This week my MT gave me the opportunity to instruct an ‘All About Me’ PowerPoint lesson for the kids. This technology is very new for the students and some have never even heard of a PowerPoint before. My job for the next few weeks is to introduce them to them to the technology and instruct a lesson or two on how to create a presentation that reads many things about who they are. Furthermore, I must create a rubric to help me assess not only their PowerPoint skills but also their writing content, spelling and grammar. I must say, I am pretty stumped on how to design a rubric for this task.
“Make Assessment Count”, from “Writing Essentials” was eye opening for me. Routman talked about many important things such as putting rubrics into perspective. As I began to write my rubric, I automatically wrote a list of things that my students must write about in their presentations. At first this sounded like a good idea but, Routman makes a lot of sense when he suggests that this “sends a message to students that writing to the formula matters, not the content.” I guess if students were told what to write about, it limits their own development of ideas. And if one of our goals as teachers is for our student’s writing to improve, we must assess writing with a broader lens. How else will our students become ‘free’ writers?
Rubrics do have a good purpose of helping students stay on track of the task and help teachers evaluate and prepare further instruction as needed. However, when it comes to using rubrics, Routman clearly says, “Don’t overdo it.” But, it’s important not to focus so much on a checklist that you end up losing track of what the child is trying to do, which may be something not in the rubric but something worth positive recognition. Routman says, “It is not advisable to apply rubrics to all writing nor to score all writing. Just as our students need lots of practice reading many texts without expectation that they will be assessed on everything they read, they need lots of practice writing without being assessed on everything they write.”
I’m really glad to have read this during the time of trying to design my own rubric. And although I am indeed using a rubric, I will try not to ‘rubricize’ my students, as Routman puts it. I will give my students the freedom to develop their own ideas in their presentations and try to pay attention to the big picture at what my students are trying to say. I actually love the idea of creating a child-friendly rubric as mentioned in the chapter. If there will be guidelines, I guess the least I can do is collect student’s input as to what they want to include in the rubric. What do you all think about rubrics? Do any of you have ideas for how to design a rubric without ‘rubricizing’ students? What assessment tools have you seen or used that you really like working within your classrooms?
I thought that this was a very interesting chapter. Personally, I have always been a fan of rubrics because I liked being able to see exactly what I was going to be graded on. But after reading some of Routman’s ideas I can see why rubrics may not always be the best answer for grading student work. My MT uses a rubric that uses the 6 traits that Routman talked about on page 240. I think that it is good that she is looking for these writing traits in student work, but I can understand how trying to adhere to a rubric might impact their writing.
ReplyDeleteOne of Routman’s ideas that I really liked was to create child friendly rubrics. (pg.243) I think that many rubrics are written for teacher use instead of for the students. Having a rubric that is written specifically for children will help them evaluate their own work because it puts the criteria into words and ideas that they can understand. I think that creating child friendly rubrics will help students write better, but without having them be focused on where points can be gained or lost.
Another idea that I really liked was to show students examples of student work. (pg.243) Students can look at the rubric and determine what grade each example should receive. I think that by grading other student work, students will have a better understanding of how a rubric works and will know how they will be graded. I also think it is a good idea to keep some especially good examples for students to look at so that they can have an idea of what their writing could be like. I think it is hard for students to write new genres if they have never done it before.
Overall, I still think that rubrics are a good idea. Writing can be a very subjective thing and as a teacher I want to be fair when I am grading student work. Rubrics help keep a teacher fair. But I also think that it is important to be selective in the way rubrics are used so that we don’t cause out students to write in only systematic ways.
In general I think that rubrics are useful in writing. I feel rubrics give students structure of what they are writing about and helps with organizing thoughts and processing though an idea. However, I also feel that there are many ways that rubrics can be misused to the point where students are not freely writing, but instead just filling in the gaps of the rubric to get a good grade. I think these kind of rubrics take away the expression and thought that students have when they write their pieces.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Aimee and I really like Routman's thoughts of creating child friendly rubrics. I feel that it's fair to let students converse about expectations since the class will be the ones doing the writing. This allows teachers to use rubrics in an appropriate way-"as an evaluation tool, not as the driving instructional force" (p.243). Also, letting students have a voice in their rubric will encourage them to take ownership of their writing. It would be easier to refer back to the rubric and review what was already discussed as a class if there was a discrepancy.
From this chapter I was really encouraged to "keep focused on effective writing". I feel that I tend to focus too much on the conventions of writing and shorthand the content of what students are writing about. This section of the chapter has helped me refocus what I really want my students to be getting out of writing. When evaluating writing pieces teachers should be looking at the whole picture. When, keeping close to a rubric that focuses on spelling or conventions we may lose the potential of what the student is trying to convey. I think that conventions are important to communicate the message, but there should be a greater emphasis in trying to capture the thoughts behind the students' words.
A thought from the book that I will apply to my class is to write often and without a rubric. Routman states, "extensive writing across cirriculum as a part of an excellent writing program is the best preparation for doing well on tests". Teachers tell students to read more to become better readers and it only makes sense to tell students to write more to become better writers. In my classroom I want to stay away from my students feeling "rubricized" and to do that I think that students should have many opportunities to write without following a rubric. I'm convinced my students have a lot of thoughts and ideas in theirs heads and a rubric that I set out might squeeze those thoughts in a small box. Instead, in my class I would promote lots of chances to free write so that students can express themselves without feeling the pressure to be confined to the outline of a rubric.
I just got done reading the Assessment Chapter in Book Club Plus! (Chapter 6). The chapter doesn't specifically talk about rubrics, but talks of guidelines for assessments. I love their idea of rewording standards "to become as visible as possible to guide classroom activities effectively and to make their purposes apparent to students and parents" (p.85). A way to do this, as the authors suggest, is to create "I Can" statements written to match standards.
ReplyDeleteTo turn this concept into a rubric, you can explicitly show, and discuss, the standards that the district or state is holding them to, and what you expect from them. Using "I Can" statements empowers the student and "emphasizes students' ownership and control" (p.85). In the case of your assignment, taking a national standard such as "Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriate to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes," could be a standard that you consider. Turning this standard into an easily understood expectation for students could look like, "I can write to communicate my ideas." This could be a component on your rubric, rating 4-1 as how well the student communicated their intended ideas to a given audience. (See pages 86-7 for more examples like this).
I think, when used correctly and comprehensibly, rubrics are a good way to organize your grading and be fair when giving marks. Last year, I created a quick rubric for grading a science assignment on living and non-living animals for kindergarten. By using the rubric, it was easy to hold students up to standards, and hold each student up to the same expectations. I believe this leads to an organized, fair assessment.
Good luck with your rubric making!