My blog this week is twofold. First, I want to discuss UbD assessments and second, I want to discuss an idea that my UbD group is discussing in class and a related article that I read this weekend.
I have to say that I was not surprised when I read that teachers should not be focusing solely on grades and easily graded assessments in which there are clear answers, but more on rubrics and the actual quality of the students' responses. As Wiggins and McTighe state, "It is not a matter of simple right versus wrong but more or less naive or sophisticated, more or less superficial or in depth"(175). Something that really stuck out at me was, once again, this idea of transferability. In light of the whole UbD model, rubrics make perfect sense in terms of assessing student progress. This notion is so important and it is something that is really lost in most classrooms today. It was almost as if Wiggins and McTighe were reading my mind because the task of creating these rubrics seemed somewhat overwhelming and as soon as I thought that they provided me with a great way of attacking this task. Separating student work into three or four piles and defining the characteristics of each pile is a manageable way to go about creating a rubric.
In my school we use rubrics a lot because the state provides us with rubrics that they use to assess the NJask tasks. What I try to do is take those main ideas and create rubrics that are more kid-friendly so we can actually look at it together and the kids can use it to critique their own work as well. This seems to work nicely, especially in writing. My concern would be that if everything was assessed using a rubric, that the parents would really come down hard on teachers at report card time because there are no "traditional" grades to pull from.
On a totally unrelated note, my UbD group has been talking a lot about how new teachers need to be aware of the community in which they teach and what their students may be bringing into the classroom. They need to understand that culture does affect teaching and that external environments are ever-present. In the March issue of Education Leadership, there is an article called As Diversity Grows, So Must We and it really addresses a lot of issues that teachers (new and veteran) need to be aware of. The student populations in many school districts are becoming more and more diverse and as that article states, "Some teachers, administrators, and parents view their schools' increasing diversity as a problem rather than an opportunity." I find this to be a very unfortunate statistic, but it does not surprise me. Most people resist change and find it difficult to deal with but the really sad thing here is that it's the kids who lose out when teachers don't embrace cultural differences and use them as building blocks to direct their lessons.
According to Gary Howard, the author of this article, successfully running a culturally diverse school happens in five phases. The phases include building a trust within the school community, confronting social justice, transforming instructional practices, and engaging the whole school community. The ideas in this article, especially those related to transforming instructional practices in order to engage diversity, are ones that I will bring into my UbD group. Awareness seemed to be a common theme throughout the article so I feel that it is necessary to make new teachers aware of how to embrace cultural diversity.
3 comments:
I think it is great that you use rubrics in your class. I also use the state rubrics when I give my students math open-ended questions. This is not an easy task. Ubd gives a great description of separating the students' work (as you described in this blog). While I think rubrics are a great way to grade certain projects or assignments, I do not think it should be the only way.
I completely agree with your point about parents and report card time. I knew a teacher that always did projects in her classes. No matter what, every time there was a project the parents complained about the grades. I wondered if it was because some of the projects were completed at home, and the parents were the ones who actually did the project. So by giving the students a poor grade, she was actually giving the parents a poor grade! Also, if rubrics are the only form of grading, parents may not be able to see the objectivity in the grading, and some may feel as though you are "picking" on their child. But I also do not think that chapter tests should be the only way of grading either. Educators need to find a balance of assessments to give to the diverse student population.
I think rubrics are a great idea. I made a couple myself and find it to be not only helpful when grading a project, but also for the students to refer to when self evaluating themselves. The way of organizing student work into piles based on their performance I believe is known as "Looking at student work" as a professional development model. I remember from my supervision class!
Rubrics are great in many ways, but I don't think that unless you sit down with the students and go over it with them that they even begin to understand what is being asked of them on the assignment. All they seem to care about is the grade, and forget reading our comments! I'm in the process of grading research papers using a rubric, and also making comments that go beyond what the rubric covers, and I can guarantee that none of my students will even read what I'm taking the time to write to them. Rubrics are great and can save us time in grading, but unless the students read them over, they could also be almost entirely uselss.
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