Friday Flash: Feb. 15, 2013

Rethinking Rubrics

As I work to develop deeper understandings using Backwards Planning I've 'discovered' a few things that I think need to be reworked and simplified.

The first of those discoveries is we make rubrics too complicated. Most of the rubrics I see have three categories - they are described in a variety of ways -usually something like 'apprentice', 'developing' and 'mastery'.

From the teacher's perspective, you have an outcome and you have to decide what it will 'look like' if the student achieves the target. So are there really three categories, or more like 'yes' they got it, or 'no' they didn't?

For the student - when they look at the rubric with three categories are we perpetuating a perception that wherever you fall on the rubric is good enough? Do they know what the expectation is for reaching the target? Does all that information in each category make it complicated for a student (maybe even the teacher) to know in a concise way what the target is?

I wonder how it might work if a rubric listed the criteria (the objectives) and then said 'yes or no'? Would this provide the teacher with an assessment of whether a student reached the objective? Would it provide authentic feedback to a student? Would it allow a student to create a goal for achieving the outcome? Would it serve as a tool for measuring growth? Could we even make it quantifiable if we needed to?

Would it be easier?????

I know, you're thinking right now, "well, what else did you discover?" Of course, I have to leave you dangling so you'll eagerly open next weeks blog post! (wishful thinking?)

Calendar

February 18th - 22nd:

Monday: No School - President's Day

Tuesday:

No RTI meeting

Wednesday:

Professional Development: Team Planning

Friday:

First grade Winter Voyage day trip
5th grade field work to the Botanical Gardens

February 25 - March 1st: (Yes...March!!)

A relatively quiet week:)

Monday:

Bill, Rebecca and Kenny leave on their Winter Voyage

Tuesday:

NO RTI meeting

Wednesday:

Tyler, Lauren and MarySue leave on their Winter Voyage

Leadership Team Meeting:

The Leadership Team met for a brief meeting on Wednesday. We discussed needing to create an interview team for hiring purposes. You will be receiving a Google survey to submit your preference for how we select this hiring team.

We also spent some time discussing next steps for our long range goal of having digital tools in the hands of learners. It is clear that NetBooks have not been the ideal tool we had wished for. We are discussing the possibility of seeing if our current NetBooks can be sold. In any case, with the funds from Life Is Art, we will be replacing our current NetBooks with Mac lap tops. Please let me know how many NetBooks each of your grade level teams currently have.

Kindergaten is funded differently than the rest of our programming. Funds collected from kindergarten must be spent on kindergarten. We have some dollars in reserve in this program and it was decided that we will purchase Ipads for kindergarten with these funds. The Ipads that kindergarten currently has will be collected to use in other parts of our school. We haven't completely figured that all out yet until we get an update of what others have and need.

In all cases, the Leadership Team identifies that every grade has a higher need and we are working towards a plan to address the entire system. Unfortunately, at the high cost of digital tools it will take us several years to accomplish our goal. In the meantime, the goal keeps stretching!

The next Leadership Team meeting will be to create a school wide Balanced Assessment System spreadsheet to turn into the district assessment office. During that work, we'll identify next steps for us as a school in creating our desired BAS.

Peek Into the Life of our School: