Week of December 5th Using the Rubric

The week of December 5^th. 

On Monday I had the rubric ready for them to review, ask question about, and revise.

Trait and Criteria	1 = NO!	2 = No But!	3 = Yes But!	4 = YES!
Concept of Writing: Students will use letter sounds/phonics to spell words, words will have proper spacing, letters will have consistent sizing, capital letters will used properly.	No words are spelled correct. No words are spaced properly. None of the letters are consistently sized. Capital letters are not used in the correct places.	Some words are spelled correct. Some words are spaced properly. Some letters are consistently sized. Some capital letters are used in the correct places.	Most words are spelled correct. Most words are spaced properly. Most letters are consistently sized. Most capital letters are used in the correct places.	All words are spelled correct. All words are spaced properly. All letters are consistently sized. Capital letters are used in the correct places.

I lead a discussion with them about the criteria to see if they had any other questions, to clarify their understanding, and to see if we wanted to make any revisions.  During the discussion, we re-clarified that some meant less than half, more meant more than half, proper spacing meant about one finger, and consistently sized meant all the short letters were the same height and all the tall letters were the same height.  The students chose not to change anything on the rubric.  I told them when they write today they will be using the rubric as a guide to help them make their writing better.  While they write, look at the rubric and look at the examples of the writing we scored; let the rubric and the examples help you.  When you think you’re done, use the rubric to score yourself, see what you scored your writing and revise your writing if you can make your writing better.  After you have made any changes, get together with your CF and you can read each others writing and see if you agree with the score together.  You and your CF will explain why and how you came up with the score.  You will then have a chance to revise your writing again.

This process took some time.  None of the students were ready to share their writing with their CF until the second day and some of the students didn’t share until the third day.  Some of the students were not even ready on the third day cause they wanted to make their writing the best they could.  I had all the students sharing what they had written even if they weren’t “quite ready” yet, so they could get a good feeling about the process.

I learned the students’ through this first process were excited about using the rubric “as a tool” to help them and most of the students were excited to share with their CF. Some of the students were apprehensive to share at first but, once they had a chance to share with their CF they enjoyed talking about the criteria and working together. 

What is Quality to my Second Grade Writers? 4=YES!

The next day, the students were eager to see their ideas under the examples on the smartboard.  I showed them the examples and the list of criteria we came up with under the examples.  I also had the examples ranked in-order from 4 to 1.  Under the best piece of writing (the 4), I listed in bullets: All words are spelled correct, All words have a consistent space (about one finger), All letters are consistently sized, Capital letters are used in the proper locations.  Under the poorest piece of writing (the 1), I listed: The words are not spelled correctly, The words do not have spaces between them, The letters are not consistently sized, Capital letters are mixed with lower case letters.  Under the 3 ranked piece I used the same criteria and used the word most of in front of the criteria.  Under the 2 ranked piece I used the word some of in front of the criteria. 

I started the lesson by having them look over what we did yesterday and do a turn and talk about the criteria and the numbers 4 to 1 by the examples.  Then, we had a discussion about the criteria and the numbers.  We discussed the words most of and some of in terms of giving one piece of writing a 3 and another a 2.  The students were a bit confused in this gray area of scoring until we talked more about what the quality of the writing meant in terms of the scoring 4-1.  I used the example from the student-created rubric model to further teach this gray area: Example: 4= YES! 3= YES BUT!  2= NO BUT!  1= NO!  Ask students to tell you about some of the mistakes they may have made in the past. When I used this example and talked about why the 3 was a yes but and the 2 was a no but, the students were able to grasp the concept. 

After the lesson, I told them on Monday I would have a rubric ready for them to look at and we would learn how we could use it to review our own writing to help make our writing better…for today, I want you to look at the criteria “what counts in our writing” and see how you can use these lists to make your writing better today and everyday.

Starting the Process of Student-created Rubrics with my Students

I began implementing the action process of having my students create rubrics for their writing on December 1^st.  From the conversation I had with my literacy specialist and from the data I collected and analyzed, I decided to start the process with the trait Concept of writing/craft.  I decided this because, the data I collected showed my students needed to learn more in the basics of concepts of writing.  They needed to focus on getting more letter sounds in their words, having consistent size and shape of their letters, having more consistent word spacing, and knowing where and when capital letters should be used. 

I began the process by making four examples of good work and poor work, which I put up on my smartboard.  Right away one student said, “Who wrote those bad words.” One piece was written perfectly with all the words spelled correctly, the letters had consistent size and shape, the word spacing was good, and capital letters were in the right places. Another piece was written totally opposite of previous and the other two were in-between; one closer to the good piece and one closer to the poor piece. I told the students we were going to be judges who get to review samples of work and then decide what makes one piece of writing good and the other one not so good.  I told them we are going to score the best writing with a 4, the poorest writing with a 1 and the other ones we had to decide if it was a 3 or a 2.  So, we reviewed the examples of good and poor writing and had a class discussion about their observations.  Before our discussion I let them look at the writing for a minute then, I had them turn and talk to their Critical Friend (CF)—(Super serious partner) about what they noticed.  As we discussed the writing I wrote their responses down on chart paper.  I was pleased that the students were easily able to pick out the best writing and the poorest writing right away.  As we talked about why they thought the good piece was good and deserving of the 4 they were able to say they could read it and the words are spelled right.  When we talked about the poorest writing deserving a 1 the students were able to say it’s hard to read, the words are pushed together, the letters aren’t the same size, and the words aren’t spelled right.  As the discussion continued I helped them transform their vocabulary to use words like consistent when talking about size and shape, and proper spacing when talking about words and letters being pushed together.  When we continued to discuss and judge the other pieces the students began to notice smaller detail and used words like some and more, and they noticed where capital letters were being used and not used.  After the discussion I told the students we would be putting our list of “what counts in our writing” on the examples on the smartboard for tomorrow and we will talk about why our criteria is important to the quality of the writing…for today, think about what counts in your writing as you write today and everyday.

Finding a Place to Start

Last month I met with my schools literacy specialist.  I told her about my action research and how I wanted to create rubrics with my students so they could learn more about the writing process, the traits of writing, the criteria for good writing, how to determine good writing and poor writing, how to determine the quality of their own writing, and how they can use the rubric to help them become better writers.  We discussed typical early second grade writing and my group of writers to determine if my group was typical of early second grade writers.  They are.  Then, we looked at the districts writing rubric.  The writing rubric is a K-8 continuum for assessing narrative writing with 10 levels of criteria; one being low and ten the highest, the traits being evaluated are structure, elaboration, concept of writing/craft and meaning/significance. After looking at the rubric we discussed where second grade writing typically lies on the continuum for assessing WOD scores and how those levels equate to a writing score for report card grading.  For second grade a level 2 on the continuum is a 1 on the report card which means below standard, a level 3 is a 2 on the report card which means approaching the standard, a level 4 is a 3 which means they are meeting the standard and any level above a 4 means they are exceeding the standard in second grade.  We then looked at the criteria for each trait at each level to see what that writing could look like.  From there, we discussed my students writing and where we thought a good starting point would be for them to learn more about the writing process, the traits of writing, the criteria for good writing, how to determine good writing and poor writing, how to determine the quality of their own writing, and how they can use a rubric to help them become better writers.  We thought it would be best to start at the beginning with having them investigate the trait of Concept of Writing/Craft and have them think of the criteria.  I will start the process by putting up writing examples that show work that is below, approaching, meeting, and exceeding the standard. I will follow step one and two.

1.    Look at Models--review examples of good and poor work and have a class discussion of what makes the one piece of work good and the other work poor.  Record the students responses during the discussion.

2.   List Criteria—Ask the students how you should assess the work.  Lead the students to recall the list generated during the discussion of the good and the poor work examples.  List the students’ ideas under the heading “Criteria” or “What Counts”.  Guide students to think of less obvious ideas or criteria as well.  Once students have given their ideas of criteria you may add what you want and explain why that criteria is important to the quality of work

The beginning and Base-line Data

Hello, I know I haven’t blogged for quite some time.  I have had difficulties this year with finding balance in my life.  When I began this process of finding a sensed need for my class and framing it around a question, I was thinking of the first grade students I had last year and the first grade writing curriculum.  A lot of that has changed this year.  I am now teaching second grade.  I have several students who are taking much of my time in regards to behavior management and I need to constantly think of new engagement strategies to add to my lessons in order to keep things exciting and new or they loose interest and behaviors escalate.  Also, the curriculum has changed from first grade to second grade.  In first grade there was an emphasis on narrative writing.  In second grade there is an emphasis on nonfiction writing.  The part about that change that has been difficult is that my districts report card rubric for scoring writing supports narrative writing so, I have had to look at the rubrics for reporting to the district and decide how to formulate them in a way to show a correlation in my students learning and performance.

I have collected and scored writing samples from a Writing on Demand (WOD) that I gave to students the first week of school.  A WOD is when students are asked to write a personal narrative small moment story with a scripted prompt and no direct pre-teaching.  I also gave an eight question survey to my students to see how they felt about their writing and writing in general.  I have also collected and scored students personal narrative stories from late October.  After scoring the writing myself, I had a colleague of mine score the writing samples as well.  We discussed the scores we both gave and the criteria for scoring based on our districts rubric.  This initial data will give me a great base-line for determining later growth and progress around meeting the writing standards on the district rubric and the rubrics the students will help to create.

Back to school!

 It feels good to be back; seeing the kids, the vibe of the new year, getting into the routines, practice, practice, practice.  "Go slow to go fast. "  I heard that before from someone and I live by those words at the start of every year.  It makes a huge difference in my year when the kids know what our classroom is all about and how we are going to operate together as a T.E.A.M. (together everyone achieves more).  This is the time we discuss our goals for the year, which we call our Hopes and Dreams, and decide how we can all help each other reach our Hopes and Dreams, which are our classroom rules or norms.

I taught all day every day kindergarten before and I loved the shut up scene from Kindergarten cop.  We have all probably had moments like this where we've felt like screaming, but we don't, instead that's when we can have our best teaching moments.

Data collection tools

• What type of tools will you use?  I feel like I have a lot of data collection tools.  I will have student work samples and writing scores from last year.  I will have CBM(writing on demand) scores from the first two weeks of school. And I could use an engagement survey qestionnaire.

I will determine the impact based on later scores and possibly the engagement survey questionnaire at the end of the action.
I will know the impact based on the quality of students writing from the rubrics the students created and their engagement.
I will triangulate data using multiple writing samples and by having other second grade teachers assess my student's writing.

• How do they fit with the questions you have?  The question I am still contemplating on is: How will implementing student-created rubrics engage my students in writing and help improve their writing.

I believe these data tools will help me assess what I'm looking for...any helpful comments or suggestions?

My Review of Literature

Rubrics: Not Just an Assessment Tool,

but an Engagement Tool used for  Learning.

Last year I had a class of 17 boys and 7 girls as first graders.  This year I have those students again as second graders as I am looping with them.  The class has a few changes, some students have moved out and new students have moved in.   The sensed need I have for my students this year is to be more engaged in their writing.  I want my students to have ownership in their learning and be “in charge” of their writing. They need to apply what they learn from the mini-lessons and work to make their writing better. With research, my goal is to refine my teaching practice and enhance my instruction in writing through: the development of my writing curriculum, clearly defining the classroom environment during writing time, and the use of assessment for learning.

I first began my research based on the question how can I foster my students to be more engaged during writing?  To move forward, I needed to clarify what it meant for students to be engaged.  I had my own vision of it, but I wasn’t clear about how to define it, and I didn’t realize that there were so many resources available on the concept.  Through my reading and research, I found definitions of student engagement can be defined as: “time-on-task”; students’ willingness to participate in routine school activities such as attending classes, submitting required work, and following teachers’ directions in class; participating in the activities offered as part of the school program.  Other definitions are focused on cognitive, behavioral and affective indicators of student engagement in specific learning tasks and sustained behavioral involvement in learning activities accompanied by a positive emotional tone.  According to the article Assessing Student Engagement Rates, “When students are engaged they select tasks at the border of their competencies, initiate action when given the opportunity, and exert intense effort and concentration in the implementation of learning tasks; they show generally positive emotions during ongoing action, including enthusiasm, optimism, curiosity, and interest. ” (Chapman, 2003). The opposite of engagement is disaffection.  The definition of student engagement had a perfect correlation to my sensed need.  Getting students more engaged in their writing tasks will support my vision and philosophy of teaching and learning.

Next, I wanted to learn how rubrics fell into my vision of teaching and learning. I began using rubrics last year for reading, math, writing, and for defining behavior expectations.  I was amazed by how the students responded to the rubrics in a positive way.  The students were excited to know they could get a certain score on an assignment based on what they did or how they met the criteria.  The positive responses and outcomes I received from students about rubrics, made me want to know more.  How can rubrics engage students? How can rubrics support student learning?  How can I implement them into my classroom on a more regular basis?  My research would help me answer these questions.   

I read books and professional articles covering a wide range of rubric use and found positive learning outcomes for students who helped create and interact with rubrics.  The research shows evidence of how rubrics support thinking, learning, understanding, and instruction (Andrade, Want, Du & Akawi, 2009).  Rubrics actively engage students and help them construct knowledge.  Rubrics are not merely a tool used to grade a final product; they are assessment as learning.  It was clear to me through all of my research, that learning in the form of rubrics can lead students to self-assess their work and develop metacognition skills.  

The evidence found in my research could help me implement ways to actively engage my students in the writing process and to enhance and drive my instruction.  The use of rubrics could support the design for my writing curriculum, help foster a more positive learning environment during my writing block, and design quality authentic assessment by showing students how to create their own rubrics and become self-assessors of their writing. 

Rubrics at work

Student-created rubrics are essentially a form of a student-centered classroom assessment, which are assessment tools that allow students to take responsibility for their own achievement from initial phases of learning.  With student centered rubrics, students and the teacher share a vision of success and they become partners in reaching a goal of academic success.  To reach a goal of academic success through student-centered assessments one must remember that students are the assessment users, high quality assessments must be created, and assessments are used for teaching and learning as students become partners with their teacher and their peers in the assessment process (Andrade , Wang, Du & Akawi, 2009).

Student-created rubrics follow the same type of creation guidelines as student-centered assessments (with some variations) and they are actually considered a type of student-centered classroom assessment.  When looking at the necessary steps taken to guide students in building a rubric (also called an Instructional Rubric), it is clear that rubrics support teaching and promote thinking and learning.  According to the article Rubric-Referenced Self-Assessment and Self-Efficacy for Writing, the authors present studies that demonstrate engaging students in generating and using criteria “increases student motivation, confidence, and achievement” and that self-assessments which focus student attention on particular aspects of their performance contribute to positive self-efficacy beliefs (Andrade, Want, Du & Akawi, 2009).

Students who are involved in creating a rubric and use it to assess themselves, will learn more because, they are engaged in higher-order thinking skills.  Student created rubrics, require students to manipulate information and ideas in ways that transforms their meaning and impacts their work. This transformation occurs when students combine facts and ideas in order to synthesize, generalize, explain, hypothesize or arrive at some conclusion or interpretation (Andrade, 2000).  Students have input in what the possible outcomes of their assignment are, which gives them ownership in the expectations of their final product.  Manipulating information and ideas through these processes allows students to solve problems and discover new meanings and understandings for themselves.  In helping students become producers of knowledge, the teacher's main instructional task is to create activities or environments that allow them opportunities to engage in higher-order thinking including: critical, logical, reflective, metacognitive, and creative thinking (Chapman, 2003).

A look at creating an Instructional Rubric (IR) with your students:

The model I used to create rubrics with students was found in, Using Rubrics to Promote Thinking and Learning, by Heidi Andrade.  

1. Look at Models--review examples of good and poor work and have a class discussion of what makes the one piece of work good and the other work poor.  Record the student’s responses during the discussion.

2.  List Criteria—Ask the students how you should assess the work.  Lead the students to recall the list generated during the discussion of the good and the poor work examples.  List the students’ ideas under the heading “Criteria” or “What Counts”.  Guide students to think of less obvious ideas or criteria as well.  Once students have given their ideas of criteria you may add what you want and explain why that criteria is important to the quality of work.

3.  Pack and unpack criteria—After class take time to combine the criteria.

4.  Articulate levels of quality—once again, go back to the students’ discussion of good and poor work and look at the models.  Sketch out four levels of quality for each criterion.  Example: 4= YES! 3= YES BUT!  2= NO BUT!  1= NO!  Ask students to tell you about some of the mistakes they may have made in the past.

5.  Create a draft rubric—after class, draft a rubric that includes the criterion that was generated with the class and expand on the levels of quality.

6.  Revise the draft—show the draft to the students and ask them for comments and revise where necessary.  Then have the students use the rubric when assessing their own and their peers first and second drafts (Andrade, 2000).

Creating rubrics with your students gives them an opportunity to have a voice in what matters to their work.  “Thinking and talking about the qualities of good and poor work is powerfully instructive.  Your students will not only help you create a rubric; they will also learn a lot about the topic at hand  (Andrade, 2000).”

I believe this model for creating a rubric with your students could be a Constructivist approach to teaching and learning. In Constructivism- people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences (Gray, 1997).  Constructivism features learner-centered instruction in a democratic environment; active learners who build and create meaning and knowledge; learners who hypothesize, question, investigate, imagine and invent; learners who reflect and make associations with prior knowledge to reach new understandings.  Learners are actively involved in a process of meaning and knowledge construction.  Students are asking questions, leading discussions, investigating and exploring new ideas and concepts, and they are assessing their own learning and understanding. When creating a rubric, students are working together in groups (Gray, 1997).

 As educators we know students learn best when they are able to construct their own knowledge.  Each student has their own schema, which is their own experiences, and it is unique to them; therefore each student learns in a way that is as unique to them just as their fingerprints are.  Student-created rubrics can draw on the students’ own schema as they give and discuss their reasons for criteria based on the examples of good and poor work; thus the individual student is constructing their own working knowledge of quality for the work.  If students’ then are constructing their own knowledge of quality work, the student-created rubric should support understanding.  In “Using Rubrics to Promote Thinking and Learning”, research shows students who use instructional rubrics would internalize the criteria contained in the rubric and thereby develop an understanding of good writing (Andrade, 2000).

Rubrics as a self-assessment tool for learning

Instructional rubrics can blur the distinction between instruction and assessment.  The use of rubrics has a powerful effect on teaching and, in turn, on the students learning (Andrade, 2000).    When students engage in the process of creating their own rubric they are creating their own assessment tool for learning how to produce quality work in which they have a vested interest.  Once the assessment tool or rubric has been made, the students use that tool as a guide to produce the quality of work they deemed was quality based on what they said, “what counts”.   After the students create a piece of work, they use the rubric to assess their work.  When the students assess their work they look at the criteria and the levels of quality.  If the work is not of top quality, the student makes changes to the work to make it better.  This act of using the rubric for self-assessment has an effect of self-assessment for learning and metacognition (the act of monitoring and regulating one’s own thinking).

From my research, I have concluded rubrics not only could be an effective way to engage students to be on-task during writing, but they are also a great teaching and learning tool that can be used to help students construct knowledge while using higher-order thinking and can be an engagement and assessment tool used for learning in a variety of ways for multiple outcomes.  In my classroom this year I will apply this new knowledge I have gained to my practice.  I will help students to discover how rubrics can support their thinking and learning as we create rubrics for learning together.   

 

Bibliography

 References

Andrade, H. (2000). Using Rubrics to Promote Thinking and Learning. Educational Leadership, 57, 13-18.

Andrade, H. L., Want, X., Du, Y., & Akawi, R. L. (2009). Rubric-referenced self-assessment and self-efficacy for writing. Journal of Educational Research, 102(4), 287-304.

Chapman, E. (2003). Assessing student engagement rates. ERIC Clearing House on Assessment and Evaluation, 40, 35-37.

Jackson, C., & Larkin, M. (2002). Rubrics: Teaching Students to use grading rubrics. Teaching exceptional children, 35, 40-45.

Montgomery, K. (2000). Classroom rubrics: systematizing what teachers do naturally. Clearing House, 73, 324-328.

Stiggins, R. J. (2001). Student-involved classroom assessment   (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Gray, Audrey (1997).  Constructivist Teaching and Learning SSTA Research

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