Changing rubrics to concentrate more on the Math skills vs. completing a task.

A few things that I thought about when reading the Learning Targets book was how my rubrics will change. Here are two parts of the rubric that I designed for the Community project (for the Math piece) and then an example of some of the new rubrics I am working on during this vacation. I also went to a Proficiency Based Learning Conference in November where I am now using some ideas gained from that experience which would be applicable to this topic.

This part of the rubric is all about the following, “We do not recommend writing task specific rubrics, however...Task specific rubrics reduce thinking to meeting a checklist of “right” answers…” With this is mind, a newer rubric that I think I would try, might look more like this,

I think the 2nd rubric focuses more on the Math learning and target than the first one. The first rubric was focusing on the product, but what learning actually occurred based on the project. Nowhere in that first rubric do we know what the student learned about how the students understand their data.

I also noticed this year a big difference in the 7th and 8th graders. Since I had taught the 8th graders last year, they were very comfortable using rubrics to guide their learning. 8th graders often referred to the rubric and asked questions to verify their learning. I would hear things like, “I need to work on this.” or “oh, I know how to do that.” Students helping each other in areas of weakness to make sure they would get a 3 on the rubric. Students would often ask, how can I make sure I get a 4 in this area? The 7th graders were not as used to this. I would offer the rubric and they may glance at it from time to time, but not really dig deep in the understanding. Then, when I met with them individually to go over the rubric and where they were, they were all about, “Can I re-do this part? How can I make this into a 3?” It was a lot more back-tracking with them than the 8th graders- they just did it the first time. For the 7th graders, they were at a different point in their learning of how rubrics work and how I can self assess my learning. Already, I have seen an improvement in the 7th graders.