- Apr 2024
-
-
Good thinkers, in contrast, know that they also have to anticipate the other side of an argument and be prepared to explain why it doesn't undermine the claim they are making. When I included that criterion in the rubric for the persuasive essay, the students who used the rubric tended to consider the reasons against their claim. Students without the rubric did not consider the reasons against their claim. Thinking-centered rubrics seemed to help students think more deeply.
Confirm: Rubrics do help students think deeply about the topic AND also about their own work.
-
This is especially meaningful because I spent fewer than 30 minutes with each student, and the task did not emphasize memorizing facts.
Challenge: I wonder how this would be affected by time constraints? I taught in an 8th grade ELA class that had 50 minute periods. I know in high school and some middle schools, block scheduling gives them 1 hr and 20 minute blocks. Would having more time to study and analyze information increase test performance?
-
We often expect students to just know what makes a good essay, a good drawing, or a good science project, so we don't articulate our standards for them. If that child's teacher supplied written expectations—maybe in the form of a rubric—she would have known what counts, and she would have been able to do better work. That little girl needed help figuring out what the grades "count on."
Connect: Yes! This was a big revelation for me. I had created a writing assignment for my 8th grade ELA class, created worksheets, a vocabulary page, a graphic organizer to assist them with completing the assignment, and some students still were not 100% clear on expectations and directions. I learned that the more specific and simple your can break down your expectations and instructions, the better off you'll be in the long run.
-
Instructional rubrics make teachers' expectations very clear.
Connect: From my experience planning lessons for our DTAR fieldwork, I found that even though the instructions and directions for an assignment were clear to me, sometimes the students may struggle with interpreting the expectations and directions or have questions you may not have thought of
-
I describe four levels of quality but do not give them labels. In my experience, satisfactory labels are hard to come by, and it is obvious at a glance that a 4 is what everyone should try to achieve and a 1 is something to avoid.
Connect: I like this approach of using numbers versus labels like "satisfactory" because it makes understanding the rubric much more tangible for the student in terms of points value and it removes the stigma of labelling something "poor" or "unsatisfactory" because a student can try their best but not meet the mark for one reason or another.
-
Rubrics make assessing student work quick and efficient, and they help teachers justify to parents and others the grades that they assign to students.
Confirm: I absolutely agree with this. It makes explaining your rationale for scores much more efficient by providing a guideline that easy to follow.
-
Students are able to see their own work with new eyes, to identify what they have and haven't included in their writing.
Confirm: I often cross-reference my work with a rubric. As a teacher, this would be something I would emphasize to my students.
-
Most rubrics have two features in common: a list of "what counts" in a project or assignment, and gradations of quality for each criterion.
Change: Yes, and I would also add that most rubrics have a description of the quality of scoring, may provide an example or specific details.
-
Instructional rubrics help teachers teach as well as evaluate student work.
Connect: I never knew rubrics can be a teaching tool as well as an evaluation tool.
-
-
www.cultofpedagogy.com www.cultofpedagogy.com
-
If a student has fallen short in many areas, completing that left-hand column will take more time than simply highlighting a pre-written analytic rubric.
Confirm: Single-point rubrics will require a lot of writing and reflection on the part of the teacher in order to help students understand where they can improve or what did they do write. Also, it will require more writing because if the descriptions arent detailed and thorough enough, it will leave room for interpretation and vagueness, which will greatly impact how students score on the rubric.
-
“Students may surprise us if we leave quality open-ended.”
Challenge: I dont know for certain if leaving quality open-ended would inspire students to excel beyond the satisfactory target. Sometimes a student needs motivation or guidance to reach beyond the bare minimum.
-
Just like with the analytic rubric, if a target was simply met, you can just highlight the appropriate phrase in the center column.
Challenge: How can a single-point rubric inspire someone to achieve an advanced or higher level of scoring? It focuses on achieving the bare minimum.
-
A single-point rubric is a lot like an analytic rubric, because it breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria.
Connect: I cannot remember when I ever came across a single-point rubric before.
-
Analytic rubrics have two significant disadvantages, however: (1) Creating them takes a lot of time. Writing up descriptors of satisfactory work — completing the “3” column in this rubric, for example — is enough of a challenge on its own. But to have to define all the ways the work could go wrong, and all the ways it could exceed expectations, is a big, big task. And once all that work is done, (2) students won’t necessarily read the whole thing. Facing a 36-cell table crammed with 8-point font is enough to send most students straight into a nap. And that means they won’t clearly understand what’s expected of them.
Challenge: Two points here: 1) Save time creating rubrics by using AI tools like MagicBus. Be sure to review them for accuracy and cohesiveness. 2) Stick to 3-5 of the most important categories for your rubric. Yes, trying to read a 36-cell table with 8-point font is exhausting and will make your eyes glaze over. Combine categories if necessary or stick with the most essential points.
-
This is where we see the main advantage of the analytic rubric: It gives students a clearer picture of why they got the score they got. It is also good for the teacher, because it gives her the ability to justify a score on paper, without having to explain everything in a later conversation.
Confirm: I absolutely find analytical rubrics much easier with providing feedback for students.
-
To make feedback even more targeted, you could also highlight specific phrases in the rubric, like, “the recipient is crowded during the meal” to indicate exactly what went wrong.
Connect: I remember in school receiving feedback with highlighted parts of the rubric indicated what impacted my score.
-
You see them in standardized testing — the essay portion of the SAT is scored with a 0-6 holistic rubric.
Change: This is one of my bones to pick with why standardized testing. Are we grading students on how well they can compose their answer or how accurately they can do so? I think any rubric that carries such high stakes, needs to be as specific and thorough as possible.
-
The main disadvantage of a holistic rubric is that it doesn’t provide targeted feedback to students, which means they’re unlikely to learn much from the assignment.
Challenge: Maybe the students can learn more about their scores if the description of the performance levels on a holistic rubric was more detailed and thorough?
-
Creating a holistic rubric takes less time than the others, and grading with one is faster, too.
Question: Perhaps this aspect of the holistic rubric is why it's most commonly used?
-
A holistic rubric is the most general kind. It lists three to five levels of performance, along with a broad description of the characteristics that define each level.
Confirm: This is the rubric type that I am most familiar with.
-
What we’re going to do here is describe two frequently used kinds of rubrics, holistic and analytic, plus a less common one called the single-point rubric (my favorite, for the record).
Connect: I am learning that there are 3 different types of rubrics.
-