Grades in a Japanese School

On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 Dr. Doug Corey of Brigham Young University (when I was an undergraduate at BYU, I was one of Dr. Corey's research assistants) and Dr. Ninomiya of Saitama University and one graduate student came to my school and observed three lessons. After those lessons we sat down and talked about Japanese Education. I was really inspired by how grades are used in Japanese schools.

Students grades seem to be largely dependent on a few things:

• End of term exam
• Attendance and participation
• And sometimes homework assignments, other tests or quizzes

But students aren't given grades until the end of the semester, which has some very powerful implications, including motivating students, eliminates labeling, shifting the focus to concepts, and it forces students to retain their learning.

Not knowing what your current grade is highly motivating

Students want to know their current grade as an indicator of if they are doing enough, either enough to get an A or enough to pass. Once students grade has received that feedback, they will continue in their current path for the rest of the year. But what if you didn't know if you were doing enough to get an A or if you were doing enough to pass. Would you do more or less? I think most students would do more, to ensure they get the grade they want.

Eliminates student labeling

I think that grades become a label for a student. Many students have been labeled by themselves or by their parents as A students. They, and their parents, expect them to get As in every class. Other students are looking to get a B, or C, or just enough to pass. I believe that this labeling mentality would be eliminated if students didn't carry their grade through the semester, every semester.

Shifts the focus from grades to concepts

Conversations with students aren't about grades, they are about concepts. Students won't come to their teacher and ask the question "How can I get an A?" or "How do I bring up my grade?" Their grade isn't in the forefront of their mind, the content of the class is.

Students are forced to continue working and retain what they learn

Because tests and quizzes aren't given throughout the semester, students understand that a major factor of their grade is a cumulative assessment. This alone has important implications. For example

• Students with strong grades will not "rest on their laurels" and not focus for the exam. These students will work especially hard on these exams. I think we do our students a disservice when they have such a high grade, that their end of semester exam won't change their grade much.
• Students need to remember all of the major ideas and concepts until the end of the term. I have found myself trying to test students right away "before they forget" because I assume that they will. If they know that they won't be assessed for several months, then the expectation is that they will remember.

If you disagree with any of my above implications, please comment below. Or, if you have more implications that you would like to add, please comment below. I would love to have a discussion about these.

How will this affect my teaching?

There is currently a school policy that one grade must be put in the grade book every week. I would not be allowed to have an empty grade book for a quarter, give a quarter test, and then put in two or three grades. If any student failed, then I would face major problems.

On the other hand, this mentality does lend itself nicely to Standards Based Grading. I am not an expert on Standards Based Grading, but I like the idea in theory. My fear is I don't know enough high school math teachers who use Standardized Based Grading, so I am cautious to use it. It is such a mind shift for students and parents. Maybe one day in the future I will look into this.

If you have any other suggestions on how these ideas could be implemented in American schools, please let me know.

Japanese Feedback on My Teaching

On Friday, February 21, 2014 I was invited by Dr. Doug Corey of Brigham Young University (when I was an undergraduate at BYU, I was one of Dr. Corey's research assistants) and Dr. Ninomiya of Saitama University and several other graduate and undergraduate students. Please see my blog post about that "research lesson." (coming soon!)

Then on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 Dr. Corey, Dr. Ninomiya, and a graduate assistant came to my school and observed three lessons. Two that were using the Flipped Mastery model, and a Geometry lesson about Translations and Reflections. After that 85 minute lesson we sat down and talked about the lesson. Since graduating from BYU about five years ago I have never received such though provoking feedback a single lesson.

Kadai (underlying deeper mathematical idea)

The first comment that Dr. Ninomiya made to me was describing mondai (pronounced moan-die) and kadai (pronounced ka-die). The mondai are the kind of problems or questions that are asked to the students. The kadai are the underlying deeper mathematical ideas. The goal of the lesson is not for students to solve the mondai, but to think and learn about the kadai. The kadai is sometimes a phased as "Let's think about ________". The kadai isn't specifically shared with students, but teachers will talk about the kadai as the goal of the lesson with the students. This is especially true at the end of the lesson, with a summary of what students have done by solving these problems.

Dr. Ninomiya didn't understand the kadai of my lesson... because there wasn't one. American curriculum is a collection of separate topics and problem sets, it doesn't lend itself easily to underlying big mathematical ideas. On the other hand, Japanese curriculum is more focused and builds upon a single mathematical idea over several lessons. As I progress as teacher through my career, I have been thinking of pulling away from the textbook (not from the Standards). I don't know how valuable remember types of problems are in the long term. This seems like a topic for another blog post. At the very least, I can work on framing the lesson within a kadai.

Notes and Summaries

Another topic that we discussed was students effectively using their notebook. In my class, the students watch a 10 minute video, take notes, and then write a summary. Dr. Ninomiya liked the idea that I had my students write a summary. He said that many teachers want their students to do lots of problems, but it is better that students are asked to summarize what they learned. It becomes a synthases exercise.

In my class, for about an hour, we do problems from the textbook. The students write down the answer on individual white boards. I do this because:

1. Students enjoy it. At the beginning, the students loved the idea of using white boards. Even after using them everyday for months, they still enjoy it. Maybe after using paper and pencil so much, they like the change.
2. Because students are writing with a large white board marker, it is very easy for me to scan the room and see what all of their answers are. I then know what mistakes have been made and the kind of thinking my students do.

Dr. Ninomiya commented about the fact that students don't have a record of what they did in class. Once they erase their white board, then it is gone. They can never go back to that problem and look at it. Notes have several purposes:

• Record of what they, the student, did: The textbook isn't always what they did, but their notebook is a record of what they did. (By the way, because textbooks are so small and thin, students are encouraged to bring, not only their textbook to class, but all of their math textbooks from junior high school or high school to class.)
• Notes remind students of what they did last class: Teachers ask students to review their notes from last class, so they can continue the ideas from last class and build onto the previous class period's discussion.
• Notes are used to study: Studying for semester exams are very important, and a student's notes are very useful when preparing for these exams. These notes are for their future self.

I don't think I am ready to give up white boards, because of the above reasons, but I think students could add things to their notes as we are doing problems on white boards.

Whys that I might implement these ideas in the future:

• Require more from the summary: Right now my student's summaries are very simple and are only two or three sentences long. I want to look into Cornell Notes and other AVID materials and see what they say about summaries.
• Use their summaries at the beginning of the lesson: Occasionally have them switch notebooks with someone around them and have them read each other summaries. Are there any important ideas that this person left out?
• Add to their notes during the lesson: My students usually don't write down the example problems that are in the videos in their notes. They just don't see value in them. (This is one reason why I been shortening the videos by removing about half of the example.) I want to change this perspective. I want my students to work out a problem or two, in their notes, show their work and write down explanations.
• Add and clarify their summaries at the end of the lesson: At the end of the lesson, the students need the teacher to remind them what they did that day. This also gives a teacher a chance to summarize the lesson and, by example, the importance of summarizing the lesson. By the way this is called the matome (pronounced mah-toe-mei) in Japanese education. The students will then add or clarify what they have written from the summary.