Recently, on a social media forum for teachers, an English Language Arts teacher asked a simple but important question about transitioning to standards-based grading:
How do you assess novels?
It’s a great question—and one I hear often. My response was this: rather than making the novel itself the focus of the assessment, the priority should be a specific ELA standard.
For example, let’s assume a high school ELA teacher wants to teach and assess the following CCSS standard:
“Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.” (RL.9-10.1)
After reading a novel, the teacher might use a prompt1 like this to assess the standard:
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 explores themes of censorship, conformity, technology’s influence, and the power of knowledge. After reading the novel, write a well-organized, text-based essay in which you:
Identify one central theme of the novel.
Analyze how Bradbury develops this theme through at least two of the following:
- Characters and their motivations
- Conflicts (internal or external)
- Setting and world-building
- Symbols or recurring images
- Plot events and turning points
Support your analysis with specific, relevant evidence from the text, explaining how each piece of evidence contributes to your interpretation.
This prompt could be one of several used on a summative assessment. However, it is essential that each prompt be purposefully aligned to one or more standards taught during the unit. While it may be tempting to assess conventions or vocabulary in every essay, doing so without explicitly teaching and formatively assessing those skills risks creating a “what is taught is what should be assessed” gap.
Tasks as vehicles for assessing standards
As my co-author, Dr. Chad Lang, reminded me, the novel is a vehicle to access the standards. In standards-based grading an appropriate task becomes the vehicle to assess the standards. Further examples might include:
- Physical Education: A middle school softball unit can serve as the vehicle to assess the SHAPE America indicator (1.8.7): Demonstrates striking a self-tossed or pitched ball with an implement to open space in a variety of practice tasks and small-sided games.
- Science: An upper elementary lab using baking soda, vinegar, water, salt, and sugar can serve as the vehicle to assess the NGSS standard (5-PS1-4): Conduct an investigation to determine whether the mixing of two or more substances results in new substances.
Too often, the classroom focus becomes the completion of a task rather than the mastery of a skill or concept. As Wiggins and McTighe emphasize in their Understanding by Design framework, educators should begin by asking:”What should students know, understand, and be able to do?”
When educators shift their focus from tasks to standards, assessments become clearer and more purposeful. Novels, labs, and units are valuable learning experiences, but they are not the goal in and of themselves. They are the vehicles that carry students toward mastering essential skills and concepts. By keeping the standards front and center, we ensure that what is taught is truly what is assessed—and ultimately, what students take with them beyond the classroom.
- Prompt generated with assistance from ChatGPT ↩︎