1. Mastery Grading in Easy Grade Pro
Kenwood High School
Mastery Grading in Easy Grade Pro
Welcome to Mastery Grading in Easy Grade Pro. We’ve explored why mastery grading is so important but now we are left with the task of finding a way that is both easy and effective at keeping track of which standards our students have mastered.
Easy Grade Pro actually has several options that make this a little bit easier for us and give us a way to communicate student performance with the students and their parents in a meaningful way.

2. Mastery Grading Many standards tested on each assessment
Determine which standards students need to work on
Determine which standards are mastered and which need to be re-taught
First, let’s refresh on why mastery grading is so critical.
-Most assessments will actually determine how well the student understands SEVERAL different standards. This is not to say that a test will never assess only one standard, but frequently the larger, more meaningful assignments will assess many different skills at once.
-It’s important for us to use mastery grading so that our students know which standards they have mastered and which ones they should focus more of their attention on.
-It’s also important for teachers to know where their students are excelling and what standards and skills need to be re-taught, perhaps in a different way, and then reassessed, again possibly using a different method.

3. Communicating with the student
Only one grade to sum up all that a student knows?
What skills are holding a student from success?
-So how many grades really should be on the top of an assessment. Again, a simple vocab quiz…one grade is probably enough.
But if a student is given a political cartoon and asked to evaluate it then their grade is really based on their comprehension of the cartoon, their ability to communicate what it means and their ability to fit it in with its historical context.
Think of how many different standards are addressed in a typical lab or a unit test, or lengthy project, or essay or presentation.
-It’s critical that we track the students’ progress in these standards if we are to really use these grades as communication and make data driven instructional decisions on our lessons.

4. First
What standards do you want your kids to learn over the course of the quarter/semester?
Make a list of about 8-12
Are they diverse yet connected?
Are they aligned to your curriculum?
Do they meet departmental and school goals?
So, before we get in to EGP you need to do a few things.
-First, you need to decide what standards you want your kids to master by the end of the quarter and semester. This can be done as a department, as a group of teachers, by course, or however you and your colleagues see fit.
-This list should be roughly 8 to 12 to start with. If you have too many you run the risk of making WAY TOO MUCH work for yourself and inundating your parents and students with WAY TOO MUCH INFO. If you do too few then there really isn’t enough info there to help teachers and students determine where the greatest areas of growth are in students mastering the curriculum.
-The standards should be diverse yet connected. This means that if your curriculum and MSC/CCSS breaks up a single skill into multiple parts you may want to consider condensing those into one standard in your grade book, while at the same time making sure that all of your curricular objectives are covered by the group of standards.
-Obviously they need to be based on your curriculum. While we strive to insure that our students are conscientious and turn all of their work in neatly and on time, these are not standards required to say that they have mastered Environmental Science.
- Finally, make sure that they are meeting your department’s and school’s goals.

5. Next open Easy Grade Pro
When you open Easy Grade Pro you are taken to a screen that most of you are very familiar with. However, what you might not be as familiar with is the standards tab.
-Clicking this tab takes you to the standards section of the grade book.

6. First choose the rubric to use
Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, under the edit button on the top of the EGP screen you need to choose “Class Options” this is where you would typically go to set the school calendar for your grade book along with your categories and so forth.
Select the rubric tab. That will bring up the option for you to choose what scale you want your standards to be graded on. The one shown here is the standard one. Looking at this scale you can see that if you give a student a 1 on a standard in an assignment that is equivalent to an E and what you are saying is that the student has insufficient understanding of the standard. Whereas if you gave him or her a 7 the student is then approaching mastery.
You can obviously change the wording and scale as you see fit, though we found these scores and wordings to be a good place to start.

7. Next create your standards
Next comes creating your standards. Get out the paper where you wrote your standards down.
-Under Edit, then add, then standard you will find the window to add your standards.
-Clicking that will bring up this screen. First choose your standard’s label. It can be something as simple as “vocabulary” or “basic computations,” or something more complex as “deciphering algorithmic code in programming.” You really do want to try to keep this to as few words as possible for simplicity sake.
-This is your chance to really get into the meat and potatoes of exactly what this standard is. So for the standard labeled as “basic math computations” you might include an explanation along the lines of: “students will demonstrate mastery of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division using whole numbers, decimals and fractions in both positive and negative numbers.” First notice that this all fits under the one standard of basic math computations, but at the same time, most likely ties together several separate pieces of the MSC or CCSS in a meaningful and clear way. We’ll look at another example of what this might look like in a different academic area in a minute.
- Make sure that you are using the rubric you set up moments ago to grade students on the mastery of these standards.

8. Attaching standards to an assignment
Now to look at how to attach a standard to your assignments. You will add assignments as you always have in EGP. Only now, instead of just writing in the name, choosing point values, and the date you will also choose which standard or standards this assignment assesses. You do this from the drop down window labeled, conveniently enough, standards!
When choosing more than one standard for an assignment you can click on a standard, then open the drop down list and click another one (you will see a check mark next to the one you just clicked on) OR you can hold down the control button after you have opened the drop down menu and click each of the standards assessed.

9. Entering the grade and standards
Now comes entering the grades for the students.
Make sure you are in the standards tab
Next click on the tab that says assignment (we’ll get to what the student tab does in a minute)
-From here, it’s actually pretty much the way you’ve always done it. Notice that across the top you have the assignment you are entering grades for (in this case the 33rd assignment of the grade book titled “abc”) and then each of the standards that it addresses. NOT EVERY STANDARD IN YOUR GRADE BOOK will show up…only the ones you selected for this assessment.
- From here, you enter in the assignment grade and then for each standard the grade the student achieved based on the rubric you created earlier. So this student is getting a 5 on this first objective because he showed only moderate understanding of the standard and needs more work there. After you put in the grade the box will change to the description of the grade you gave on the rubric.
-- If you want to review other assignments you simply use the drop down menu to select different assignments
--This will tell you how the students did based on the assignment grade as well as the standards that comprised the assignment.

10. Looking at a graph of standards
You can also look at how the students are doing as a whole on a particular standard.
-- First, click on the little bar graph icon.
That will bring you to the following screen.
-Make sure you are on “standards grades”
-You will see your list of standards here. Select the one you want to review.
-Your results will be shown for each student here along with the averages for the class.
-Along the bottom is a bar graph letting you know where your kids are in terms of how well they are doing with this particular standard.

11. Looking at a student’s record
This brings us to looking at a specific student’s achievement on the different standards assessed.
-- first click on the tab that says student. You will notice that in the drop down right below this tab a students name comes up. You can scroll through and see each of your students here.
--Notice that on the left side of the screen the different standards are listed along with their descriptions and what the student’s average is on each standard.
--On the right hand side you see each of the quarter’s assignments listed with the grade the student earned as well as the grade of each standard that was assessed by that assignment.
--notice that there is nothing recorded for standard 4 which means no assignment has yet assessed student mastery of this standard. Looking at the standards is a good way to do a check on making sure that you are assessing all standards several times throughout the quarter. Obviously some standards may not be assessed immediately in every class and may only be reached towards the end of the quarter or semester.

12. Share this with students and parents
Sharing a student’s progress in class is still done using the same student progress report function.
--However, it is important that under the options menu you have checked the standards box to make sure that it will show up accordingly.
--On the report that is printed the student’s overall grade in the class is listed on top, and then below each standard is listed along with the student’s overall level of understanding of that mastery in grade form. It also shows each assignment that assessed that standard and how the student did on each standard
--Take a look at standard 2. The student has a fair understanding of the standard as denoted by his grade. Then, notice the student’s progress on that standard. He went from a B on the first assignment that assessed the standard to then getting A’s on the next two assignments assessing the standard and then for some reason dropped to a C on the most recent assessment on this standard. This would be a good time to discuss with the students why they dropped so dramatically and make sure that the student is not confused. This could also be because another level of rigor has been put in place on this standard and it is now being assessed in a more complex way that the student needs to work more on.
Obviously the first time this report is printed for the students it is important to teach them how to read it and what it means.

13. Questions or thoughts Email Brett Molin or swing by his office
This is a lot of information I know and can be a little intimidating or confusing. I encourage you to please swing by my office or shoot me an if you need help. You can also print out this PowerPoint and keep it next to you while creating and using your grade book. I have created a PDF version of this powerpoint with the script I used so you can move at your own pace.