But one of the greatest characteristics of standards-based grading is that it refocuses everything about a classroom back on what's important--the focus is on learning, not racking up points so a certain letter can be next to students' names on a piece of paper they get every so often. And it doesn't just refocus the students; it has refocused my instruction back on student learning in ways that my first-year-teacher self couldn't even have imagined.
Really, it just makes sense: if you want your students to focus on their learning (what they don't know, do know, and how can they know what they don't know), it's the teacher's job to design learning experiences and activities that help students focus on learning.
In a standards-based classroom, you can't have students do an activity:
--because you need something for the students to do that day so they will leave you alone.
--because it's in the "Activities" section of the huge resources binder that came with the textbook.
--that covers some of your objectives, but it covers others that are beyond the scope of your course, but that's OK because more information is better. (If you have students that can't identify what's important information and what's not, this is only doing more harm than good.)
As you can tell, I get a little feisty when learning isn't a priority in a classroom.
Here's the bottom line: in a standards-based classroom, activities must be planned and designed so that they not only guide students towards content mastery, but also mastery and control over their own learning. In other words, the very nature of the learning experience must teach them how to learn, not just what to learn.
So, after many a trial (by fire) and error, I have finally embraced a constructivist view of planning and instruction. I now design activities where students construct their own meaning based on previous experiences and knowledge, but are also developing learning skills in the process. In my classroom, I emphasize that learning takes place in three ways: writing, drawing, and talking, so all activities incorporate one or more of those components. I also include some student self-assessment and peer evaluation, so students develop the "critical eye" of metacognition that is sorely needed for them to realize what they truly understand and what they don't.
(Edited to add: Here is an example of a sheet I use to have students self-assess their knowledge. They will fill this sheet out about 4-5 times during the unit to see how their knowledge has increased. What's important about the use of this sheet is this: you have to teach students what a 1-4 looks like so they can accurately assess their knowledge. You can do this using exemplars of each early in the year--and often.)
Am I perfect at this? Not by a long shot. Am I on my way? I think so. If you would like to see a sample of a learning plan I have developed for my Cell Reproduction Unit, please click here. If you have any comments or suggestions, please leave them below. But before clicking on that link, just be forewarned that my learning about how to improve student learning using constructivism is still very much under construction.