Provides assessment criteria for students in advance and ensures student understanding
Provides guidance and timely feedback to learners on attainment of concepts/skills
One of the basic fundamental foundations of my instructional style is that students should have an opportunity to take ownership of their own learning and that they should be expected to be responsible for themselves and their own work. When students are merely given a grade on an assignment, without any knowledge as to how they will be graded or how their project measured up to the standard, they do not learn how to monitor themselves. It is for this reason that I believe very strongly in giving students rubrics for assignments as soon as assignments or projects are introduced to the class. Many people feel that third graders are not mature enough to understand rubrics or how to evaluate their own work, but I think that they have to be taught how to have this skill, it does not come naturally! I taught students how to use a rubric with our first big project, the Jumanji Game Board. We looked at the rubric together as a class and discussed what each of the indicators meant. We then discussed what game boards that fit into the various scores would look like. As students were working on the games for two weeks, they had to have their rubrics out on their desks. At the beginning and end of each working period, they had to check on their rubric what indicators they were planning to work on and what they had added to their boards. Then, when the projects were completed, I graded them with the students so that they could see how I looked at the rubrics while I was grading. They helped to determine their grades on the projects. I gave them verbal feedback on their boards then, as well as written feedback on their rubrics. This process was carried out throughout the year with different projects, with the level of my involvement in coaching the students through the use of rubrics decreasing over time as the students' ownership of their projects increased.
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| Students complete independent book projects for the books they read in class. They were given an assignment sheet that detailed the grading criteria. We then looked at examples of work from each grade so that they would know what to expect. |
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| Students were given a rubric for their Jumanji Game project. |
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| After students completed their projects, they were given feedback on each section of the rubric. They used their rubrics as checklists while they were completing the projects. |
