What SBL Is
SBL is Standards-Based Learning. Every state has set standards for subjects, usually according to grade level. They're what we expect students to be able to do by the end of that grade level, and they're
supposed to be the basis of all instruction and assessment, to ensure that all students have access to a consistent, high-quality, grade-level-appropriate education. Sometimes, though, the focus of instruction gets lost in the ever-increasing pile of paperwork, red tape, new mandates/methods/programs/tech, student issues, and general melange of hoops every teacher has to jump through every day just to get through a work day.
In a school that uses standards-based approaches to educating students, learning standards—i.e., concise, written descriptions of what students are expected to know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education—determine the goals of a lesson or course, and teachers then determine how and what to teach students so they achieve the learning expectations described in the standards (http://edglossary.org/standards-based/).
For my first few years of teaching, I knew there were standards, and I looked at them sometimes, but they didn't shape my instruction. I was one of those teachers who thought, "I have a textbook! I'm following the textbook, so I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do." I was guilty as anyone when it came to assuming that a textbook will "cover" everything I was supposed to "cover." I use quotes here, because I'm not here to "cover" information; I'm here to teach kids skills. There's a difference. And textbooks are really great at "covering" information, but they are typically not conducive to teaching skills. Even textbooks that have been approved by a state school board, the local school board, and that look great to the classroom teacher are not necessarily based on the grade-level standards that we're supposed to be teaching. Textbooks often don't address standards in a progression that makes sense to students, and they certainly cannot adapt to students' needs. There are good textbooks out there, but relying on a textbook as the sole source of curriculum is foolhardy and a complete disservice to our students.
Instead, the teacher should decide which standards to address, in what order, and to what degree. The teacher may need additional materials, or additional resources. She may abandon the textbook altogether!
This takes time. It takes effort. It takes planning. It pays off.
How I Started SBL
I attended a wonderful conference for foreign language teachers in my state (https://wvflta.wordpress.com/) in 2014. It was my fifth year teaching and my first time ever attending a conference specific to my subject area--I wish I had gone much, much sooner. I met all kinds of language teachers who knew WAY more than I did, and they all talked about communication and proficiency. I was way out of my league. I had been taught Spanish through some very traditional methods that most people my age and older are familiar with: here's a verb, here's how you conjugate it, now go conjugate this verb until you puke.
But that's not how people acquire a new language. That's ultimately not how I acquired Spanish. I acquired Spanish by living in Spanish-speaking countries. Sure, I could tell you the pluperfect subjunctive form of any verb you gave me, but I could barely tell a doctor that I had a sinus infection, which suddenly seemed like a much more useful skill than obscure verb conjugation. I realized that I needed to change what I was doing if I wanted my students to be able to actually use the language they were learning.
Change was (and still is) difficult, though, as I had only ever had traditional instruction as my example. I read articles, I watched YouTube videos, I reviewed my notes from the conference, and I slowly started trying new things. I made a professional Twitter account (@ogmsespanol) and began networking with other language teachers with similar instructional goals. I started using more Spanish in my instruction, I started giving control of the class to my students, I got rid of the textbook, and I stopped giving homework. And just
this semester, two and a half years after I first saw information about SBL in a language classroom, I went full SBL myself. I'm still figuring it out, and I'm still making mistakes, and I probably always will, but I'm learning from them all the time.
How ANYONE Can Do SBL
I've posted previously about how any teacher in any subject area can implement standards-based learning. That post is here:
How Anyone Can Do SBL
For Language Teachers: How I Do SBL in a Language Class
First, a disclaimer: I do not know all about this. I am not an expert. I have a lot of theoretical background including an MA in Applied Linguistics, but I was taught to teach using the Grammar Translation method, and so in communicative practice I am a total novice. I'm learning as I go, and I am grateful for all suggestions that come my way. Please do not hesitate to add your own experience and correct my mistakes.
I use the
ACTFL Can Do Statements to design my instruction, practice, and assessment. Linguafolio is an assessment tool that uses the ACTFL Can Do Statements to help students self-assess their language proficiency level. My state provides
Linguafolio in an online format, but if you don't have access to the online version, you can use the paper format to have your students self-assess before you begin a language course.
I teach a nine-week exploratory course to grades 5 and 6. The class meets every day for 45 minutes. I have not yet made these courses completely SBL, but I'm working on it one piece at a time. By the end of the nine weeks, my goal is for students to be at the Novice Mid proficiency level. This may be a little ambitious, but I believe with focused materials, instruction, and practice that this is possible for all students.
I also teach Spanish I to grades seven and eight. This course is the spring semester of the 7th grade year and the fall semester of the 8th grade year. This is the course that I have made entirely SBL, starting at the beginning of the course in January 2017.
Our goal for the first quarter is for all students to demonstrate Novice Mid proficiency in all five language skills: presentational speaking, presentational writing, interpretive reading, interpretive listening, and interpersonal communication. In the first week of class, I gave all students their own copy of the ACTFL Can Do statements, and we read the Novice Low standards together out loud, then the Novice Mid. I talked about what it means to be proficient at a particular level, and what I envisioned us doing to get there. After familiarizing themselves with the standards, students spent a class period self-assessing their language proficiency using Linguafolio to establish a baseline. It's important that students understand the language of the standards, as I've had students in the past use Linguafolio and severely overestimate their abilities because they did not fully understand what the standard required. Now, I require students to write down a specific time/activity when they used the skill in the standard, and I find that students' self-assessment is much more accurate.
Throughout the course, students can informally self-assess as they need to in order to check their own progress. I strongly encourage this, and from time to time we informally self-assess as a class to see where we need to go next (i.e., what instruction/activities I should prepare for them or guide them in to). When we begin a new set of standards, I have students help me brainstorm activities that will help them achieve the standard, and once we've selected an activity together, I sit down with the class and we create our own vocabulary/grammar needs list. Over the course of the next few days, I offer a mini-lesson for direct instruction, then have students practice the activity they selected.
Assessment happens after a few weeks, when students have had the chance to read the standard, get instruction, practice the skill, and prep for assessment. Assessments are as authentic as possible, and we only assess one language skill at a time. This allows me to offer specific, written, actionable feedback to each student on each of their five skills. I use the ten-point grade scale below. My goal is to be as objective as possible, while providing students with specific steps for what to do next. The lowest possible score is a 6, or a 60%, which is a whole topic unto itself - essentially, if a student totally misses an assignment, they only have to dig themselves out of a 60%, rather than a 0%. It's much fairer than the traditional 0-100% scale. I post this scale all over the classroom and in the hallway, and students will include a copy of it in the interactive notebooks we're starting in the coming weeks.
Grades in Spanish Class
And how to move
forward
10 I
meet or exceed the standard!
I’m ready to move on to the next
level in this skill! I should look at my standards packet to
see where to go
next.
9 I
almost meet the standard.
I’m really, really close! I just
need to make an extra push and I’ll be there!
8 I’m
struggling with this standard.
I need to ask Srta. Elliott to meet
with me during class or homebase to explain it again and practice. I may need to practice on my own at home with
materials from Srta. Elliott, which she is happy to offer me.
7 I
can’t do this standard yet at all.
This is so frustrating! I need
extra help from Srta. Elliott outside of class, and I need to practice on my
own with the materials I ask her for.
6
This assignment/assessment
is missing.
I didn’t turn this in and I need to
get it in NOW!
Deadlines are set by students, and they are flexible (within reason). Once students know what is expected of them, I ask them to establish a timeline and set their deadline together. If a student needs an extra day or two, they make arrangements with me to have their own deadline. If a student is done early and wants to turn in their work early, they can, and then I direct them to the next standard/activity/proficiency level. This helps personalize learning, keeps students moving on the trajectory they've set, and helps students develop those metacognitive/executive functions that we all want them to have but often have trouble teaching them.
Positive Payouts with SBL
I was confident that going full SBL would have positive results, but I was not prepared for how quickly I would see them. My students spent a few weeks adjusting and realizing that they were expected to actually communicate in Spanish, not simply memorize words and regurgitate them on a worksheet. They still sometimes forget that their purpose in class is to work toward the standard rather than a percentage grade (there's more about our difficulties and challenges below).
In nine weeks (one quarter), my 7th grade students have made incredible progress in the language and in their self-agency. The only grades are assessments of their five language skills, and they have come to realize that while an activity may not be graded, doing it will help them do well on the assessment. Most students have taken work home to take more time on it. Several students have asked for ways to practice on their own (and their parents have too!). The students know their standards, and since I've been sending out a family newsletter and uploaded our standards document to our online grading system, their families know them, too. I've had several positive interactions with families about our new learning style, including one mom who
thanked me for posting our standards!
Now that students know the standards and how they're being evaluated, classroom engagement is at an all-time high. I don't have to threaten homework or extended assignments; all I have to do is remind students that this is one of many baby steps that will get them to their evaluation. One small, reasonable, quiet reminder, and the entire class is back on track. Yes, there are occasional days that are chaos. This is middle school, after all. But there is no constant struggle, no threatening, no negotiating, no seating chart--simply tune in and understand, or expect to struggle. No one likes to struggle.
Toward the end of the grading period, I offer students the opportunity to make appointments to re-evaluate one or more language skills during our homeroom period. I will not hunt them down; they must make the appointment themselves and remember to show up. They must use the feedback I have given them, re-read the standard, and practice before they can re-evaluate--it's a lot of work. Out of 36 7th grade students, 15 made and kept appointments to re-evaluate at least one skill. When was the last time 41% of a class of 7th graders showed that kind of self-agency in their education? I've never seen it.
There is still some misunderstanding, of course--SBL isn't a magic solution. But in nine weeks, my Spanish I students are able to talk about themselves, their daily activities, their likes and dislikes, describe others and their likes and dislikes, and most of them chose to talk about their families, so they know how to describe their family members, too. They've started a unit on story telling in which they use common verbs to talk about pictures, so they've started using simple sentences and they can recognize questions and ask/answer simple questions about what they see. This is a big deal. At this same point in the semester using the textbook, my students in the past were only able to tell their likes/dislikes and describe themselves. It's not because this group is smarter than past classes (they are incredible, wonderful kids), but it's because I made changes that have a huge, positive impact on the way my students learn.
Current Issues with SBL
It all sounds idyllic, but there are issues, too. Students are used to more traditional methods of "doing school," and this style of SBL feels very weird and uncomfortable at first. It was difficult getting students to understand that there would be no homework, no weekly assignments, no participation points, but that their job was to be mentally present to make connections and absorb everything they can.
An issue that still surfaces is students' obsession with perfect grammar. They can't seem to understand that I don't expect perfection; in fact, I expect certain patterns of mistakes. I had a student re-evaluate her writing standard on a poster, and rather than add the information I told her she was missing, she spent her entire time fixing grammar that didn't even keep her from communicating her point! We talked, she seemed to understand, and we're moving forward. This is a habit we must break, though, as there can be no such thing as perfection, especially not when learning a second language. Learning grammar is not the same as learning to communicate.
Another issue that comes up frequently is "this isn't how we've done this in the past." No, this isn't how school has been done for years; it's better. It's focused, it's consistent, and it adapts to every student's individual needs while teaching them responsibility and instilling ownership of their education. Past practice worked for some students, but not for all students. It's our responsibility and privilege to serve
every student in our classroom, and standards-based learning is the best approach I've seen yet to reach every single child.
All of this, by the way, has been a lot of work behind the scenes. When my students walk in, they think they're playing games or chatting with their friends in Spanish for 45 minutes, but what's really happening is that I've spent days crafting activities that are just right for their current language level, while slowly pushing them to do more in small increments. This has to be just the right balance of familiar language with new challenges; too much familiar language becomes boring, while too many new challenges feels impossible and they balk. Setting up my parent newsletter, grading system, evaluation and re-evaluation policy, and keeping appointments with students is a lot of work. Creating materials, finding authentic sources, and keeping my head above water while using best practices is a lot of work. I go home every day with a headache. But look at the payouts in the section above! I've already seen so many incredible results of all of these changes that I know, after only nine weeks, I can't go back to what I did before. I just can't.
