Badge System

The purpose of this post is to describe the badge system in Acton.

Why are badges needed? The idea of badges is to produce a clear set of achievements for the Eagles, which they need to reach to move on. Acton has no exams and no grades and each Eagle advances at his/her own pace. The goal of the badge system is to set concrete core skills standards for the Eagles. In addition to that, the badges relate to learning “how to be” (detailed explanation below).

We’ve created a badge folder for each Eagle, in which we’ve prepared the badges that are relevant to him/her. Here is an example of a badge system of an Eagle at level 2, which corresponds to the second grade:

As can be seen in the photo, there are four badges that relate to the core skills, which she must get:

1. For her to get the math badge, she has to complete level 2 in Khan Academy (which corresponds to the whole second grade curriculum). This means she can work with other platforms like Dreambox for example, but in order to get the badge, she needs to complete all the assignments in Khan.
2. In order to get the reading badge, she must complete level 2 in Lexia (which corresponds to the whole second grade curriculum.). In addition, she must read one “Badge Book” (books considered “meaningful” and selected by the guides or suggested by an Eagle and certified through a defined process).
3. In order to get the writing badge, she must complete two writer’s workshops successfully.
4. In order to get the spelling badge, she must complete the Click and Spell 50-100 words, and the No Red Ink level 2.

In order to complete the work on the badges, the Eagles have to document their progress in an orderly manner and they receive the badge after presenting all the relevant work products. For example, in order to receive the writing badge, they must present all the stepping stones of the writer’s workshop (not only the final product, but also drafts, reviews etc.).

In addition to the core skills badges, the Eagles can receive the “Learning how to be” badges.

In the picture, you can see which badges the Eagles can get and what they are required to do for each badge. Some of the badges I especially like in this category:

The focused learner badge:

• The Eagles should prove that in every day during an entire session, they have properly defined their daily goals (and just think of how this becomes a habit if an Eagle does this every day for six weeks in a row!)
• The Eagles have to face their excellence goal for a whole session (a goal they set during a conversation with their team leader, a challenge that will always address their most difficult learning problem, for example: working with Khan for 30 minutes, every day).
• The Eagles need to go through an entire session without anyone demanding Eagle Bucks from them for interrupting others.

Look how beautifully these parameters represent a focused learner in reality!

The learner of the Socratic conversation badge:

• The Eagles have to record their participation in 10 Socratic discussions (write down which questions they asked and what questions they answered)
• Finish a whole session, during which they were not asked to leave a Socratic discussion circle (due to interrupting the circle).
• Lead three Socratic discussion by themselves, including planning the entire discussion and then have a feedback conversation on the result, with a guide

Again, here it’s about three very complex tasks, which, if the Eagle successfully completes them, reflect the fact that she controls the fundamentals of the Socratic conversation. This challenge of “learning how to be” is so complicated to learn, and even more complicated to evaluate. The idea of the badge system is to give the Eagles an opportunity to evaluate themselves and their achievements on this subject. In my opinion, this is educational innovation at its best – very exciting.