Tests, Stickers, and Unicorns

I finally gave my kids a test as of this week, so it was time for them to see one of the many little secrets still stashed away for their descent into my madness: Animal Stickers.

For those of you already familiar with Jonathan's post regarding the subject, or with the my favorite from TMC14 you can probably skip ahead a bit as I'm going to be a bit more long-winded.

In the Summer of 2012, I made it a point to try and improve my AP Calculus AB classes, specifically by trying my hand at using Standards Based Grading.  I enlisted my friend/coworker Jonathan's help to bounce ideas around with, knowing that getting together on something usually results in the most ridiculous/brilliant ideas ever.  The conversation went something like this:

A: Yeah, this works.  But it's too normal.
J: You know what would be funny?
A: (Ears audibly perk)
J: Animal stickers
A: Good lord... With monkeys as the best?
J: And kitties!

And the mad scientists mathematicians went to work.

1) SBG and Friends!

          If you've ever wondered how funny it would be to hear a high school senior in AP Calculus talk about their grades as having received a "kitty" and two "froggy"s, I suggest that you try this out immediately.  It is very much worth the time and effort. (And, yes, there's always the question about a donkey being a 0)

Upon receiving the returned standards, the grades appear in the form of animal stickers.  Of course, the first hurdle here is that this turns pretty costly very quickly, which is why this alternative arose.

Taking those images, setting them into the appropriate Avery template for address labels, and using a paper cutter.  Works pretty well overall. That brings us to the second development, and inspiration for this post title.


2) The Unicorn Awards

Each of the six-weeks grading periods comes with a cumulative purely context-based exam (think AP Exam Lite) that they cannot retake.  It is also only worth about 10% of their grade. In spite of the low value, this test becomes somewhat of an event in my class for one particular reason: the highest scorer is deemed The Unicorn.  As such, we have the Unicorn Award ceremony.

This usually takes up the majority of the class period post-exam, but it's TOTALLY worth it. We essentially hold an awards ceremony, complete with an official title (ex. "The first tri-annual Unicorn Awards", though I keep up with it every year), sponsors (I set up a slide show with .gif's of stupid meme-ish stuff and products like "Taylor Swift Dandruff Shampoo", which offers to help you "Shake it off"), and, in some cases, actual cue cards and camera operators (poster board with lines for "Mr. M" and "Ugly Kid" as well as a Skype to my laptop from my iPad).  Then we have our three contestants, who have not received their tests yet and don't know their scores, who are asked very pageant-like questions ("If you could be....any person...in the world...what...would you tell their family when they found out that you weren't them?").  

I know. Ridiculous.  Welcome to the madhouse.

Then comes the crowning...

Since the test is such a small percentage anyway, I also do a bit of curving based on the Unicorn, or as I call it, "The Unicorn's Blessing." If there's a tie for top score, MOAR BLESSING.  The Unicorn must wear the headband for the entire class (if there's a tie, I also have a Batman mask because it's the best thing after a Unicorn) and receives a tiny plastic unicorn as a keepsake.

I also make sure that everyone can only be the Unicorn once.  Reason #1: It keeps the same kid from dominating all the time.  Reason #2: I have enough pictures to do this...

The blacked out bars are all of their names.  This goes on a t-shirt that they were surprised with after I secretly got their shirt sizes.



So, why do I do all of this? First and foremost, because it's silly and fun and Calculus is so stuffy in so many places.  So I'm not going to say that I did this with some grand teacher insight in mind, because I didn't.  As I said, Jonathan and I were just looking for a really good laugh.

I'll tell you what came as a result.  The animal stickers took a lot of their heads off of the numerical values.  They started talking about and reacting to the animals more so than what it did to their average.  A kid that everyone told me was a grade-obsessed mess was now going "Huh, a kitty! I can work with that."  (That's verbatim)   The unicorn was an odd point of pride for not just the kid who got it but for the period.  I overheard some kids one-upping each other on how many unicorns their class period had.  Also, by the end, it gave a chance to some of the okay-er performing kids to feel like they were the best.

I would be careful about trying to do something like this, though.  It's very easy to have your alternative scoring system turn into something non-meaningful, thus negating the point of SBG.

So Unicorns will continue.  Animal stickers will continue.    90's Rap/Hiphop Desk cards with playlist randomization and first-person biographies will continue.  Because why the hell not.