By the time we sit down to determine a grade, the gradebook is already full. Last week we looked at how to organize and make sense of what is in it to help us determine a grade. But the information we use reflects a decision that is made much earlier, one that shapes everything that follows: what counts for grading?

This week we will step back one stage before organizing our gradebooks to look at how we can consider what counts for grading in the first place.

Access the previous articles: Determining a Grade and Organizing Evidence of Learning​

What Counts for Grading in PE

There was a time earlier in my career when I thought I had to focus on every aspect of the PE curriculum equally, and so I taught, assessed, and graded them all equally. On top of that, I folded in learning behaviours, because that was what everyone around me was doing, and I knew no different.

If we talked about it in class, it became fair game for grading.

That included the one-off activities, guest speakers, field trips into the community, and more. My gradebook became a documentary of everything we did, organized into categories and scores.

But this did not last long. It was not sustainable, and more importantly, my teaching felt empty. I was cruising through units and lessons, trying to get to the next one because I had a plan to follow.

It was not until a student asked me why my PE classes were "so random" that I stopped to look at what I was doing. I had long talked about the importance of PE and what we were learning in it, but my approaches were sending a different message. I was so focused on teaching everything, and making it all feel important, that I forgot a key lesson:

If everything is important, then nothing is.

Part of my challenge was in how I was using the PE curriculum. Curriculums tend to be quite large with many learning standards. Most of the ones I have used, and seen in my work with other teachers, are too full to teach effectively. When we give each part equal attention, we spread ourselves thin, and students get a sporadic series of experiences that never go deep.

Prioritizing the Learning

So, I stopped trying to teach everything with the same degree of intention, and I started to prioritize what matters most. I built a list of prioritized learning standards (or curricular competencies, outcomes, and the like) that became the focus of my teaching, assessment, and grading. My aim was for all students to succeed in these by the end of the course, which meant they deserved more time, space, and attention than the rest.

This did not mean ignoring the rest. The standards that did not make the list still had a place, as supporting standards. We would touch on them, but they were there to help students reach the prioritized learning, not to compete with it. I did not assess them to the same degree, and if a student did not fully succeed with one, that was ok. My focus, and theirs, stayed on the learning that mattered most, the prioritized learning standards.

The shift went from teaching for coverage to teaching for depth.

To build that list, I looked at my curriculum and highlighted the standards that would help students throughout our PE class and outside of it, in other classes, in other areas of life, and so on. Those became my priorities, as their value carried on long after the unit was done.

Take one from my own curriculum: Apply methods of monitoring and adjusting exertion levels in physical activity. A student who learns to monitor and adjust their own exertion will use it again in later units, in their fitness journey in class, and on their own, long after PE is finished. That learning carries forward, which makes it a priority.

When we become clear on what we are prioritizing, we become clearer on what counts for grading.

Principles to Ground Grading

Last week we looked at how we organize and make sense of the information in our gradebooks and how this can shape the grade we determine. This helps ensure our professional judgment is based on what students demonstrated with their learning, and the principle that informs this approach is that grades are based on evidence of learning achievement.

But before we organize and make sense of that information, we first have to decide what counts for grading in the first place. Which brings us to the principle behind this week's focus:

For a grade to communicate learning achievement, it has to be built from the learning itself, the standards we prioritized and focused on in class.

Prioritize the learning clearly, and what the grade communicates becomes clearer and more accurate.

What About Learning Behaviours?

When it comes to grading in PE, few things stir up as much tension as what to do with behaviours. It surfaces a wide range of perspectives and reactions, and the goal here is not to settle all of that. It is to look at how this week's principle, grades communicate learning achievement, can lead to clearer grading, and then consider what we can do with behaviours.

So why keep behaviours separate from the grade?

The first reason is that they matter too much to blur. When effort, participation, and other behaviours get blended into a grade about learning, we can no longer see either one clearly. The grade becomes a mix that says something about the learning and something about behaviours, but it is unclear what is being communicated.

Pulling behaviours out lets us clarify what they are, support students with them, and communicate growth and achievement just as we do with their learning. They can be communicated alongside a learning grade, not within it.

The second reason is that behaviours are not the learning itself. They are how students show up and engage with their learning, rather than the learning achievement we are focusing on and grading. When we treat the two as one, the grade stops being an accurate communication of either.

Behaviours matter, and they deserve our attention. The shift is to keep them separate from learning within a grade and communicate them in their own way, rather than blending them together.

If you want to see what that can look like in practice, I wrote about it in an earlier newsletter.

The Takeaway

What counts for grading is decided long before we open the gradebook. When everything counts, the grade is pulled in too many directions to say much about any of it. When we prioritize the learning that matters most and keep behaviours separate, communicated in their own way, the grade becomes a clear and honest picture of where a student is in their learning.

To get clear on what learning to prioritize, you do not need to overhaul your current planning. A place to start is to look across your curriculum and consider which learning standards you revisit throughout your course. Then ask which standards would matter to a student beyond your PE class. Together, these should give you a starting list of prioritized learning standards to plan around, and a clearer sense of what counts for grading.

The hardest part of grading is not the grading itself. It is deciding what counts before you ever begin.

Coming Up Next Week

Over the past three weeks we have worked backwards through grading, from determining a grade, to organizing the evidence, to deciding what counts. Each step rested on a principle, and each principle has been quietly pointing at the same place: what grading is actually for.

Next week we reach the final step, the one informing all the others. Why do we grade at all in PE? We will bring together what this whole series has been building toward.

I will also share a resource I mentioned for working through which standards to prioritize, so you have a fuller way to decide what counts.

See you then.