The Single Point Rubric Recently, I read “Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics” by Jennifer Gonzalez, of Cult of Pedagogy. It introduced me to the Single-Point Rubric and this tool has transformed my teaching. I made some hacks to this rubric to better meet my needs and, ultimately, allow me to provide more thorough and meaningful feedback to my students. I’ve had issues with the traditional four-point rubric because, despite their attempt to be objective, they end up limiting a teacher’s ability to provide students with personalized feedback. The Single-Point Rubric simply identifies the objectives of an assignment but allows the teacher to assess a limitless spectrum of possible responses student can offer. In Maja Wilson’s Rethinking Rubrics she points out that holistic and analytic rubrics drive a teacher to think only about the rubric while using it to assess student work. Traditional rubrics define what is standard, what is below standard, and what exceeds the standard. Like this:
Can You Simplify Your Rubrics to a Single Point? - The Art of Ed Magazine / Can You Simplify Your Rubrics to a Single Point? Rubrics. Is there really a clear cut way to efficiently and effectively use them in the art room? They are often too specific, too vague, undermine points for trivial things or just plain don’t work as a measurement for student growth in art. These types of rubrics tend to use a grid of 4 or 5 learning targets with various levels of growth listed across the top. If your answer to these questions is anything like mine, it’s because we feel we have to use measurements like this. I recently discovered this idea from The Cult of Pedagogy blogger Jennifer Gonzalez. Below is an example I’ve used recently with my middle school students. Download the Rubric Now! You might be wondering how using alternative assessments such as a single-point rubric can translate into actual grades. What are some ways you’ve improved rubric use in your art room?
Article: Learning to Love Assessment When I was a young teacher—young both in years and in understanding of the profession I had entered—I nonetheless went about my work as though I comprehended its various elements. I immediately set out to arrange furniture, put up bulletin boards, make lesson plans, assign homework, give tests, compute grades, and distribute report cards as though I knew what I was doing. I had not set out to be a teacher, and so I had not really studied education in any meaningful way. I had not student taught. The one element I knew I was unprepared to confront was classroom management. Now, more than three decades into the teaching career I never intended to have, it's difficult for me to remember exactly when I had the legion of insights that have contributed to my growth as an educator. Following are 10 understandings about classroom assessment that sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly illuminated my work. The formulation of one insight generally prepared the way for the next.
From Traditional Conclusions To Claims, Evidence, And Reasoning Constructing Explanations and Engaging in Argument from Evidence are two Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) practices I have heavily emphasized in my classroom over the past few years. My immersion in NGSS professional development that focuses on these practices has allowed me to develop new ways to engage my students and assess their abilities. I teach seventh grade in a selective enrollment school in Chicago. When I first started teaching, I used a traditional lab report rubric (Figure 1) to help scaffold the conclusion writing of my students. The rubric focused on the skills we had started at the beginning of the year, collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, explaining data, and reflecting on the work done in the lab. Figure 1 In the beginning, some students had difficulty explaining their data; they could only state some numbers or a qualitative change they had seen. Modifying the Rubric Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4
Tame the Beast: Tips for Designing and Using Rubrics Rubrics are a beast. Grrrrrrr! They are time-consuming to construct, challenging to write and sometimes hard to use effectively. They are everywhere. 1) Use Parallel Language Make sure that the language from column to column is similar, that syntax and wording correspond. 2) Use Student Friendly Language! Tip #1 hints at a larger issue. 3) Use the Rubric with Your Students... You have to use the rubric with the students. 4) Don't Use Too Many Columns This has to do with organization in general. 5) Common Rubrics and Templates are Awesome Avoid rubric fatigue, as in creating rubrics to the point where you just can't do it any more. 6) Rely on Descriptive Language The most effective descriptions you can use are specific descriptions. These are some useful tips for rubrics, and I'm sure you have many yourselves that come from your experience as educators.
5 Types of Rubrics to Use in Your Art Classes - The Art of Ed Most art teachers use rubrics to assess students’ work. Rubrics are a great way to make sure students understand the expectations of the assignment. Because all the criteria are clearly defined, they make grading 100 still life artworks much easier. I use the term “easier” loosely here; we all know grading 100 artworks is never easy! Choosing what type of rubric to use in your classes is an important choice. First, let’s talk about how rubrics can describe the criteria. 1. This type of rubric defines characteristics of a successful artwork. The strengths of this type of rubric are you can share it with students to communicate a broad understanding of what makes “quality” work. The weakness of this type of rubric is that it is very broad. 2. A task-specific rubric is, as the name suggests, much more specific. What is great about this rubric is that it makes expectations for each assignment very clear. Next, let’s talk about the structure of the rubric. 3. Download Now 4. Download Now 5.
Single Point Rubric Grading... by Walton Burns Traditional rubrics spell out criteria for every area of assessment and every grade or level of student achievement. A single-point rubric only contains what the student is expected to do to succeed. That makes it faster to write, faster to use, and easier for students to read and understand. All that without sacrificing space to add personal comments so the student can see what they still need to work on and where they exceeded your expectations. Why Use a Single-Point Rubric? * Traditional rubrics take a long time to write. * Due to all that text, rubrics can take a surprisingly long time to grade as you try to figure out which box a student’s work fits into. * Students often don’t read all the text that a traditional rubric contains. * Such a clear focus on expectations builds student autonomy as students are more easily able to self-assess. You can check out this video on how single-point rubrics work as well This zip file contains: 4 sample rubrics for writing assignments in PDF.
Article: How Classroom Assessments Improve Learning Large-scale assessments, like all assessments, are designed for a specific purpose. Those used in most states today are designed to rank-order schools and students for the purposes of accountability—and some do so fairly well. But assessments designed for ranking are generally not good instruments for helping teachers improve their instruction or modify their approach to individual students. First, students take them at the end of the school year, when most instructional activities are near completion. The assessments best suited to guide improvements in student learning are the quizzes, tests, writing assignments, and other assessments that teachers administer on a regular basis in their classrooms. Despite the importance of assessments in education today, few teachers receive much formal training in assessment design or analysis. To use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments in three important ways. For Students
Grades Fail at Motivating Students. Intrinsic Motivation Works Better. We are approaching the two month mark since schools shut their doors in response to COVID-19, and we are now entering a new phase in the learning process. Despite an optimistic start, educators and students alike are realizing that remote learning is not all that it’s cracked up to be. When distance learning started it was a novelty for students; it was fun to sit at home and “go to school” without ever leaving the bed or getting out of their sweatpants. It was funny to see the inside of a teacher’s home through their zoom screen, proving that they do actually exist outside of the classroom. That novelty has officially worn off. As bad as things are, it appears that things are going to get worse before they get better. Historically, we’ve mandated students attend school, but we’ve incentivized them to do well by rewarding them with grades, GPAs and class rankings. But thanks to COVID-19, grades have suddenly lost their meaning. Perhaps all this is for the best. Letting Go of Grades
Rubrics 101 A rubric is commonly defined as a tool that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing criteria, and for each criteria, describing levels of quality (Andrade, 2000; Arter & Chappuis, 2007; Stiggins, 2001). Rubrics contain three essential features: criteria students are to attend to in completing the assignment, markers of quality (typically rating scales), and scoring. Criteria are used in determining the level at which student work meets expectations. Markers of quality give students a clear idea about what must be done to demonstrate a certain level of mastery, understanding, proficiency (i.e., "excellent" does xyz, "fair" does only xy or yz, "poor" does only x or y or z). Rubrics aren't just for summative evaluation. Why You Should Consider Rubrics Rubrics help instructors: Rubrics help students: Developing a Rubric First Things, First It will be overwhelming to create a rubric for every assignment in a class at once, so start by creating one rubric for one assignment.
Why We Need to Move Away from SMART Goals and Towards New Forms of Classroom Assessment Every new school year breathes new life into my professional career. After a summer of relaxation and self-directed professional development (which is the most important type of PD), I’m ready to return to my classroom to help students discover and refine new skills. While that may be the case again this year, I also find myself becoming increasingly unsettled as my career progresses. My uneasiness is a culmination of years of reflection on my classroom mission. My district has taken on new initiatives the past few years (as all districts do) to solve the well-documented, disconnected nature between high school graduates and workplace preparedness. The reconfiguring and implementation of these two areas—curriculum and assessment—undoubtedly costs money and time. The research and literature discussing skill-building for today’s workforce mostly address the same reality: schools are missing the most important factors for encouraging future success. “I’m not anti-measurement.
How I use the Single Point Rubric to Provide Feedback | My Life as a Teacher I have been using the single point rubric template I found on the cultofpedagogy website by Jennifer Gonzalez. My students find the tool useful because I am able to give them written feedback based on the criteria instead of giving them a grade. I then meet with students in small groups and we go over the feedback and reteach if necessary. Link to multiplication and division of fractions document: Single-Point-Rubric CCSS Mult and Divide Fractions Fifth Grade Link to the document below: Single-Point-Rubric-Writing an opinion Fifth Grade Like this: Like Loading... Article: A Better Way for Quizzing I feel like I'm using a lot of survey tools to basically replace the way I used to give paper quizzes. Is there a better way to use technology to check for understanding?—Surveying the Room A: Survey tools are a great way to get a speedy read of a classroom and collect information quickly. Some digital survey tools that are popular for administering quick quizzes include visual aids like a pie chart or bar graph to help make sense of everyone's data. In addition to creating a quick quiz with a tool like Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, you can use digital tools to capture student understanding with voice and video. One way to check for understanding is screencasting. When you collect information in this way, you can hear a student's thought process as they work through a task or respond to a prompt. You can also use technology to check for understanding through video exit tickets. EdTech Essentials
5 Ways to Worry-Proof the Student Feedback Process - Cincinnati, OH Student feedback can be heavy. I know that it can be an invaluable tool in improving instruction, but collecting, interpreting, and using the feedback can be grueling nonetheless. First, it is scary to be judged (especially by learners that may harbor grudges from you upholding the policy on "no late work" or even from the younger, hormonal teens that are driven by their emotions). In hopes of making the student feedback process more bearable this semester, I decided to focus on specific ways to use the feedback. 1. I love the organizational properties that tables provide for data. Another option would be creating a table of the themes that become evident from the feedback. 2. Do you remember the movie "Meet the Fockers" and how Deniro kicked his future son-in law Ben Stiller out of his 'friend circle'? 3. More than likely, your evaluations will include both positive and not-so-positive feedback. 4. No evaluation process is perfect. 5.