Wiggins+Chapter+8

Chapter 8 is a heavy section on rubric development. When I first starting teaching 30 years ago, I thought a rubric was cube .. and then I looked it up and it said that it was a rubik...I had never heard of a rubric for assessment... things were just wrong or right and then you gave them a 100%...76%... whatever the score was... then you gave them A, B, C, D, F......... hmmmm... We did not talk about "descriptive feedback". We migh write... NICE JOB... I once met a principal who said he would not hire a teacher who did not use the word rubric in the interview. So, what is your take on rubrics? I think they are great! I find them to be useful, especially when they give examples. I have found that the more detailed the rubric is, the more prepared I have been when turning in my 'assignment'. When they are vague and show no thought I don't see the point behind them. I have had teachers/professors give out rubrics before and they are structured like: The paper shows clear understand/ The paper shows somewhat clear understand/ The paper shows very little understand / the paper shows no understand. What is that?. How are they useful to you.. how are they not useful? Do you create analytic rubrics as described on pg. 174? Are your rubrics six faceted? like pg. 183? YIKES!!! Are your rubrics reliable (pg. 188)? Do you use them as formative or summative evaluations? So many questions... so few answers....

I agree the page 183 definition of a rubric, is scary! I mean I am so limited with time, I sometimes don't know how I will manage making rubrics. I think my main question, is how often do we use them? On every assignment, or only monthly/each 9 weeks, etc? With my building, we are redesigning our curriculum, report cards, and rubrics to fit the Common CORE. We are meeting in teams to create our rubrics, then we will create our new report cards. As a team, we decided it was best to have a rubric for every section, for example: math: operations and algebraic thinking, and breaking that down into a pretty detailed rubric that we can share with parents with the report card and at conference time. I find it easier to use rubrics in writing, and I actually enjoy filling them out/making them. I hope I will feel as comfortable with math soon! ally I'm so glad to hear someone from the primary grades have a positive response to rubrics. I haven't seen them much/at all and so I was wondering how well they worked with the younger kids. Emily

To be honest, I haven’t really used any rubrics in math class while teaching. I also feel that I haven’t given any effective performance assessments in my teaching. Yes, it’s definitely something I want to do more of, but just haven’t gotten that far. Why do you think you have not used rubrics? Do you think your assignments have the multiple criteria embedded in them? W hile teaching social studies, I used a “rubric” of sorts, but it definitely leaned more towards a holistic rubric. I’d give students more of a “checklist” of things their project needed to have, then scored them based on that, giving them one final score. I do really think that it’s so important to give descriptive feedback, and that’s one things I constantly try to do. Whether it’s verbal or written on work, but it’s hard to keep up with. Thank you for an example/description of a holistic rubric. I felt that the authors didn't favor it as much and therefore didn't bother to give a good description of one. I found the backward design chart on page 186/187 was good, and very thorough. On page 183 I really stopped to think about the piece of grading for correctness vs grading for understanding. I think that all goes back to the piece about making assessments authentic, and delving deeper into the curriculum. However, often times I think teachers assess on the surface, rather than looking for true understanding. Perhaps it’s because many often feel that they can’t dig deep enough into the countless standards we have, to truly look for understanding. I think this is really true... I wonder with the new standards if they will demand more depth. In the end, I would say that rubrics can be a very effective method of assessing students and grading performance assessments. However, I think I’m a bit frustrated because I feel that these are all great ideas that we’ve talked about, but when do I find them time to develop good, effective materials? (Nicole) Amen! (Welcome to the club! I feel the same way... everything is about time, it seems. I keep a notebook of ideas that I'd like to eventually create/develop but I don't think I've even gotten to more than one or two of them during my past four years of teaching...*sigh*) (Michelle) Love the idea of keeping a notebook! Time is our worst enemy! Every year I think that I become better as an educator because I am able to look into my "book of tricks" in order to try to implement the new ideas that I learn. I think that rubrics are a good idea when students have to complete performance assessments. It helps them to know what direction to go in and spells out exactly what they need to do and demonstarte in order to get a certain grade. As a student who worked for the grade, I loved this. I was the same way. I liked having that structure and knowing exactly what was expected. At the end of the project that I was completing I could look at the rubric and make sure I had everything I needed to get a 100% and that was that. With students like this, I feel that some rubrics can hinder the creativity of students. If you're concerned about stifling creativity, I like the author's theory of showing multiple examples of top level work in order to spark creativity and prevent copying. I'll admit, I was just like you in filling out every little detail, and if one example was given then I would copy that to the letter as much as possible. The only time I used a rubric was during my methods placement. I thought it was best to use an analytic rubic, which helped the students to have a detailed list of all that was expected of them. The lesson also had different aspects that were being graded and I felt that it would be to overwhelming to have it all in one section. I appreciate rubrics for many of the same reasons that you do. However, I did notice some discrepencies or contradictions in the book while I was reading it. You mentioned that you let the students know the criteria ahead of time before they did their assessment. However, the book was discussing on pg 181 how to design assessments or rubrics based on the student's work. They talked about sorting the samples and writing down traits in clusters and then defining the traits. I must say this confused me because it went against everthing they seem to be teaching about backwards design. Maybe they were thinking that this is how you would refine the performance for the next group of students. My take on this was that they were giving an example of a way to create a rubric for your first time; though they may have been suggesting as you say, as a way to refine the rubric for future use. My concern with that is will the next group of students benefit from the same type of assessment? Although I see the merit in the backwards design of creating goals and then assessing on those goals I still become concerned that in a way we are still teaching to the test but just calling it a different name. (Gretchen)

How ironic that I am reading about rubrics and the implications for giving grades at the time when report cards are due. We are having Parent Teacher Conferences this week at my school and one of the things that I have been looking at is the grades rubric/criteria of the teachers. There was an interesting comment made on page 177 which said, "Averaging a learner's intial versus final level of comprehension of a complex idea will not provide an accurate representation of her understanding." I recognize that, as a teacher, I frequently did just this. I gave grades on some work without necessarily considering the appropriate weight of each criterion and then I averaged those grades over time in order to get a final grade. This is one of the things that I warn my teachers about. In fact, instead of the regular report cards, we are using (especially in the primary grades) standards based reports. With this, teachers are able to use a rubric along with clearly defined criteria in order to deduce that a student is making adequate progress, proficient, lacking in understanding/transferability of skill, etc. (Ugochi)

I don’t use rubrics in my teaching and they’re something I’ve never really thought of using. Did you learn about these in your teacher education program? Does it seem to make sense to consider using more desciptive means to assess? When I have used them (in my undergrad classes and student teaching) they were definitely more of the holistic type, although after reading this chapter I feel the analytic type makes more sense - they seem to correspond well with standards-based report cards, which I’m sure most of us use. I see the value in using rubrics and I think they do help focus assessment more on understanding, it’s just finding the time to create them. Go to [|www.rubistar.com] and it does it for you. As far as descriptive feedback I do try to give that as much as possible, especially on my students’ writing pieces. I also found the idea of grading for correctness vs. grading for understanding interesting, although I think that grading for understanding would be difficult with the amount of information we’re required to teach. This chapter (like ones past) presented a lot of useful information, I’m just feeling overwhelmed with it all at this point – I feel like I basically need to re-learn how to be a teacher! I am overwhelmed every day... but I try to accept it as a part of the work .(Jen) In some crazy way I think that being overwhelmed means that you are a good teacher because those that are content or happy I think have become complacent. They are not being reflective of their work and are happy being static. It sucks though that we must feel this way. It definitely makes our jobs that much harder to do. (Gretchen) (Jen)

I definitely like the idea of grading for understanding and not just correctness. (But doesn't the information have to be correct to lead to understanding, see I just do not fully agree with that line of thinking. How can you not pay too much attention to correctness when it has to be important to fully understanding.)Julie I don't think that you should not pay attention to correctness that's not what I am saying. Of course if your students are not getting any questions right then they probably don't understand the material. What I mean is that just because your students are getting an answer right does not mean they fully understand the material. Exactly! A lot of times in my life I have gotten questions correct that I did not truly understand. I think my thought was that teachers cant just give out a paper or test and think that the students responses or correctness in the test will fully determine whether they truly understand the material-Dan. I think this chapter gives some go to set up rubrics and grading criteria. I don't have too much experience with making rubrics besides in my education classes but I think they are a good way to grade your students work because it lays down everything that you are looking for from your students, at leas the analytical rubric does. I think laying out criteria is the most important point and needs to be shared with your students. I think if your students know what you are expecting from them then they may be more likely to write the paper or do the project the way you want them to. Doesn't this hinder their creativity though? I was going more for the idea of letting your students know that you will grade the paper based on certain criteria's such as, grammar and supported arguments. If the students know they have to have four arguments supported with evidence to back them then they will most likely include that in the paper. The rubric would just act as a more detailed set of instructions for your students to follow-Dan. I agree the rubric becomes a guideline. If they are approaching the assignment from the way you want then they might really get the understanding that you are looking for. After the criteria and rubric is in place that is only half the battle though. I think detailed responses to the students is a must. I know rubrics display what you are looking for but sometimes the rubrics will say something like "the student displayed good arguments". The problem is that even though the rubric says they need to display good arguments and have evidence the student may think that they have. Teachers need to give descriptive feedback as to why they met or did not meet that criteria. Often times teachers create a rubric and just give the grades and do not explain their reasons for the grade on the rubric. Descriptive grading will help the student better understand what they did wrong and what they still need to learn. (Dan). I agree that descriptive feedback is necessary for students to better understand/see their progress but sometimes that's difficult to get through to them. My students, for example, have formative and summative writing assessments which are both assessed with a rubric (kind of a combination of an analytical and a holistic rubric but leaning toward the holistic - not exactly 6-faceted like they describe in the book). Each time I grade their writing, I make corrections as well as comments and only 10% of the students actually looked at any of it. Unless I sit down with each individual student and //discuss// their assessments, most of them don't even bother to look at the feedback - ARGH!!! (By the way, one thing I found very interesting was the "Implication for Giving Grades" on p. 177. I had never thought about the fact that final grades don't actually reflect a student's final understanding of a subject. I mean, they kind of do because they are a compilation of all of the final unit grades but if homework is included in a grade, that makes the "grade of understanding" inaccurate, too! Wow...) I am so glad that you brought this point up because I thought it was really thought provoking. How accurate are the grades when you are averaging understanding from beginning to end? In most cases you figure the understanding of a subject at the beginning of a quarter is very limited and if you taught correctly then by the end the understanding is much deeper. I really love the statement that their understanding should be determined by a scrap book and not a snapshot. I make portfolios for each one of my preschoolers showing various work samples, notes, and photos that document their progress over the year for this reason. (Gretchen)  This point caught me as I was reading as well. It is one of the reasons I really like the elementary report cards with the S-satisfactory, P-progressing & U-unsatisfactory grades. This way students and parents know which specific areas children are grasping and which they are struggling with vs a letter grade which doesn't take into account any progress as it is averaged from the beginning of the quarter. (PS - I think we should bring in a rubric to analyze - see if it is 6-faceted, analitic, and/or holistic - on Tuesday... I'm curious to see what everyone else uses.)(Michelle). This is a great idea. I will put the word out to teachers...

I immediately thought of my cornerbacks on the football team when I read "when identifying appropriate criteria, we must clarify a set of independent variables in the performance that affect our judgment of quality", instead of using criteria that is simply easy to see. For instance, it would be easy to say that a corner did well when the receiver did not catch the ball and did poorly when the receiver did catch the ball. This, however, is not a very valid way of judging a cornerback's performance. There is much more that goes into assessing his play, such as position, footwork and playing his responsibility. The line on page 189, "It doesn't matter what tests you use as long as they are varied and many", struck me as interesting. I think that this certainly helps with the reliability of the assessment. However, I would change the word "tests" to "assessments". These assessments don't always come as tests. They can be as informal as reading the students' faces to see how well they understand the material. (Chase) I feel like this chapter was pushing for everything to be graded with a rubric, and that most assessments are formal and summative. I did take an easier breath when they stuck that quote in as a reminder that they agree with multiple forms of assessment. The focus for the chapter was very obvious and I felt overwhelmed thinking/feeling that ALL my "tests" would have to go through the rubric process.

I love to work with rubrics. I use a website [|www.rubistar.com] that helps you to build your own rubric.  Rubistar is a great site! I worked with it quite a bit in my undergrad and have continued to use it since.  It is very easy to use. In general, rubrics are easy to use and easy to explain. It is a way to improve student performance, showing teacher's expectation and evaluated areas. Also, most of the times it helps students to become more judgmental of the quality of their own and others work. I agree! I think students are more critical of themselves and others when they're given the opportunity to assess. I think it's great to make them take ownership of the task as well. Often times I've felt that students can catch their own mistakes, or look to improve pieces of their learning, if they're given the opportunity/proper tools to reflect on their learning, quite often through rubrics. They can find areas to improve and quite often ask to re-do pieces before having it formally assessed?  I let the students to grade their peers by using the same rubric that I use to grade them. Students enjoy to be the judges of others. I use rubric when students are doing an individual or group projects. Two years ago, when I was teaching 8 grade Science, I asked my students after they finished their project to create their own grading rubric and most of them did really well, some others didn't have a clue of what they were doing. I use rubrics as a formative assessment; What does this look like as a formative assessment? How do you use rubrics for that?  I believe that rubric is a tool of assessment but it is not 100% accurate. Most rubrics don't reflect students' understanding. Anyway, personally I use it as a formative assessment and not as a summative assessment. (Silvia)

<span style="color: #00802f; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I felt that this sentence set the tone for the entire chapter, "Clear and appropriate criteria specify what we should look at to determine the degree of understanding and serve us in making a judgment-based process consistent and fair." I completely agree with the chapter saying how building a rubric relies on an analysis of student performance. I created a project and attached a rubric to it but since I had two advanced classes and two regular classes plus special needs students, I had to create 3 different rubrics to compliment my students abilities. <span style="color: #008080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am so excited to hear that you created three different rubrics to fit all of those students! That shows that you are definitely looking at the individual needs of you students. I am sure it was time consuming. As a student in high school I was rarely given a rubric on my projects, then in college 90% of my projects/assignments had rubrics attached to them. It just helped me as a student to stay focused on the goal of the assignment since I could easily get side tracked. <span style="color: #008080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The idea of rubrics focusing your attention better is an asset. However, I still think that sometimes the teachable moments and unexpected or found learning that students happen upon on their own can maybe be hampered a little by rubrics. I know someone else questioned the crimp on creativity earlier in the wiki. (Gretchen) <span style="color: #00802f; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I am not sure if I can agree with their statement that teachers typically pay too much attention to correctness and too little attention to the degree of understanding. As a social studies teacher you have to make sure statements and facts are correct (which I'm sure it would be for other subjects as well) but its what they do with those facts and how they can explain them to help determine their grade. (Julie)

I remember hating rubrics as a student, but I did find them valuable as a teacher especially during parent/teacher conference time. They were a good "system" to use to explain to parents the expectations in a clear and consistent manner and help students understand their expectations as well. I agree with you in the fact that rubrics help when it comes to showing parents and students your expectations. Its also a good way to cover your butt when when a parent complains about his or her child's grade! (Jason) This chapter talked about the 2 types of rubrics. The Holistic rubrics-- (an overall impression yielding a single score) and the Analytic rubrics (the distinct traits or dimensions judged separately). We know that UbD wants us to be "assessors of understanding" and use the analytic rubrics. Which type of rubrics do you guys use? I am not currently teaching so therefore I am not currently using rubrics, but I do agree that the use of analytic rubrics would be more appropriate to use because they consider the difference between the big picture and the technicalities. In other words, If my student really demonstrated an understanding, or big idea, or competency; but made errors in grammar, punctuation, or spelling--- I would want to give credit where credit was due. As for reading that we should be incorporating the 6 facets into our use of rubrics---I felt a little overwhelmed and again, I'm not even teaching. For the current teachers in our class, is this possible? If so, how? Does the chart on the spread of pages 178 and 179 reflect how to do so? What does this look like? I read everyone's responses and I continue to feel like I am in my own seperate bubble. I have to follow standards just like everyone else and I am constantly checking to see if my students are meeting their IEP goals and I have to give some state tests, but I have some differences too (I do not do report cards). Do you think that rubrics work well though, with special needs kids, maybe even more than general education? In a way I guess it is a bit of a luxury because I am little more free to build my own assessments. However, I must say that I am still overwhelmed by the idea of creating rubrics and making them fit six facets ( but it is easy to quickly build up many criteria to your rubric almost like a runaway train). I have used a rubric in my classroom more for a teacher aid than anything. Because I work with three other teachers in the room we all look at things a little bit differently. A rubric helps to focus all of us onto the same page to make sure we look for and assess the same things on each student. In many ways, they are probably still are very holistic because my students do not read or write so there are not as many areas to hold them accountable. We try to iron out a lot of the validity issues ahead of time. Try is the key word. We try to discuss their results afterwards and find where the holes may be (assessment or child understanding). The feedback is a little more tricky. We are constantly trying to give the students constructive feedback throughout the day. However, I generally do not let the students know when I am assessing them specifically because I feel they are too young for that, and they often freeze up. However, I do make my expectations or criteria known before they begin most assessments or activities. As an aside we had an inservice several years ago on how to appropriately give feedback in art class. I really try to use ideas from that in my everyday conversations with the children. The idea of constant assessment is a big reality in my classroom, and we are overwhelmed and trying to find ways to make it work with out going crazy and still get the information that we need to properly facilitate student understanding. (Gretchen)

I use rubrics on larger projects that I create for my students. I agree that projects are good places to use rubrics, rather than the everyday assignments. A detailed rubric is a great resource for not only the students but teachers as well. I know in college I prefer assignments that include a detailed rubric letting me know exactly what I need to do to receive an A on the assignment. And as a teacher it makes grading projects easier and more consistent throughout all the projects. The rubrics that I have created in the past have been analytic rubrics. I divide the project into separate parts and grade each part individually. For example I created a rubric for a project that included categories such as; creativity, technology used, presentation, visual aid, resources, and whether the content presented was correct or not. This rubric was a summative assessment that covered all parts of their project. I find rubrics difficult to create, but if done correctly they are very reliable. Rubrics are time consuming and impossible to do for every assignment. I will admit however once they are created they make grading and my expectations of the students easier to follow and understand. The students know exactly what I expect from them and there are no excuses when they receive whatever grade they get. (Jason)

Chapter (8) details with two different types of of rubric. The first of the two is the Holistic, this rubric gives out a single score for a ''product or performance' of a students work. I'm familiar with both words holistic and rubric, but I have never seen or heard of them being placed together before reading this chapter. I'm no a fan of the holistic rubric. I AM NOT EITHER! That is want I said in my post below! I feel with this tool, holistic rubric. we are putting to much judgement on one thing. Like the the author states, what if one paper is mechanically flawed but filled with wonderful arguments; and the converse of this statement. I have always seen more of the analytic rubric. Going through the education classes here at Otterbein I became very familiar with the concept. Most of the projects and paper that we were asked to do were graded off of rubrics. I found them to be helpful if they were created with some thought and were appropriately suited for the assignment. Another wonderful part of rubrics is that a student can focus on certain aspects of it. Like Jason said above, he has a technology used portion. If a student is very interested in bring a lot of flash to their topic this is a great opportunity for them. (Chase s)

Karen Chapter 8 I find this chapter a bit hard to read in the sense that, like som many things it looks great on paper and in theory, but it seems so time consuming and that scares me. I could spend all my time planning and creating assessment, and then have nothing to put in front of my students. Maybe it gets easier with practice and experience? I like the idea of rubics even though I have not really gotten the chance to create them. I really like the sentence on page 175, "sophisitcated analysis vs. mere reacalling. This sentence and the whole book for that matter is for us teachers to strive to get deeper meaning and understanding out of our students. I know that holisitc approach is to get a general idea, but I really like the idea of the anaylitical approach because it gets at the the areas of performace and understanding. On page 174 it lists the different parts of writing and that a student can be good at word chice, yet lack in sentence fluency. It is just a great way to really dig deeper and to truly assess every aspect of student understanding. It talks a lot about the fact that educators and most people focus on being correct and this idea does not really mean that at all. This idea is on page 182 with the bot who was an immigrant and his lack of math skills could be his limited English. This scenario just made me stop and think all of the factors that can go into student performance and I better create varous forms of assessment to combat all of these factors." WE HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT THE PERFORMANCES WE DEMAND ARE APPROPRIATE TO THE PATICULAR UNDERSTANDINGS THAT ARE SOUGHT"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!