Tag: Rubrics

Assessment, Learning

Your Rubric Is A Hot Mess

Sonya terBorg

Confession: I stole the title of this post from this post here by the same name written by Jennifer Gonzales.  It caught my eye (yes, I judged a book by it’s cover) but then lived up the promise of the title by offering some awesome advice.  You could do yourself a favor and quit reading right now and head over to read her post.  Seriously.

Still here? OK, here is the basic premise of the post:

1. Teachers love rubrics.

2. Teachers love filling rubrics with loads of writing.

3. Students are unpredictable and don’t like to fit inside tiny (rubric) boxes.

4. Teachers spend the majority of their rubric writing, writing things they don’t really want to see.

I found myself nodding along with everything in this post. I do like rubrics but I feel like it is a lot of semantics and wordsmithing of what essentially amounts to “good”, “better”, “best”.

Solution: The One Point Rubric.  Take a look at this:

Three columns, one point for each criteria.  Instead of writing four (or five) columns, write one column based on the expectations/curriculum standards which would represent achievement at a mastery level. From here, when grading students’ work, decide if they met, exceeded, or did not yet meet the required standard.

I really like this idea. As Jennifer points out, if you are including the students in on the creation of the rubric, it becomes an easier task as they only need come up with what mastery of the task looks like rather than three or four other descriptors of different levels of achievement.

What do you think?

Have you used this approach before?  I am currently working with grade level teams at my school in my role of curriculum coordinator, to plan and reflect on the teaching of writing. One of the things the teams do when/after we meet and agree on the areas of focus from our scope and sequence, is to create rubrics.  I would like to share this with them and see if any of them would be willing to try the one point rubric.  Stay tuned…

Innovation, Learning

Weekend Reading: Rubrics, Red Lanterns, and Redesigning Math

Sonya terBorg

4205_84162030142_3124147_n

Here is a round-up of three interesting articles to enjoy over coffee this weekend:

Rubrics

Grant Wiggins provides some really interesting insights into rubrics in his article How To Use A Rubric Without Stifling Creativity. Firstly, Wiggins reminds us what a rubric does:

It summarizes what a range of concrete works looks like as reflections of a complex performance goal.

He goes on to describe the process in which a rubric is best created and the importance of strong anchor papers or exemplars that illustrate the key points of a rubric. It really is a fascinating article. I have read it three or four times already and each time I am getting new things from it. We are in the process of examining the language arts scope and sequence at our school and will be thinking about the use of rubrics and exemplars in our classroom practice. This will be an article I will definitely be referring back to as I continue to synthesise my thinking on this topic.

Red Lanterns

My hero, Seth Godin, wrote recently on the Red Lantern and, with many schools beginning a new academic year, encourages us to think of employing a ‘red lantern’ philosophy in our classrooms, lecture halls, and institutions. He encourages us to “celebrate the Red Lantern winners” – essentially, applauding and encouraging those who finish last but with massive amounts of gusto, determination and drive.

He concludes his post with a challenge to educators everywhere:

How do we celebrate the Red Lantern winners instead?

What are you doing for those in your class who continually push themselves without giving up?

Redesigning Math

I am a huge advocate of the Khan Academy. What I want to work on in order to supplement my use of this phenomenal resource, is a map of PBL – Problem Based Learning – math tasks. I take my hat off to the incredible amount of work done by Geoff Krall in combing the internet and his own brain for ideas for such an approach in middle and high school math classes. His blog, Emergent Math, and the post on problem based curriculum maps is amazing and would take more than one weekend to peruse. His work goes down to a sixth grade level – an area he confesses needs the most work – so if you teach math at a younger level, like I do, you won’t find it easily transferrable but you will find it incredibly inspiring. If it leads me on a trail to PBL math maps for younger grades, you know I will share them!

Happy Weekend!