We’ll spend some time today practicing writing rubrics. We’ll use a Google Doc I’ve opened for us. I will close it immediately after class and link your finished work back to this page/post. You should be able to click on the link and begin editing immediately.
Every assignment or activity you assign your students should have a DIRECT AND CLEAR link to an expectation listed in the course curriculum. You may be assessing a student’s ability to meet an overall or specific expectation under each strand. This is the basic requirement for all planning we do.
This will bring us the to next point in our assessment: assessment by expectation. Our mark-books should have clear connections between a student’s success in individual expectations. A parent should be able to see that a student has difficulty with the skills strand History A1 but can meet the criteria to master expectations associated to B1, B2, C2, D2, etc. Some teachers don’t mark like this. But you should. It’s Ministry Guidelines.
Ideally, according to the Ministry of Education, students do not receive a letter or numerical grade for their tasks. Their achievement is based on their ability to meet a series of normative steps representing the ‘typical’ student. Growing Success identifies the following criteria in each level of achievement. These are then tied (in practice) to percentage equivalents (I have added these).
Levels of Achievement
The achievement chart also identifies four levels of achievement, defined as follows:Level 1 (50 – 59 %) represents achievement that falls much below the provincial standard. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with limited effectiveness. Students must work at significantly improving learning in specific areas, as necessary, if they are to be successful in the next grade/course
Level 2(60 – 69 %)represents achievement that approaches the provincial standard. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with some effectiveness. Students performing at this level need to work on identified learning gaps to ensure future success.
Level 3(70 – 79 %) represents the provincial standard for achievement [emphasis added]. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with considerable effectiveness. Parents of students achieving at level 3 can be confident that their children will be prepared for work in subsequent grades/courses.
Level 4(80 – 100 %) identifies achievement that surpasses the provincial standard. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with a high degree of effectiveness. However, achievement at level 4 does not mean that the student has achieved expectations beyond those specified for the grade/course.
Specific “qualifiers” are used with the descriptors in the achievement chart to describe student performance at each of the four levels of achievement – the qualifier limited is used for level 1; some for level 2; considerable for level 3; and a high degree of or thorough for level 4. Hence, achievement at level 3 in the Thinking category for the criterion “use of planning skills” would be described in the achievement chart as “[The student] uses planning skills with considerable effectiveness”. (p 18)
These levels then form the basis of the ALMIGHTY RUBRIC.
According to Growing Success, students are to be assessed on their mastery of a subject through a series of CATEGORIES OF KNOWLEDGE (KITCA – Knowledge, Inquiry & Thinking, Communication, Application).
The categories, defined by clear criteria, represent four broad areas of knowledge and skills within which the expectations for any given subject/course can be organized. (pg 17)
Your job, as the teacher, is to plan units, activities, and assessments (over the duration of the course) connecting the curricular expectations to these categories of knowledge.
1) Identify your curricular expectations (you would have used these in planning the activity/assessment
2) Decide on how extensive your rubric must be. I consider the time it will take students to do the assessment and make the rubric a relative size (short = small rubric, massive assignment = giant rubric, etc).
3) Understand what skills you will be assessing. Are you using A strand and one of the B-E strands? These must be reflected in your rubric.
You may want to actually embed the KITCA Category which suit the planned activity [Are your students demonstrating mastery of facts (K/U) or are they applying information to new contexts (Application)].
4) Create your table. Play around with its look to maximise student understanding of expectations and criteria.
5) The language of your rubric should be student friendly – but contain enough ‘meat’ for you to make consistent decisions and give solid feedback.
Rubric with Overall Expectation focus
Rubric by expectation
Rubric with KITCA category focus (B1, A1 expectations as well as Historical perspective)
The rubric above assesses achievement in both Knowledge/Understanding and Application. The author elected to avoid using written descriptions of the levels of achievement and opted for numbers to simply for the visuals for a grade 10 Applied History student.
KITCA categories (A1) focus
The author of the rubric below used words to describe expectations.
Check out the examples in this document. Rubric Examples
Ass & Eval keynote
Literacy in History – keynote
More Quick Literacy Strategies are found here.
For use with Observations and Inferences
presentation: Assessment and Evaluation Oct 2
Assessment in education is essential. Most parents (and yes, some teachers) focus on the end goal: the report mark or the levels the students get on individual assignment. Unfortunately, this only part of the picture.
The Ontario Ministry of Education, in its latest document, Growing Success, outlines the policy for which assessment and evaluation can “improve student learning.”
There are tons of online Professional Development resources and web modules available on the Edugains website.
I found THIS ONE on assessment for and as learning cheesy, but helpful.
(image created with wordle.net)
There are some interesting ways to integrate these types of assessments into your classroom.
Four More is an example of a formative assessment. It “integrates collaboration, movement, and individual accountability.”
fourmore – template
Students are able to “check in” with their peers about the lesson topic. The activity allows students to get up and walk around and gather additional information about what is being learned.
The Frayer Model is a graphic organizer to help students grasp a concept or term more fully.
The Ontario Ministry of Education released a great strategy with their “Think Literacy” Documents. Here is their interpretation of the Frayer Model. Another great .pdf version of the graphic organizer can be found here.
This example is from a geography unit.
Many teachers assume tests are the only way to assess student curricular mastery. Many students find these stakes too high, suffer from anxiety and are unsuccessful. A quick “search” of the 9/10 Canada and World Studies Curriculum document quickly reveals there are two mentions of the word “test.” (note: of the 33 results for ‘exam,’ NONE address the major final assessment!) Therefore, the Ministry of Education has no specific requirement to set formal tests in our courses (ironically, they love testing in Math and English.) Other options include research assignments, inquiry questions and varied formats for demonstration of learning.
Every assignment or activity you assign your students should have a DIRECT AND CLEAR link to an expectation listed in the course curriculum. You may be assessing a student’s ability to meet an overall or specific expectation under each strand. This is the basic requirement for all planning we do.
This will bring us the to next point in our assessment: assessment by expectation. Our mark-books should have clear connections between a student’s success in individual expectations. A parent should be able to see that a student has difficulty with the skills strand History A1 but can meet the criteria to master expectations associated to B1, B2, C2, D2, etc. Many teachers aren’t doing this yet, but it’s coming.
Ideally, according to the Ministry of Education, students do not receive a letter or numerical grade for their work. Their achievement is based on their ability to meet a series of normative steps representing the ‘typical’ student. Growing Success identifies the following criteria in each level of achievement. These are then tied (in practice) to percentage equivalents (I have added these).
Levels of Achievement
The achievement chart also identifies four levels of achievement, defined as follows:Level 1 (50 – 59 %) represents achievement that falls much below the provincial standard. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with limited effectiveness. Students must work at significantly improving learning in specific areas, as necessary, if they are to be successful in the next grade/course
Level 2(60 – 69 %)represents achievement that approaches the provincial standard. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with some effectiveness. Students performing at this level need to work on identified learning gaps to ensure future success.
Level 3(70 – 79 %) represents the provincial standard for achievement [emphasis added]. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with considerable effectiveness. Parents of students achieving at level 3 can be confident that their children will be prepared for work in subsequent grades/courses.
Level 4(80 – 100 %) identifies achievement that surpasses the provincial standard. The student demonstrates the specified knowledge and skills with a high degree of effectiveness. However, achievement at level 4 does not mean that the student has achieved expectations beyond those specified for the grade/course.
Specific “qualifiers” are used with the descriptors in the achievement chart to describe student performance at each of the four levels of achievement – the qualifier limited is used for level 1; some for level 2; considerable for level 3; and a high degree of or thorough for level 4. Hence, achievement at level 3 in the Thinking category for the criterion “use of planning skills” would be described in the achievement chart as “[The student] uses planning skills with considerable effectiveness”. (p 18)
These levels then form the basis of the ALMIGHTY RUBRIC.
According to Growing Success, students are to be assessed on their mastery of a subject through a series of CATEGORIES OF KNOWLEDGE.
The categories, defined by clear criteria, represent four broad areas of knowledge and skills within which the expectations for any given subject/course can be organized. (pg 17)
Your job, as the teacher, is to plan units, activities and assessments (over the duration of the course) connecting the curricular expectations to these categories of knowledge. This can be accomplished through the rubric.
1) Identify your curricular expectations (you would have used these in planning the activity/assessment)
2) Select the most appropriate Category (or Categories) of Knowledge which suit the planned activity. Are your students demonstrating mastery of facts (K/U) or are they applying information to new contexts (Application).
3) Decide on how extensive your rubric must be. I consider the time it will take students to do the assessment and make the rubric a relative size (short = small rubric, massive assignment = giant rubric, etc).
That said, even though there may be mulitple stages to the task, perhaps you’re only going to assess the Thinking/Inquiry elements. Even though they used facts (K/U) and are orally presenting the information (Communication), you may be only interested in determining their mastery of the inquiry process or their creative thinking skills (T/I).
4) Create your table with the criteria for success on the left and the levels of achievement across the top.
The rubric above assesses achievement in both Knowledge/Understanding and Application. The author elected to avoid using written descriptions of the levels of achievement and opted for numbers to simply for the visuals for a grade 10 Applied History student.
The author of the rubric below used words to describe expectations.
Check out the examples in this document. Rubric Examples
We’ll spend some time today practicing writing rubrics. We’ll use a Google Doc I’ve opened for us. I will close it immediately after class and link your finished work back to this page/post. You should be able to click on the link and begin editing immediately.
Some great Field Trip Locations for History:
– cemeteries – Beechwood Cemetery
– high streets (architecture)
– museums – The Bytowne Museum, The Diefenbunker
– local cenotaph
– statues
– cities (view development of City from downtown to rural)
– virtual field trips – Quebec City
– antique shops
– town/city archives
Steph Pearson 