Rubrics will really help us to efficiently assess student work in a way that creates further learning. Students should have a better, more clear view of success for each assignment. It seems like a primary function is to give students direction while completing an assignment while holding a view of the completed assignment in their heads while they work. I think the clarity of these instructions becomes a huge part of using rubrics successfully. A grade that is based off of a rubric is much easier to improve on the next assignment because they can know what was done correctly and what has room for improvement. This can create more of an ownership of their work because they can understand where to improve. Working personally with a student and their rubric for the assignment can create much greater understanding of what I am expecting.
Working together as a class to create the rubric is a great way to create understanding that is difficult to achieve by just giving out a rubric that you created. Students will again gain a better personal connection to the assignment and it may not seem so foreign. The creation of the rubric by the students can go far in developing writing skills that could not be achieved by simply creating a paper and receiving a grade for that paper.
Rubrics are scary but should really be a solid part of assessment if we hope to give our students a fair chance to succeed. They will not only help our students but they will help us become better teachers because our help can be more directed for each student.
Questions:
What are the criteria that are universal from assignment to assignment and what things are better to be unique for each assessment?
Are there assignments that are not good for being graded with a rubric?
What are some creative ways to use rubrics?
I agree with you Dan, rubrics are an important tools to be able to assess our students in a more organized way. I truly believe that rubrics can encourage our students to become more metacognitive aware. A well-organized rubric not only makes grading clearer and easier but it can also enable us to provide beneficial feedback. To answer your question of whether is possible to have an assignment that does not need a rubric. I believe that every assessment formative or summative can use a rubric. However, I believe that there is not one method of assessment that can absolutely prove all of the student’s knowledge. Like chapter 5 suggests, “reliable assessment demands multiple sources of evidence”.
ReplyDeleteHey Dan,
ReplyDeleteI know that writing a rubric can be intimidating at first, but once you get the basics of how to write one, it becomes easier after that. As you say, rubrics are fundamental to assessment, and are the perfect way for you as a teacher to convey to your students what you are looking for, and how to go about accomplishing the assignment you give them. Things like grammar, using credible sources, and sentence structure are things that would apply to every assignment, regardless of what it might be, while length, number of sources required, and topic would vary. It is certainly true that some assignments are better suited for rubrics over others, but all assignments should have some guidance as to what you as the teacher are looking for. Creative ways to use rubrics? I will have to think about that one some more. Thanks for posting!
I like rubrics, and wish that more teachers would use them now for college classes. I hate having to guess what a teacher is looking for in a paper or a presentation. Rubrics provide a much needed explanation of what teachers want. I also like the fact that they help give feedback too. When I was in high school, I remember getting a "C" on a paper, and thinking to myself, "why did I get a "C" on this paper, but then an "A" on the previous one. What did I do differently?" I think that rubrics help students to understand what they did wrong and how they can improve for the next paper, or even to redo the one they turned in. As to your first question, I do not think that there are any necessary universals besides having clear and understandable objectives with a rubric that describes them to the students.
ReplyDeleteA theme that I've come across a lot in readings for Ed classes is fairness. Fairly grading and assessing students is a definitely doable task, but one that requires planning ahead and following the backwards approach model. Rubrics and giving students model work are the best way to communicate exactly what is expected to students. I agree 1000000% that allowing to students to work with you in the process of building a rubric is a great way to build understanding as well as providing encouragement for students to speak up and share how/ what they will be successful at. Giving value to this belief is an approach that will foster the growth of student self efficacy.
ReplyDeleteHi Dan,
ReplyDeleteI think we can all see the benefits of rubrics after this week's readings if we haven't before. I also like rubrics, and I think it was in college that many professors used rubrics more often than in high school. Just as Andrade mentions in one of her articles that “Rubrics can teach as well as evaluate.” and I think that is why rubrics are so important and could serve such a significant role regarding assessment. To answer your question if there are any assignments that are not good for being graded with a rubric, I would say most assignments can be graded by using a rubric, and I think any assignment could use a rubric. Probably a creative project like art cannot really be evaluated by using a rubric, however if the rubric serves as a guide then its role is accomplished.
Rubrics can definitely be beneficial for students and teachers as well. Like you mentioned, a rubric can show students what they need to improve in as well as what their strengths were. I think the idea of creating a rubric as a class is great because students will be held accountable for meeting standards/criteria they set themselves. One of the ideas from chapter 5 that I found useful was were students grade themselves based on the rubric before turning in an assignment and then the teacher grades them using the same rubric, if there is a big difference between the two grades then the teacher and student discuss it. That's a great way of using rubrics to self-assess.
ReplyDeleteI love having rubrics because, as mentioned by others, they help students know what the teacher is expecting and what they should focus on. I find rubrics are particularly helpful in an English classroom. I know many English teachers grade differently. For example the amount of grammatical errors allowed in a paper may vary from teacher to teacher (also assignment to assignment). Also the importance put on length content, etc. may also vary so it is important for students to know what their particular teacher is looking for-that way, they can have a fair chance at striving for an A.
ReplyDeleteI do think there are some assignments that cannot be graded with a rubric. A lot of creative or personal response assignments can fall into this category. For example, as an English teacher I would like to have students do journal entries; however, I do not plan to grade these journal entries using a rubric; instead, I plan to grade them based on whether or not they completed the assignment. As far as using a rubric creatively, I do not have any original ideas-but I do like the suggested idea of having students help create a rubric-I think this would help them feel more involved.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your first question of whether there are universal criteria from assignment to assignment, and which things are better to be unique. I think this taps into the duties of teachers and how they go about their everyday lesson planning and instruction. To further clarify that, we can see a universal need to align our tasks, activities, and instruction with the intended standard. And so, a universal criteria should be one that aligns directly with the standard that is to be reached. Another universal criteria should be those dealing with the skills appropriate for the age level of the students. As for those criteria which should be unique, I believe those have to be aligned with the task, as well as those characteristics unique to your students and class as a whole.
As for your second question, I believe there are times when rubrics are not necessarily needed or necessary. I believe when dealing with declarative or factual knowledge, it is not necessary to break down criteria and levels of understanding in order to appropriately assess the students. As new teachers we tend to want to stay away from multiple choice, or true false, and would rather give assessment that requires students to dig deep into a concept or subject, and in those times I definitely do think that rubrics are great. However, teachers must engage students in low cognitive tasks as well as high cognitive tasks, and so, for those requiring declarative knowledge in the form of low cognitive tasks, I do not believe rubrics are necessary.
I'm not sure about all of you, but being that I graduated from undergrad in 2004, this rubric thing is actually very new to me. And while this week's readings confirm to me how important they are as part of the teaching/assessment process, they absolutely overwhelm me. For instance, the rubrics included in the edTPA handbook really seem over my head. I think one of the most important take aways I have from these readings is that creating rubrics with your class makes a lot of sense. This way, you can rest assured that your students actually understand what the rubric is detailing. I think it's important to remember that we don't necessarily have to use sophisticated vocabulary to create throughout a rubric. Rather simple language, detailing the most important points of each square is necessary for comprehension. I look forward to practicing them in our class!
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that rubrics can be used most effectively when clear, and help level the playing field for all students in the completion and comprehension of an assignment, I also believe that rubrics fall short of assessing important aspects of learning. These aspects include opinions, understandings. reflections.
ReplyDeleteDan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your points made about rubrics. Personally, I prefer that my professors give me a rubric for our big assignments that are worth a large percentage of our grade. It gives me a better understanding of what is expected from me. Also, there is barely any miss-communication of what should be included in your assignment because it is clearly (hopefully) written out for you to simply follow. I had never heard of writing a rubric together as a class, but it does not sound like bad idea because that way, the classroom as whole gets to go through every point and decide together on what is considered a "good" grade versus a "bad" grade. Creating a rubric together as a class will really benefit the students when completing their assignment because they have background knowledge already what is expected from them. I also believe that rubrics are not appropriate just for any assignment, like someone mentioned earlier, that they would not use a rubric to grade a journal. In my opinion, I do not think journals should be graded at all. Only large assignments and really important projects should use a rubric.
I agree with your points. I actually helped in making a rubric with my class that we were going to be graded on for an assignment. I thought this was pretty awesome. I liked it because we had no reason not to understand how our assignment was being graded. This is great because it gives the students an opportunity to chime in on how their assignments are being graded and know what is expected from them.
ReplyDeleteAs far as rubrics that are given for assignments, I believe it helps a lot! Ive seen some rubrics that show examples of good material and bad material. I think this is important because it actually shows what the material should and shouldn't have. I always enjoy rubrics because it gives me an opportunity to grade myself as well. Do I think my material is worth a good grade or is it a bad grade? I personally think it helps a lot.
I totally agree that rubrics can be a great way to grade certain assignments. Working with your students to establish a rubric can be good, but it can also be bad. By working with your students to create a rubric, you get an understanding of where your students are and know not to make your grading rubric too difficult or too easy. Unfortunately, working with students to determine what is the proper way to grade the the different classes can be difficult. It is time consuming and takes away time from learning and doing a rubric for every individual class, then each class will be put on a different level of expectations. Rubrics are a great tool to use for assignments such as analytical essays, grammar, and big projects. However, they are not good for grading personal essays or anything that can have a wide variety of different answers or responses.
ReplyDeleteRubrics in general are a great tool for the teacher and the student. It helps the student be able to know what is expected of them and it helps the teacher focus when grading. I especially like the idea of having students create their own rubric. I was able to be in a class where we were instructed as a class to create our own rubric for a paper and it was a great strategy because I feel it allowed us to have some control over the grading aspect.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that rubrics help students hold higher expectations for their work. I like thinking of rubrics as not letting a fireman go into a fire without equipment. Students need to be well equipped as they work on future assignments.
ReplyDeleteAs a student who always relied heavily on "what the teacher wanted from us" vs the "be as creative as you want" rubrics were perfect for me. I was either in HS at a time before they became popular or my school was just not hip to them yet. I remember getting papers back where I would get a A on something, then write (what I felt was a similar paper) get a C on it and then be confused on what were the differences. Why did this writing style work for this case, but not the other? Or when comparing my paper to a friends, be confused of how we could have the same number of markings/feedback but two totally different grades. I used to wonder if my teacher was really reading our papers or just marking it based off of what mood she was in. I would ask myself what makes a paper an A vs a paper a B?.. was it the number of grammatical mistakes, or was paper organization more important? what outweighed the other. ...I think this is where rubrics work perfect. Rubrics allow students to have an outline of what is expected and a checklist of how to execute that product. It allows for creativity of the substance, but structure for people who dont know where/how to begin. I do think there are basics to what needs to go into all rubrics, such as: clarity, organization, main idea etc but rubrics leave much leeway to specify for certain/unique projects.
ReplyDeleteAs I was mentioning about my HS, by my junior year, my english teacher was using rubrics. And very much how chapter 5 mentioned, he always had us grade ourselves first based off the rubric and then he would grade us and we would talk/compare. Though at first I must say I was nervous, especially to over grade myself and then have him only tell me my "A" paper was really a "B-" but that open dialogue was so beneficial. It fostered trust between teacher and student, and called me to take responsibility/accountability for my assignments/grades.
Hi Dan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for writing. I'm going to think about this question that you pose about whether or not rubrics can not work for certain assignments. As I discussed in my previous post, I think rubrics are beneficial, but I also think that teachers very often use them to demarcate expectations and then assess accordingly. It's not a guide for teaching. Supposedly, this is a more ethical and student-centric way to grade because students know up front what is expected. They know what tasks they need to perform. So at its core, while helpful for grading and assessing and getting grades and getting assessed, I'm just not sure how meaningful rubrics are. They're just a set of guidelines that tell you what you need to do. They don't (unless you create rubrics with your students, which Jason points out in his post is very time-consuming) take into account student expectations for what they should learn. It's basically a tool for dictatorial teaching.
Oh but Liz all teaching is dictatorial you can't get out of it ya old communist! Fine. You're right. So that's where we can land on rubrics. They help students know exactly how, "step-by-step," they are being compelled to perform for the academy.
Now as far as being used badly with specific assignments, I will reiterate that I think it is wrong to assess students on things you don't teach. For instance, in the City Colleges, grammar makes you or breaks you. Their rubrics (they may have changed since my tenure) are completely focused on grammar. Perhaps even more so from individual teachers than from the City College machine....I digress. The point is that teachers put punctuation and capitalization on rubrics, assess you, and fail you. They very rarely talk about these things in class. I've asked students and teachers and sat in on classes. Most don't talk about grammar, but they grade you on it in a high stakes way! In the City Colleges, and perhaps you are seeing this in your neighborhood schools, capitalization and punctuation are real challenges. What we may take for granted is not the same in many of our public schools. Thus, rubrics may be really useful, actually, to tell you what you need to teach. If everyone is failing your rubric, you may have to go back and re-examine what is going on in your instruction. Of course, this is crucial. If a bunch of people are failing, it's probably you, not the students.
Creating rubrics can be really tricky. There's the aspect of addressing students understanding of the material as well as creating a fair learning platform for all student. I think by making a rubric very transparent so that students are aware of what is expected if them will call for better student engagement.
ReplyDeleteSaarah