5 Tips for a More Meaningful Rubric Sarah Wike Loyola , Upper School Spanish Teacher, Spanish Team Leader, and Technology Mentor in Charlotte, NC Posted 06/08/2015 12:26PM | Last Commented 07/06/2015 2:30PM Every educator feels pretty darn cool the first few times they grade students' work. So, why not make it meaningful? Teachers who use rubrics: set clear guidelines and expectations from the outset of the school year. hold students accountable for the work they produce in a justifiable way. let their students know on which areas they need concentrate the next time they are given a similar task. see improvement in their students’ work. Teachers who do not use rubrics: leave students without clear guidance on which skill areas they need to improve. do not provide students with concrete evidence of what their work lacked. do not provide sufficient guidance on what the student outcome was meant to be in the first place. Many teachers I meet want to use rubrics, but they do not know what to include on them. Be consistent.
What is a Rubric? Heidi Andrade Rubrics have become popular with teachers as a means of communicating expectations for an assignment, providing focused feedback on works in progress, and grading final products. Although educators tend to define the word “rubric” in slightly different ways, Heidi Andrade’s commonly accepted definition is a document that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing the criteria, or what counts, and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor. Rubrics are often used to grade student work but they can serve another, more important, role as well: Rubrics can teach as well as evaluate. When used as part of a formative, student-centered approach to assessment, rubrics have the potential to help students develop understanding and skill, as well as make dependable judgments about the quality of their own work.
Effective Faculty Feedback: The Road Less Traveled, Assessing Writing, 2006 Grading papers may be one of the most stressful, most time consuming, and least rewarding activities in which professors engage. Although effective grading techniques for papers have been widely researched, especially within the "Writing" or "English" scholarly arenas, has this information been put into practice? The goals of this paper are two-fold: (1) to replicate and extend Connor and Lunsford's [Connors, R. Elsevier. 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, FL 32887-4800.
Dipsticks: Efficient Ways to Check for Understanding What strategy can double student learning gains? According to 250 empirical studies, the answer is formative assessment, defined by Bill Younglove as "the frequent, interactive checking of student progress and understanding in order to identify learning needs and adjust teaching appropriately." Unlike summative assessment, which evaluates student learning according to a benchmark, formative assessment monitors student understanding so that kids are always aware of their academic strengths and learning gaps. Meanwhile, teachers can improve the effectiveness of their instruction, re-teaching if necessary. "When the cook tastes the soup," writes Robert E. Stake, "that's formative; when the guests taste the soup, that's summative." Alternative formative assessment (AFA) strategies can be as simple (and important) as checking the oil in your car -- hence the name "dipsticks." In the sections below, we'll discuss things to consider when implementing AFAs. 53 Ways to Check for Understanding
@Westylish's Blog: The Impact of Personalised Video Feedback on Sixth Form Hi... This year I have been working on videoing the feedback that I am giving to my sixth form students. My AS class produced an essay on the extent to which Hitler's consolidation of power was achieved in a legal manner. I then videod the feedback and the students used the feedback to improve their original draft using DIRT. The students then produced a second essay on the reality of the 'Economic Miracle' within Nazi Germany. The students selected three targets that they received last time and applied them to this essay. When the students handed their essays in and I videod my feedback I began by focusing on these three targets and whether I had felt that the students had met them. Using the video feedback in this way felt a lot more 'joined up' than before and the impact was clear as students who had missed one of the videos didn't make as much progress as those who had benefited from both.
4 Easy Tips and Tricks for Creating Visually Engaging Rubrics | Edutopia Lisa Yokana recently shared a useful rubric in her post on "Creating an Authentic Maker Education Rubric." As this post was making the rounds on social media, Edutopia staff received a number of requests to distribute a modifiable version of her sample maker rubric that educators could adjust to the particulars of their own settings. Editable Maker Rubric To satisfy that need, I’ve created two different versions of Lisa's sample maker rubric in Microsoft Word and Google Docs formats. In addition, here are some tips and tricks to help you make the most use out of this sample rubric template. Rubric Design Tips and Tricks Form follows function. Everything on your page should have a job. With this sample rubric, I implemented several quick and easy design tricks to help improve overall functionality and experience. Minimize lines to allow more pertinent content to surface. Other Rubric Samples From Edutopia Be sure to visit Edutopia's Rubrics page for more tips and resources.
Authentic Assessment Toolbox Home Page to the Authentic Assessment Toolbox, a how-to text on creating authentic tasks, rubrics, and standards for measuring and improving student learning. Inside, you will find chapters on A good place to start -- In this chapter I identify the characteristics, strengths and limitations of authentic assessment; compare and contrast it with traditional (test-based) assessment. Why has authentic assessment become more popular in recent years? When can it best serve assessment needs? After a brief overview, follow a detailed, four-step process for creating an authentic assessment. All good assessment begins with standards: statements of what we want our students to know and be able to do. Authentic assessments are often called "tasks" because they include real-world applications we ask students to perform. To assess the quality of student work on authentic tasks, teachers develop rubrics, or scoring scales. A guide to constructing good, multiple-choice tests, to complement your authentic assessments
Empowering Teachers With Tech-Friendly Formative Assessment Tools Formative assessment is an important part of effective instruction. Teachers can use observations, checklists, and quick quizzes to gather data that will inform their instruction. Formative assessment identifies areas where students are excelling and struggling so that teachers can best alter their instruction to meet the needs of all students. Technology can make formative assessment a seamless part of everyday activities. Choosing the Right Tool With the abundance of technology options available for teachers, it can be intimidating to search for and locate the right one. When choosing the right tool, you will also want to take into account the age and ability of your students. Gathering Formative Assessment Data Tech-friendly tools can make data collection seamless during classroom instruction. Formative assessment data is often collected on checklists attached to clipboards or sheets of paper in a binder. Planning With a Purpose
Marking Matters Like most teachers in the autumn term, I have set myself a few targets, some of them to do with marking. I’m going to make sure that I mark student work regularly, make it useful and get students to do something with it. In search of a bit of inspiration, I read two great blogs on this subject over the weekend. The first was by the marvellous David Didau (@LearningSpy) entitled ‘Marking is an act of love’. The second blog was by Mary Myatt (@MaryMyatt). “When it comes to giving feedback, reasons should always be given for the comment. So, these two articles made me reflect on a flow diagram that we have used at DHS to describe ‘effective feedback through marking’. Download a copy here. The key points from it are: Select the work that you are going to mark in detail carefully – make sure it is something that students have had to think about and produce themselves e.g. a paragraph of writing that describes and explains something. Like this: Like Loading...
20 Simple Assessment Strategies You Can Use Every Day 20 Simple Assessment Strategies You Can Use Every Day by Saga Briggs The ultimate goal of teaching is understanding. But sometimes it’s easier to talk than to teach, as we all know, especially when we need to cover a lot of material in a short amount of time. Below are 22 simple assessment strategies and tips to help you become more frequent in your teaching, planning, and curriculum design. 22 Simple Assessment Strategies & Tips You Can Use Every Day 1. Avoid yes/no questions and phrases like “Does this make sense?” 2. During the last five minutes of class ask students to reflect on the lesson and write down what they’ve learned. 3. Give a short quiz at the end of class to check for comprehension. 4. Have students summarize or paraphrase important concepts and lessons. 5. Hand signals can be used to rate or indicate students’ understanding of content. 6. 7. 8. Students take a few minutes to think about the question or prompt. 9. 10. 11. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
Marking is an act of love UPDATE: After a lot of thought and reading, I’m no long convinced that marking is anywhere near as important or useful as it’s often claimed. In fact, much of it is a complete waste of time. In this post I explore the difference between marking and feedback and here I suggest that less marking might mean more feedback. October 2015 Have you ever flicked back through an exercise book and seen the same repeated comments followed with soul numbing certainty by the same repeated mistakes? I’ve always felt guilty about marking. I guess if you’re marking like I used to, then it’s easy to feel like this. The big difference is DIRT. At Clevedon School, this has been formalised into Triple Impact Marking: Here are a few of my thoughts on how to change the way you think about marking and, maybe more importantly, how you go about it. and Joe Kirby has also written about how using symbols can save precious time. Don’t write out comments. So, that’s it: my thoughts on how to make marking matter.
ARIZONA PROGRAM A dunaharaszti Kőrösi Csoma Sándor Általános Iskola tantestülete úgy döntött, hogy iskolánkban bevezetjük az Arizona programot. Egyre gyakoribbá válik az oktatásban, így intézményünkben is, hogy néhány diák rendszeresen és tartósan zavarja az órák nyugalmát. Ettől a helyzettől a tanár és az osztály többi, tanulni vágyó tanulója egyaránt szenved. A munka ritmusa, íve megtörik, ami a hatékony tanulás rovására megy. Reményeink szerint, a program alkalmas arra, hogy kezelje ezeket a konfliktusokat. A programot 1994-ben egy Phoenix-i iskolában vezették be Arizonában (innen a név). Az Arizona- program lényege röviden. A diákokkal, a szülőkkel és a pedagógusokkal ismertetjük és elfogadtatjuk az alábbi alapelveket: --Minden tanulónak joga van a zavartalan tanuláshoz. --Minden tanárnak joga van a zavartalan tanításhoz. --Mások jogait tiszteletben tartom. Ezeket a feliratokat az osztálytermekben kifüggesztjük. szobába küldi, ahol mindig tartózkodik egy ügyeletes tanár. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 1. 2.
Using DIRT as a Learning Journey Education is full of acronyms. Some are useless, whilst others are impressive and useful. One such acronym which keeps popping up in the #UKEdChat community is DIRT, which stands for ‘Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time‘, mainly aimed at secondary aged pupils (11+), although some aspects are already embedded within primary practice. In her book, Jackie Beere reminds how important the process of DIRT is: This is properly trained peer assessment or self-assessment where students measure their progress against the original objective in mini plenaries and think about how they have learned – what worked and what didn’t. Mainly used by Secondary School English teachers, David Didau (@LearningSpy) and Alex Quigley (@HuntingEnglish) have shared how the process is used in their classrooms, at their blogs here & here, but the potential of using a DIRT framework is possible in other curriculum subject, using the following Assessment for Learning tips: Dialogue – Talking to students is key.