By the time they come to me in the sixth grade, my students have internalized “good grades” as the end goal for their schoolwork. In my journey to transition to a gradeless math class, I needed to inspire an attitude shift in my students, replacing grades with a sense of mastery. I believe a mastery-based approach must prioritize the learner and invite them to be an equal players in curriculum and assessment. But I wondered: were my eleven and twelve-year-old students ready for this responsibility? I wanted my students to be more self-aware, but I also needed a way to respond to their growing self-awareness, to differentiate for my students as they progressed differently.

Stepping back, I saw that a gradeless classroom would need a comprehensive structural change. The kind of change that cannot happen immediately but, instead, might take the full year to instill. 

This led me to self-paced learning, which presents students with the whole of the content to be taught and gives them the power to move through the curriculum at their own pace. I was initially inspired by Ben Siegel, a tenth-grade math teacher, using a self-paced gameboard to break math units into achievable standards that are clear to students. 

Building Executive Functioning

To adapt this method for a younger, middle school audience, I needed to “level-up” their executive functions. “Executive functions” is an umbrella term for the 8 cognitive processes we rely on to independently manage our lives, and include such key skills as self-monitoring, flexible thinking, and organization. Most of my students have relied on their teachers to direct and redirect them for their entire elementary school career. In the self-paced learning style, students make independent decisions and must regulate themselves to ensure they are not moving too fast (and missing content) or too slow (and falling far behind). A gradeless classroom asks students to transform their self-monitoring functions while a self-paced classroom requires them to plan, prioritize, and organize more independently. Coaching students to develop and improve their executive functioning was key to both approaches.

To scaffold this, I created the WARP learning routine.

When structuring the self-paced curriculum, I broke it into four key steps: (1) “Work your way,” meaning students must initiate the task of learning a new concept, either by watching a video and taking notes or working with the teacher; (2) “Assess your learning,” meaning students must self-monitor the work they have done to assess if they’ve mastered the new skill; (3) “Reflect on your growth,” where students must think flexibly with an emotionally controlled response to determine if their abilities with the new skill are as strong as they should be; and (4) “Plan your next steps,” wherein students must plan and prioritize what work to move onto next and how best to accomplish it. These four steps repeat with each new math skill. 

The Unit Plan

The foundation of self-paced learning is having the curriculum at the hands of the students. Using Google Classroom and a hyperlinked Google Doc, I organized each concept as a level, then I broke down each concept into learning stages. They must complete all four stages to move on to the next skill level.

First, the instruction stage. Students watch a video lesson on YouTube, Edpuzzle, and/or Nearpod. This ‘cloned teacher’ effect means that students can access the learning at their speed. Students must determine if they understand the video and make a plan based on that self-reflection: move onto the practice, watch the video again, or ask the teacher/a peer for help.

Next, the practice stage. Students would apply their new knowledge to their math work. When the practice is complete and self-corrected, they must complete the check-in stage. The check-in scaffolds my students' still-growing executive functions. Students who self-monitor incorrectly rely on a self-grading mini-quiz Google form to see if they understood the content. They receive a score out of 5 and determine if their score reflects an ability to move forward or a need for further practice. Of course, a self-grading quiz is NOT in fact a gradeless setup. But it is a temporary step in developing that key self-monitoring skill, which is incredibly important for a shift away from grades. As the year progresses, the check-in quizzes are replaced with problem-solving scenarios and puzzles.

The final stage is reflection. I used Flipgrid recordings, emoji scales, and journal prompts to encourage my students to pause and reflect on how well they understood the new skill before moving onto the next one. Having the unit plan decreased student reliance on formal teacher assessment, and giving increased independence for the majority of students opened up opportunities throughout the unit for much more authentic feedback sessions for students who need it, usually sought out by the students themselves. 

The Mastery Tracker

Of course, my young students did need additional structures to stay organized, especially early on in the school year. The mastery tracker Google Doc was how I managed this. Its role was to scaffold their self-monitoring and organization as well as provide a space for their reflections to live. In early units, it functioned as a place for students to record their check-in scores, embedding an additional pause for reflection that directed their attention to their learning growth. I also used it as a space of encouragement for growth and effort, where students could gain digital stickers (or, “health hearts”) for showing executive function growth. During student conferences, I could use the Mastery Tracker as a conversation starter about their areas of growth. 

Parents as Partners

By having both documents online, parents can log in and check-in. Seeing the learning goals clearly laid out shifts the conversation away from grades and eliminates the mystery of waiting until a final assessment to answer ‘how is my child doing?’ Formal grading is often unclear to parents, who then compare their child’s results to others to know if they are on track. With self-pacing, the performance of other students is irrelevant because parents can compare to the learning objectives instead. Seeing the data and expectations at each level increases parent understanding and sets them up as better partners to support their child (and their child’s teacher!).

It also increases flexibility. Some parents like homework while others do not. Those who want it can simply log their child in to complete another level or they can review prior work. Children can be sick, absent, or enrolled in distance learning, but the parents, teacher, and the student will always know what’s going on. 

Gamification

For most learners, the shift to self-paced learning is a freeing, stress-reducing experience almost immediately, but for others, it was a frustration. Needing to reflect, plan, and self-monitor was hard for many of them. And yet, when I think of middle schoolers, I think of all the video games they love to spend their spare time playing. Those games are NOT easy, and require plenty of executive functioning skills! And they usually don’t involve grades to motivate kids to keep playing.

Following Ben Siegel’s Candyland, I designed each of my units after popular video games to hook student interest. I added little details from the games throughout, like switching the digital sticker images or the colors. However, these touches are not what keep kids playing hard games.

According to Marczewski’s RAMP model, there are four gamer types and each type is motivated in different ways: (1) Socializer, (2) Free Spirit, (3) Achiever, and (4) Philanthropist. If I could integrate game elements that would attract all four types, I would motivate my students towards mastery instead of grades. For the socializer, I added an optional communal gameboard, so students could have a friendly competition to reach the next level first.

During the 2020-21 year, due to COVID-initiated distance learning, I traded the wall-based game board for a digital Padlet. Regardless of the type of board, the important change for the achiever was the conceptualizing of each skill as a “level” in the game that they needed to beat. Now they saw the check-in quizzes, problems, and puzzles as challenges to “beat” instead of grades to achieve.

The Free Spirit type was usually satisfied by the autonomy of self-pacing in the first place, but also later in the year, when I added creative projects to the units such as the Mathcraft Village project. Similarly, the Philanthropist was satisfied by having the whole unit at their fingertips, but to further engage them I added sidequests that allowed them to explore the math concepts as they relate to the real world. A more organic opportunity arose for Philanthropist types as the students increasingly saw themselves as masters of the learning, offering to help out their peers on the levels they’d already beat. 

With these changes, not only were students more invested in their learning, but they were using the language of badges, challenges, and status to describe their learning mastery. I realized that students do have a lot of the executive function skills I was asking of them, I just needed to use the right language to get them to communicate it with me. 

Final Assessment

Traditionally, my school was one that supports the use of tests to “objectively” assess student math ability. While undertaking a large structural change to my classroom routine and curriculum, I wasn’t sure if I could truly be rid of this last vestige of traditional grading. Instead, I slowly redefined the final assessment for my class over several years. First, I made testing more flexible to encourage student mastery. As part of the self-paced structure, students had the right to schedule, within reason, the date of their final test once they had completed all the levels of “game.” If they schedule the test before the unit deadline, they could go over their test results and choose to do a retest. Second, I replaced the grade with a mastery chart, breaking the test components into the same skills as written in the unit plan with a mastery scale next to each. After completing the test, students self-evaluated their performance. Then, I simply checked the box for each skill to show the students’ current mastery level. This led to many positive conversations of students seeking feedback on why their work displays one level instead of another and what they could do to improve it. This, paired with the ability to retake the test, supported their motivation towards mastery. 

My third experiment included a complete replacement of the test with final projects based on the skills of the unit, such as a set of journal prompts, a build-your-own amusement-park Google Slides project, or a problem-solving scenario where students had to communicate how the model solution was correct or incorrect. Towards the end of the school year, I felt more comfortable switching to non-traditional assessment because I was having more productive feedback moments with students throughout the unit and felt I had stronger understandings of their mastery levels without the use of formal testing. 

Conclusion

Transitioning to a gradeless classroom must include an attitude shift to mastery-based learning. Once I adjusted to the self-paced structure, my focus organically shifted to mastery. Within this structure, you can easily differentiate by adjusting goals for individual students within their unit plan or mastery tracker. As a teacher, I was no longer thinking about how to prepare my students for a test, but rather how to help them achieve mastery of each new skill. Truly, a gradeless classroom does not require the use of a self-paced learning structure. Nor does a self-paced learning structure rely upon the use of gamification. However, this pedagogical shift created a common language between me and my students without having to rely on grades.

Lauren Thurber is a K-6 teacher and pedagogical coach from Montreal, Quebec. She has taught teachers-in-training from McGill University’s Department of Integrated Studies, where she has also conducted research on teacher identity and student-centred assessment. You can follow her on Twitter @LThurberEDU.