades are very personal - Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman
• Share your own vulnerability
• Open your classroom space, share your ungrading practices
• Honour professional judgement
• Invite colleagues and admin into your classroom
• Keep your admin in the loop - let them know what you are doing with ungrading and be prepared with a plan

Parents:

• Parents are allies - need transparency, clear communication of grading practices
• Pitch/justify your why of ungrading - send out a newsletter early in the school year
• Mastery can start a strong parent-teacher relationship
• Start an FAQ document to share with parents, teachers, admin, etc - post on website, LMS, etc

Students:

• This is the trickiest group to build buy-in!
• Consider the language you use to talk about grading, assessment, and feedback
• Expect pushback - this takes a bit of time to learn
• Involve students in the grading practices
• Start with having a conversation in general about grading
• Have them track their progress with a portfolio
• Build in reflection opportunities
• Know that emotions can be high - some students might feel anxiety and stress

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

We are talking all about how to leverage tech tools to build community in your (hopefully) face-to-face classroom. We'll link different tools to our four whys of community building: collaboration, communication, social-emotional learning, and safe & inclusive environments.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/60**

Reasons for Building Community:

• Communication
  • Screencastify - overviews, instructional videos, presentations, email responses, feedback
  • Mote - use in slides, docs, gmail etc. for audio only
  • Google Chat - individual or group chats, informal, easier for students than email (low risk)
  • Google Meet - extra help sessions outside of class, drop in
  • LMS - announcement tools, discussion boards
• Collaboration
  • Google Jamboard (digital whiteboards) - small groups, breakout rooms, brainstorming, getting to know you activities, word walls, research, games
  • Flipgrid - screen share behind your picture now!
  • Google Slides, Docs, and Sheets - graphic organizer to get them started, collecting data as a class, crowdsourcing problem solving with Screencastify
• Social-Emotional Learning and Safe & Inclusive Environments
  • Use a variety of tools, modes of communication
  • Google Forms - gather info about your students, check ins, class song playlist, languages
  • Involve your students in your classroom layout, whether it is physical or virtual (LMS) - custom banners, layout, unit vs week
  • Check Ins - Google Form, Google Slides, etc. to see how students are doing
  • Headspace
  • Online games - Jamboard, Kahoot, Quizizz, Google Arts & Culture Puzzle Party - you can have students create these to save time!

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

This week, we are chatting all about different classroom strategies that we can use to support our English language learners (or multilingual learners). We'll explore a variety of strategies to support learners at varying levels of language learning in our classrooms. Katie is super pumped for this episode since teaching English language learners is her wheelhouse!

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/96**

• What works for ELLs, (English language learners) also works for ALL learners
• Universal Design for Learning approach

Strategies:

• Use of images/visuals along with words (decreases reliability on translators) - dual coding theory
• Academic (content-specific, assessment words, etc) vs conversation/social language
  • Requires explicit teaching
  • Collaborative vocabulary lists (Frayer model, SEE-I model) - include word, translation, interaction opportunities, images
  • Read&Write for Google Chrome and Google Slides to build class vocab lists
  • Dual/single language vocab placemat for assessment language
  • Incorporate student voice
• Asking questions - be specific (what questions do you have about x? etc)
• Demonstration of learning:
  • Consider early language learners - how can they demonstrate what they know? Need to offer options!
  • Make use of first language
  • What are you assessing? Knowledge or language?
• Mastery-based learning (Modern Classrooms Project)
• Word banks, sentence stems, sentence frames - add scaffolds into assessments
• Model writing with your class (I do, we do, you do - groups then individual)
• Try fill-in-the-blanks as a scaffold and then pull back the scaffolds over the semester
• Graphic organizers:
  • Teaching different note-taking methods (jot dots, Cornell notes, etc)
  • Plagiarism happens because our language learners don't have the language to be able to put it into their own words
• Know that students come from a lot of different lived experiences - build relationships, cultural awareness, critical conciseness, and trauma-informed teaching and learning strategies

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

This week, we are chatting all about mastery-based grading in skills-based curriculum areas. We've got a packed episode where Rachel is reflecting on her thought processes and Katie helps with problem-solving some challenges with mastery-based grading.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/95**

• Mastery-based scales for skills - easy to understand for students, teachers, and parents
• Proficiency scales from the book: Going Gradeless by Dave Frangiosa and Elise Burns
• Start by breaking it down:
  • What are the key skills you want students developing in your course?
  • Break it down - what does it look like for each level of the scale?
  • Consider benchmarks
  • How many levels do you want in your scale?
  • How would this convert into grades? Consider a grade conversion scale
• Standards-based grading scales - for science it can be tricky because you value both background knowledge AND skills (see Jessica Liew's episode E084 to learn more)
• Teasing apart knowledge and skills is challenging - what are you actually assessing?
• Assessment plan: 
  • Mastery checks for background knowledge only
  • Checkpoints (cumulative quizzes) - both knowledge and skills (problem solving, communication) with re-tests focused on knowledge only
  • Inquiry, design thinking, projects - all skills based scales
  • Skills scales have 3 levels - Got It, Almost, Not Yet
  • Scaffold building of the skills within the assessments themselves
• Regardless of system, communication is going to be key!
• Final grades:
  • Percentage of mastery demonstrated of knowledge and skills
  • Skills can be most recent, most consistent - replacing grades in your gradebook
• Try group moderated grading as you try this out
• Expect grading conversations to take a long time!
• I can statements as a checklist for mastery-based grading with space for comments/feedback
• You don't have to have all the answers - try, fail, learn, and iterate!

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

This week, we are chatting all about our why and what brings us joy in education. We'll reflect on our educational journeys and talk about how we've made decisions that have impacted our career pathways. Reminding ourselves of where we find joy is one way that we are preparing ourselves for new challenges in the next school year.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/94**

Things that bring us joy:

• Students, relationships, and the classroom
• Focusing on joy can help you make career decisions
• Reality testing your assumptions - try ooching (from the book Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath)
• Staffing process, timetabling - a big, fun logic puzzle
• Problem-solving, collaborating, and socializing with colleagues
• Being part of a larger school community
• Learning - teaching is a challenge, how can I improve? M.Ed., other courses, reading
• Sharing our learning - presenting at conferences or staff meetings, podcasting, running PD
• School breaks especially summer - getting outside into nature, not working, spending quality time with family and friends
• Opportunities such as 3 over 4 - apply to work for 3 years with a year off (pay is spread out over the 4 years)
• System-level roles help to understand how decisions are made for the board
• School events - commencement, prom, grade 9 nights, etc.
• Being a part of a student's journey and growth over the high school years

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

In this blast from the past, we are digging into the HOW of ungrading. In part 2 of this 2 part series, we are talking about different strategies and ideas to get started with ungrading in the classroom. It can feel pretty overwhelming to get started, so tune in to listen to some easy ways to dive into ungrading ideas.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/71**

Ideas/Strategies:

• Podcasting - listen to E050 for more info on Podcasting in the Classroom
• Focus on reflection of learning, process of learning
• Video - Screencastify/Screencastify Submit
• Feedback first before grades
• Involve students in grade determinations (conferencing, interviews)
• Student self-assessment of traditional tests
• Rubrics - consider single point rubrics, co-constructed with students
• Mastery-based grading or minimal grading scales - pass/fail, mastered/getting there/not yet, etc.
• Portfolio/Blogging - gathering the evidence of learning throughout a course
• Before each reporting period, consider process letters, conferences, interviews
• Seek admin support
• Balance between mastery-based grading and ungrading practices
• Start with your learning goal and choose strategies that support it
• Peer-to-peer feedback (scaffolded, sentence stems/frames, start with low stakes)
• Determining grades via self-, peer-, and teacher-feedback combined
• Grade-free zones (first 1/3 of your course)
• Contract grading

Links Mentioned:

• So You Wanna #Ungrade? The Practical Guide - Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh
• Grading Student Writing: Making It Simpler, Fairer, Clearer - Peter Elbow
• How To Ungrade: A Workshop (Jesse Stommel)
• Tweet: 12 alternatives to letter grades in education (Teach Thought)
• Peer Grade (useful tool for peer feedback)
• Sprint: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas In Just 5 Days (Jake Knapp)

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

In this blast from the past, Katie and I explore the ways to set up your Learning Management System (LMS) effectively and efficiently to optimize course organization and learning for your students. We reviewed tips, strategies, and ideas for setting up your LMS, whether it is Brightspace, Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, or something else.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/56**

• Use your LMS, even if you are fully face-to-face
• Layout and Homepage:
  • This is your doorway into your virtual classroom
  • Easy navigation - minimize the links to the essentials
  • Link all of your other tools within the content area
  • Include contact info on homepage
  • Announcements 
  • Brightspace Part 1 and Brightspace Part 2 episodes
• Organization:
  • Embed third party tools (EdPuzzle, Google Slides, YouTube videos, etc) into your content area
  • Link in Google Docs when it makes sense
  • Use consistent naming & numbering systems (reduces cognitive load)
  • Folders - units, weeks, whatever works best for you
  • Use your announcements to lay out weekly expectations
  • Include student voice in planning and organization
  • Include visuals and make it look pretty - design is important (consistent fonts, icons, emojis, etc to reduce cognitive load and increase engagement)
  • It's okay to set up your LMS to meet your needs, just make sure you create an intro video to help your students navigate it - Screencastify is great!
  • Canva is a great tool for design - Canvas Banner, Canvas Button, Google Classroom Header (also a Style Your LMS category available)
• Inclusion Ideas:
  • Include important cultural celebrations 
  • Add your personality - Bitmoji or GIPHY is great and integrated into Canva
  • Have students design your classroom banners - include languages represented in your classroom too
  • Design With Canva YouTube channel
• A Scary Suggestion:
  • A little bit of basic coding (HTML and CSS) goes a long way!
  • Code Academy (look under Web Development)
  • This helps with interactive elements in your LMS - buttons, flipcards, etc.
• Final Advice:
  • Use student-friendly language to increase accessibility

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

This week, we are chatting all about our reading, learning, and relaxing plans for the summer. It's been a tough year and we are ready for a break! We'll go over some great books to read, summer course that we might be taking (or not taking), and how we plan to recharge ourselves to get ready for the new school year.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/93**

Learning/Working:

• Modern Classrooms Project Summer Institute
• Other professional learning courses (Rachel is taking her Principal's Qualifications... maybe)
• Building resources/lessons for de-streamed grade 9 science and ESL mastery (consider building templates as a team to reduce the workload)
• Footgolf in Hamilton, ON
• Katie is NOT working for the first time in quite a while
• ASM Materials Education Foundation - Materials Science Camp for Teachers

Reading:

• Leading for Equity and Social Justice
• Equity by Design
• Braiding Sweetgrass (audio is best)
• Is Everyone Really Equal?
• Classroom Assessment and Grading That Works
• Giving Students a Say
• Decisive

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

This week, it's all about cleaning up our digital lives to get organized and ready for summer (and the new school year)! We are chatting about tips and tricks to organize your Google Drive, learning management systems (LMS) such as Google Classroom, Brightspace, Canvas, or others, and your other digital and local file storage systems.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/92**

Google Drive:

• Create an archive folder for this past school year for meeting notes, etc
• NEW Keyboard shortcuts in Google Drive
• Start with organizing/purging the orphaned files (not associated with any folder)
• Beware of slides.new, docs.new, etc
• Try switching between list view to grid view to see a preview
• Move multiple files by holding down control/cmd or use shift while clicking to select
• Create folders for the new school year
• Add reflection docs and record your thoughts NOW while they are fresh
• Rename folders starting with numbers to give them priority
• Go through your starred folder - do you need everything still?
• Consider using priority workspaces - hide ones you don't need (no need to delete)
• Don't touch your shared with me folder - it's meant to be a hot mess
• Check sharing settings on your folders - remove people or set temporary access

Local Storage:

• Start with your downloads folder, move relevant files to the cloud
• Clean up your desktop - delete screenshots and old files that might be slowing down your device
• Screenshot shortcut for clipboard on Mac = cmd + ctrl + shift + 4
• iCloud drive (similar suggestions to Google drive) or other cloud storage drives

Learning Management System (LMS)

• Google Classroom - return student work, archive old classes, set up new classes
• Brightspace, Canvas etc - not as much to do here, make sure student work is returned, pin/unpin relevant courses, consider organizing template course shell

Final Advice:

• Organizing your workspace/desk can help you get started
• Pick 1-2 areas to focus on and just start there
• Consider setting a 10 min timer each day to work on digital organization

Support the show

Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

This week, we are chatting about all things descriptive feedback. We're exploring what descriptive feedback is, how you can tailor descriptive feedback to boost student learning, and general tips and strategies to make descriptive feedback easy and manageable to implement in your classroom.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/91**

• Descriptive Feedback - What do you notice, where are the gaps, and what specifically can you do to improve
• Not fair to students to give feedback without giving opportunities for putting it into practice
• Feedback is a constant cycle between student and teacher
• Time is a big barrier to providing descriptive feedback - digital tools, peer feedback, self-reflection, audio/video feedback are all ways to help
• Consider including a checklist or success criteria in student-friendly language with task/assignment submissions
• Book: How To Give Effective Feedback to Your Students by Susan M. Brookhart
• Feedback strategies:
  • Timing - throughout skill development, immediate or slightly delayed, put the feedback into practice, short mastery checks are quick to grade!
  • Amount - avoid fixing everything (cognitive load), focus on 1-2 key ideas to give feedback, focus on usable feedback that moves the student learning forward
  • Mode - written, verbal, most effective as a conversation; try audio/video feedback for larger projects
  • Audience - knowing your students, gearing feedback with appropriate language, try group/whole class feedback
• Word choice/language in feedback matters:
  • Mastery-based language (almost there!)
  • Focus on the strengths/weaknesses of the work itself
  • Avoid any type of judgement of the student themselves
  • I notice..., I wonder..., consider...
  • Referencing success criteria and making comparisons
  • Reflective questions 
  • Positive, asset vs deficit-based mindsets
• Digital Tool Recommendations and Ideas:
  • Mote
  • Screencastify
  • Notability or Good Notes (great on an iPad)
  • Explain Everything
  • Dropdown Chips in Google Docs (E090)
  • Save your common feedback notes in Google Docs or Keep or Classroom
  • Consider creating videos for common mistakes
  • EdPuzzle
  • Branched Google Forms
  • Google docs/slides with all levels of feedback with links (can help scaffold peer feedback)
  • Choice boards for peer feedback

Support the show

Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show