rubrics Search Results

Speed Up Grading with Rubric Codes

Do you have a mountain of student writing to grade? A pile of extended responses that have been sitting in your passenger seat for a week? Do you wish you had more time to give students better feedback? This video shows you how to use rubric codes—a small twist on grading student writing that keeps the feedback but cuts way down on the time. If you’re getting way behind on your grading, this may be just what you need. Need Ready-Made Rubrics? My Rubric Pack gives you four different designs in Microsoft Word and Google Docs formats. It also…

How to Create a Project Based Learning Lesson

…rubric were used for which benchmarks in the “Silent voices” project by looking at the far left column on the project rubric (link in previous section). These benchmark numbers dictate what the smaller rubrics will look like for grading each deliverable (since, remember from my note in step 4, we will never use this entire rubric at once!). So for example, benchmark #3’s rubric would include the following rows only: collaboration, viewpoints and narrative writing. Step 6: Create Student-facing Rubrics Most teachers from most grades will tell you that the language of standards are not student-friendly, and I agree! That’s…

Episode 167: Co-Constructing Success Criteria

…in each other’s work and go back to. In the same form, it’ll then help the kids be more able to self-assess themselves because they know what they’re doing, they know what they’re looking for. They’ve seen models of success before they started. They had opportunities to ask questions, and now they have a clear understanding of what the expectations are and how to be successful. Rubrics will likely come up. People who are listening might say, well, don’t rubrics do that? To a certain degree, yes, but rubrics are problematic in a lot of ways and that’s definitely a…

Build it Together: Co-Constructing Success Criteria with Students

…language, also known as I Can Statements, which can be placed in visible locations around the classroom. As the learning cycle progresses, the teacher can refer back to these statements, connecting them to the language of the standards, so everyone is familiar with and fluent in that language at all stages of the assignment. 2. Study and annotate the assignment. At the beginning of a project or learning cycle, give students the prompt or assignment that they are going to be working on; this may also include a rubric (Sackstein prefers to use rubrics that only state the target criteria,…

How Accurate Are Your Grades?

…L1 languages. I have spent the last two years working on improving my rubrics so that the criteria are quantified (although this can sometimes be just numbering individual sub-criteria for inclusion in a category), linguistically useful for student English level (we are in a public/private partnership that sends us recruited students of all levels) and, most importantly, provides a strong base for students to really understand where the problem is. When I started this project I thought that the solution was just getting the rubric criteria quantified, but as I worked with the rubrics and the criteria I realized that…

Kiddom: Standards-Based Grading Made Wonderful

…the grade processing that seems to be happening in the background is still a traditional setup and not really Standards-Based Grading. While it’s true that Kiddom allows for assignments to be aligned with learning standards and connected to rubrics for grading, in the end each assignment gets a certain number of points and these points are the basis of an overall grade. Standards-Based Grading isn’t just about using rubrics to assess work. The approach includes a rejection of points-based grading as carrying with it all sorts of issues that have gone largely undetected and run antithetically to the mastery-based focus…

4 Laws of Learning (and How to Follow Them)

…rubrics to spell out success criteria. Single-point rubrics work especially well for complex assignments. Provide models of different levels of success, so students get a clear picture of finished products. Formative Assessment: Improving formative assessment leads to learning improvements for all students and reduces gaps between low- and high-achievers (Black & Wiliam, 1998). Make formative assessment truly formative. It’s a measurement tool that shouldn’t count against a student’s grade. Check formative assessments quickly after they are given and use them to make instructional decisions. Conduct formative assessment in different ways: quizzes, exit slips, class polls, and think-pair-shares are all ways…

Words Matter: Language-Affirming Classrooms for Code-Switching Students

…targeted instruction during small group lessons. Finally, progress-based assessment criteria such as checklists and rubrics clarify your expectations for each task and make feedback actionable. It’s especially helpful to co-create those with your class. Not only will they have a better idea of what you’re looking for but they’ll be encouraged by seeing what they already can do. Translanguaging If you’re looking for a bolder way to incorporate students’ existing language abilities into your lessons, translanguaging is a great way to develop literacy skills in multiple languages (España & Yadira Herrera, 2020). That’s the practice of designing activities to allow…

Making Cooperative Learning Work Better

…know better. Chances are very good that neither of these are true. Train students on collaborative skills by working on shorter, easier projects at first, then have students reflect on how well they collaborated. Only have them tackle a bigger project after they have mastered the collaboration skills. If you’re going to teach collaborative skills, you need to identify what the skills are. One great set of resources comes from PBLWorks, where you can download rubrics for assessing collaborative work. Whether you use the rubrics to actually perform assessment or not, they can help you identify the skills needed for…