Competency-Based Grading Made Easier with the MasteryBook by Jordana Benone, High School Teacher and MasteryBook User

Teacher confession: The end of the school year has always been tough for me. While there is always lots of celebration and relief that the end has come, the realities when facing my gradebook make me question every move I made. Of course, this was worse when I graded on points and averages, but even with the change to standards-based and then competency-based grading, I still had my struggles.

Student Reflections: MasteryBook

In advance of their grading conferences at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, Portal students were asked to reflect on a number of questions about their learning. One of the questions was, “How did your understanding of your learning change once we started to use MasteryBook? What did you do differently once you had MasteryBook as a tool?”

Starr Sackstein on the Second Edition of her book Hacking Assessment

Starr Sackstein on her New BookHacking Assessment Second Edition Listen to Mastery Portfolio’s COO, Starr Sackstein, on the Equity & Access Pre-K 12 Podcast as she discusses her new book Hacking Assessment Volume 2, coming this July!     In this episode, Larry Jacobs and Starr not only discuss her new book but dive into […]

Deepen Reflection, Deepen Learning

Teachers can learn a lot from asking students to reflect and self-assess against the standards and we do the students and ourselves a disservice by not making it an expectation. Perhaps writing a reflection like this isn’t appropriate for every class, maybe a video or voice recording would be better.

A Better Way to Report Learning

What is the function of a student report card? What does it seek to communicate? How effectively do most student report cards share information about individual student achievement? What if we rebranded our communication loop? What would that look like?

Giving Effective Feedback

In this episode, Isaac and Starr Sackstein discuss giving effective feedback and ways teachers can manage giving feedback and holding students accountable in order to be efficient in maintaining the strategies you share with kids. Effective feedback is how we increase learning for all kids. The better we do it, the better they learn. How […]

Office Hours: 30 minutes with Constance Borro

“Having specific, real-time data doesn’t seem possible in the status quo, but it is possible, and that data is transformative. “ Constance Borro, CEO of Mastery Portfolio Constance Borro, CEO of Mastery Portfolio, sat down with R.E.A.L Discussion to talk about Mastery Portoflio’s beginning, its strengths, and our ultimate goal of revolutionizing grading and assessment practices […]