Rubrics - a way forward.

Rubrics and continuations by @sherrattsam article on  popped into my feed at a perfect time. I have been reflecting on how I can make mine more student centered and not just something I feel I 'have' to do at the end of a unit. 

At the moment I am working with a Graduate student and the conversation about assessment came up. My intern was finishing off his 'post' test (requirement from Grad school) and came across Child X's work.  

He was in a dilemma as he knew that Child X had made improvements. He had been engaged, shared ideas and answered class discussion, yet based on his rubric Child X hadn't passed. His personal OTJ judgement was that he had worked extremely hard on our Matariki topic yet he hadn't meet the criteria on the rubric to 'pass'. 

We discussed the fact that when assessing it should be meaningful and provide formative information not only for the teacher but for the student. To me assessments need to show a child their 'next step'.


One of the issues I have with rubrics are the ones written where certain students will never get off the lowest point despite their best efforts. How are we promoting success if we write them like this? How does that child feel knowing that they will never reach the middle or the top? This could also be said for the student at the other end of the spectrum. The child who will achieve. How are they challenged? 

Language! Even I have been guilty of this in the past. Creating a rubric that is full of jargon that won't help the students achieve. 

I will admit, I really don't like the word rubric- I'm more a Success Criteria sort of person where All students can achieve at their level. It allows them to achieve success but also means that they also have next steps to achieve. This is something rubrics don't often allow. 

One of the problems is that a lot of rubrics are designed by the teacher rather than co-constructed with the class/students. (yes been guilty of this as well!).


My focus next term is to work on this and create criteria's that are created with the students rather than for the students. 

• where they think the learning is going

• what they’re looking for from themselves

• what they’re looking for from their peers

• how they might reach – or get close to that

• who might guide them in that direction (Rubrics and Continuum 2017)

This is something I would like to focus more on next term, co-creating with my students so that they are setting their own goals and beginning to communicate what they need to achieve.  Obviously I will need to scaffold this and provide models but I feel it will be more successful then rubrics I have used in the past. 

Self Reflection.

One of the reasons I haven’t been blogging for a while is because I have been struggling to write anything positive. I will admit this year has been a struggle. I am teaching a year 2/3 class and to be honest, I am finding it very difficult to enjoy it.

I am WAY out of my comfort zone and spend a lot of weekends wondering if I am actually the best person to teach this year group.

My comfort zone is older children. Give me some of these students in year 5/6 and I will absolutely love them! But at this age I am not so sure.

I am reflecting a lot on my own teaching and learning. My planning is for ever changing each day and some weeks I completely re-write what I am doing.

I look at my assessments and wonder how will I move a certain child on to reach a level that seems so far away!
Post assessments have me questioning my own teaching style. Did I expect too much from some individuals? Did I rush through the learning? Do I need to give this year group more time? More hands on? Learn through play?

My biggest worry is that I will fail these children.

As a teacher I feel I’m not experienced enough at teaching younger students to read and write and feel I am always swimming in the deep end. I then begin to second guess myself and my own teaching ability.

Is this where I want to be? 

Writing inquiry - Week 1 examples

Examples of my students writing.

Students were given the screen shot and watched the animation again. Also included was a range of vocabulary which students were encouraged to use in their own writing.

Students took part in shared writing and then were asked to go and write their own opening. Students were supported and guided when needed.

Year 4 student

Year 3 Student

Writing Inquiry Week One

As I embark on my first inquiry I have decided to record my findings here as I know that questions, queries and uncertainties can be answered. I am not sure how to approach this inquiry and what is the best way to record all the evidence, information and findings I come across so any advice will be appreciated.

The four students I have chosen are students are writing below the National Standards for their age. All but one is a year three student.

My year four student is writing at a level 1A (OTJ- Overall Teacher Judgment)  but it is not always consistent

All my year threes are writing at a 1P  (OTJ) depending on the day.

According to National Standards  in year 3 my students need to be doing this;

Students will independently write texts that are clearly directed to a particular audience. They will organise their texts according to a basic structure that meets their purpose for writing (for example, a story with a beginning, middle, and an end). These texts will include, when appropriate:

·         content, mostly relevant, that conveys several experiences, items of information, and/or ideas relating to a curriculum topic and that sometimes includes detail and/or comment

·         mainly simple and compound sentences that vary in their beginnings and lengths and in the simple conjunctions used

·         attempts at some complex sentences

·         some specific vocabulary that is appropriate to the content of the text.

By the end of year 4 they need to be able to;

Students will independently write texts, using language and a simple text structure that suit their audience and purpose (for example, when recounting, describing, narrating, reporting, or explaining). These texts will include, when appropriate:

·         content that is mostly relevant to the curriculum task, covers a range of ideas, experiences, or items of information, and often includes detail and/or comment supporting the main points

·         mainly simple and compound sentences that vary in their beginnings structures, and lengths and are mostly correct grammatically

·         attempts at complex sentences

·         words and phrases, in particular, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, that clearly convey ideas, experiences, or information.

Below is the unaided piece of writing I gave my students last week.

Year 4

Year 3

Year 3

Year 3

End of Year Report

Reports throughout my years of teaching have gone from handwritten to typed, three to four pages of written comments about EVERY subject to 1-2 pages of short, sharp and to the point comments. Schools comment on their values and now look at aspects other than reading, writing and maths.

As a school we have moved away from our previous report system to a new one. We already had a very simple format that didn’t involve a lot of writing (which I loved) but it was labouring in the fact that the computer system we used wasn’t very user friendly.

 Because we changed over computer programmes, we couldn’t transfer our old report template over. Also rather than making more changes in two years which would cost quite a considerable amount the decision was made to create a new report format to take over to the new site.

I have to admit the report looks great.  A4 double sided, atheistically pleasing and straight forward. All our assessments are computerised and therefore automatically update into the report. As I now teach year 3/4  I have to deal with Interim and end of year reports. This tells me straight away which report I need and for what child. It calculates attendance and puts in all the necessary information regarding National assessments and even tells parents when their child’s next report will be sent out. What could be easier?

Reading, writing and maths comments are of a decent size and we have added in next steps for parents so they can help at home. Our Values and Graduate Profile are simple click in the circle to show them where they are at so very easy to do.

I also like that we have changed the wording in our reports. I was never happy with the ‘below standard’ word as we all know students learn at their own pace and some may just not be there ‘yet’. I like the wording ‘Learning Towards as I think it is more positive. I am still not too sure about the ‘Effort’ comments of ‘improving’, ‘expected’ and ‘Consistently high’.’ Improving’ I don’t mind but the word ‘expected’ I am not sure about. To me it sounds like we are saying that no effort was actually put in as that is what we think your child is capable of anyway.  Maybe it is just me? I find the whole notion of how some teachers decide what ‘effort’ level a child should have very interesting (maybe a post on that one day).

My only other issue was the ‘General Comment’ only two lines. I guess some teachers would love that but the teacher/parent in me always feels this is the most important part of a report. As a teacher and a parent it lets me highlight other areas or attributes a child has that may not always come through in the reading, writing, and maths comments. Let’s be honest not every child is going exceed these areas and it is one area that teachers can add to that makes a student shine.  And as a parent that’s what I want. It also gives teachers the chance to really talk about the student where the other comments are what they can/cannot do academically.

So I made a comment about this. The only issue by allowing another line (which I still don’t think is enough space) we would then have to create a new page. So my question is do ALL other schools for every report have the Learning Levels of the NZ curriculum on them? As my theory is, take this off more room for the comments. In the other areas we comment where they are so do we need this? Could it be placed on a separate piece of paper?

Ideas?

Slow Writing

Twitter has been a constant source of ideas and inspiration for once again it led me to a different way of approaching writing.  Anything about writing usually grabs my attention these days as for the first time in many years I had no answers as to why my class struggled with writing.

I had a class that orally produce wonderful ideas during shared writing but when it came to them independently producing their own work it was like pulling teeth. We had the vocabulary wall; I modelled sentences, used creative prompts, media etc. but the harder I seem to work the less engaged they became. The last thing I wanted to do was turn them off writing so I began to question what I could do. Thankfully a tweet from @redgierob  came just at the right time.

Slow writing is getting students to slow right down in order to think about their technique.  The idea is to get students to slow the hell down and approach each word, sentence and paragraph with love and attention. Obviously they’ll write less but what they do write will be beautifully wrought and finely honed’. David Didau 

Thankfully my class was already clued up on different types of literacy elements thanks to all the work we did on this during our poetry slam unit. Therefore I didn’t have to spend any extra time teaching them these concepts.

In our first lessons there were a few hiccups. Because it was set out as below, some of my students completely forgot everything I had taught them about a sentence and tried to write a sentence on one line! Once we got over that hurdle everything started to come together.

Sentence one must appeal to the senses.
Sentence two must use three adjectives.
Sentence three must start with an adverb.
Sentence four must contain a connective.
Sentence five must use exactly three words.
Sentence six must be a question.

I used some short films courtesy of The Literacy Shed (which I love!).  We used the Ghostly Shed as I knew it would grab my boy’s attention. The great thing about these films were that most were less than two minutes long and there was no dialogue meaning the students had to use the music and visual to ‘read’ the story.

I spent the week working on this and each day I would add six more different sentences so by the end of the week we had four different models up on our board. As my students became more confident in this process they began to mix the sentences around. Students also began to realize that there was usually a pattern to the six sentences and that it was quite easy to create their own.

What transpired was some amazing writing. Even better, I had students who usually struggled with writing now enjoying it and telling me how easy it was to write!

Mark for quality not quantity

I am a BIG fan of quality marking.  I am pretty much a teacher that believes if we are expecting children to complete something in their books then we should be marking it and rewarding it with an appropriate response. Not just a ‘well done’ or ‘good’. And yes I know it is sometimes near impossible to mark work every day but then I also raise the question ‘why do we have to have written work in books every day?

There has been a big shift in the way we mark and many teachers have taken to using a whole range of methods to assess. Used properly, marking and feedback are essential tools for ensuring that children learn more effectively and understand what they are aiming for, and they can provide strategies for success and ways to move forward.

Research (‘Inside the Black Box’ Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, 1998) has shown that there has been a tendency to mark for quantity and presentation of the work, rather than for quality. We have all been victims of that red pen scrawling’ please keep your work tidy’ or ‘you must write more’. The problem is how does that help the student? What do they gain from comments like this?

 Mathematics is one area I think we undervalue quality comments. We tend to only mark these books with a tick or a cross (or a dot)? Why are we not asking student’s questions based on the lesson? Next step questions to move them on?  Solve a problem, another question to cement the learning? Ask them what their next step would be? Or a range of HOTs (higher order questions) to get them really thinking.

Children need to be given a clear idea of how to improve their work, move forward in their learning and achieve their goals. If we continue to just tick, write ‘well done’ or ‘good’ how are we as teachers moving them forward? What we need to learn to do is have manageable and effective ways of marking and provide feedback to pupils so that they can move forward in their learning. Children need to understand their achievements and know exactly what they must do next to make progress.