Activity Reflection #7 - Developing Rubrics

Hi!

This week, in my graduate class, we are exploring the world of evaluation, assessment, rubrics, and other means of seeing if whatever we are doing is effective. Sometimes it's hard to tell while we're in the teaching trenches if we are really getting the message across.  It is very important to self-evaluate ourselves as we are teaching, and adjust as necessary, depending on the students' responses, but it is also difficult to evaluate whether or not everyone is getting the concept.  Is the shy, quiet boy in the back getting it?  Is the chatty bubbly girl in the first row really able to focus?  Is the creative, out-of-the-box-thinking girl pondering the lesson or is she off in the world she has envisioned inside her head?  Is the athletic boy who can rattle off every MLB player's stats without a blink of an eye really grasping this concept?  Is the bright, inquisitive boy in the front row bored because this isn't a challenging enough lesson?  Is the girl who just found out her parents are getting divorced able to even wrap her brain around my words? Kids are good actors, too - they can pretend to "get it" while not having a clue of what the teacher is talking about. Their minds are off on other things, and as teachers we have to cast off, dangle the worm, hope they bite, and reel them in.  Hopefully we've chosen the right bait.  And, in a sense, evaluation and development of rubrics allows the teacher to learn if she really caught any fish. I mean, not all teachers are as competent as the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off - his personality, brilliance, and delivery reaches all his students in the most effective and efficient ways - ummmmmmm....... doesn't he?

Whenever I hear the word "rubric," for some reason, I think of two things - Rubik's Cube and Ruprect, from the movie, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - neither of which has anything to do with rubrics, the evaluation tool.  A rubric can be defined as "An authentic assessment tool used to measure students' work. It is a scoring guide that seeks to evaluate a student's performance based on the sum of a full range of criteria rather than a single numerical score. A rubric is a working guide for students and teachers, usually handed out before the assignment begins in order to get students to think about the criteria on which their work will be judged" (Kennesaw State University).  I think that last statement is the KEY to rubrics - the student gets the rubric BEFORE they do the assignment so that they know what exactly is expected of them. They know ahead of time what they need to do, to what extent, and how well they need to do it to achieve a satisfactory grade.

So, my assignment this week is to create a rubric to accompany my digital storytelling project for my fictitious first grade class.  (I am not currently teaching, but I have a niece and nephew, twins, who are in first grade, so I have them in mind as I work on my project ideas.)  While I am pretty familiar with rubrics, and I have even created some, I have never made a rubric for first graders.  I wasn't even sure where to start on how to evaluate them so I checked with a friend of mine who teaches first grade.  Of course, kids at that age are all at different reading levels, so that was something that she stressed with me - make it easy enough to read for the kids who are pretty good readers, and let someone help the struggling readers.  (This advice was given for the rubric, not for other first grade assignments, I should note.)  

I found the Kennesaw State University site to be extremely useful.  Not only did they define rubrics, their purposes, uses, and features, as well as their advantages, they gave many samples of various kinds of rubrics for different grade levels.  I found this the most helpful area.  There was a section of rubrics designed for K-2 students, and this is where my "ah-HA!" moment happened.  Before I even started this research, I realized that many first grade children wouldn't grasp the whole scale of 1-5 thing or "Student showed adequate knowledge of the subject matter by listing at least three examples of how moths can cause harm both inside and outside of a home".  No, the language needed to be simple and, if possible, symbolic.  I was drawn to one that used faces:  

The rubric looked cute with all the little faces and it contained simple language....  but not really what I wanted.  I love the idea of the neutral face and the smiley, but the frowny one just kind of made me step back and think - Anyone who didn't do the assignment at all would get the frowny face for each question, in my opinion,  but if the student even TRIED, shouldn't they get something for their effort?  Am I being careful not to hurt their self-esteem?  Well, yes, but we are talking first graders here.  SIX years old.  Let's be happy for their attempt, at this point.  Perhaps later in the school year, we may revise that philosophy, but for now, I am content with not hurting their little egos.

So, I came up with my own rubric with stars as the symbolic rating system:  one kind of ordinary-looking shooting star has the lowest rating, one with a more elaborate tail represents the middle rating, and one with a lot of stars as the highest rating.  I included a key from not-so-good, to good, to very good. 

I went back to my curriculum page (on which I have done a lot of tweaking lately) and wrote my rubric criteria based on the instructions I had written there.  I thought that was the most logical way to create it, since those directions are what the students will have to follow anyway.  Here is what I came up with - a rubric for the students to do for themselves as well as one for me to evaluate each of them.

First, the student version.........

 

 

Now, for the teacher version....

I like what I created and I am not sure if I would change it.  I think I made a pretty thorough rubric that my students and I can use to evaluate their work. 

Comments? 

Until next time, keep reelin' in those kids!

~ Christi S

Resources:

Kennesaw State University. (2007) Assessment rubrics. Retrieved from http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/intech/rubrics.htm