You know that feeling when you realize it has been too long since you have seen a chiropractor and everything isn’t working the way it should be? That is what my assessment practices were like, misaligned and out of place. I knew that this year was the year that I needed to take my assessment strategies to the chiropractor for an adjustment. They needed a sharper focus and alignment to the ACTFL and Ohio World Language Standards. Specifically, I needed to look at the Can-Do Statements closer and understand what a true novice learner is. I never knew that the chiropractor I would visit would be my colleague, Victoria Holt, during her amazing professional development (PD) during Viking Academy.
This PD suggested that I use a rubric to grade every single question that I put on an assessment…..that’s right….every.single.question. I was really turned off by that thought, as I am sure you are right now. Can’t the answer just be right or wrong?? The biggest thing I learned is that when we are grading, we need to try to think about what the student was thinking when they put the answer down on their paper.
Why did they get something wrong/right? What if they solved the math problem with the correct formula but miscalculated something? Shouldn’t they get points for their thinking? How many points? How much of the standard/learning target did they meet?
This challenged me to think about World Language Can-Do statements. If you look at our standards, they can be pretty vague at times and we need to use the Can-Do Statements within the standard to help us assess their progress. I am by no means the perfect Can-Do Statement writer or follower, but I am trying my best to get better at it each year. I really think this rubric will help me assess their progress better, with the help of the Mastery settings in Schoology.
So this rubric. Here is the thing, it is the same exact rubric for every single question. By using this magical rubric, you are literally forced to tie a standard/learning target (I prefer to tie Can-Do statements given the broadness of WL standards) to the question. To top it off, students are ALWAYS aware of the rubric being used and the Can-Do statement on the test. HOLY COW THIS SOUNDS LIKE AN INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF WORK, RIGHT? Wrong…kinda.
My wonderful new coworker, Victoria Holt, gave me permission to share an image of the document with you. She is the creator of the rubric and was one of the facilitators of the PD that I attended. Do not be a shady person and steal this to sell on TPT. Thank you:)
So let’s break this down into the steps I took to overhaul my grading practices.
1. Make the rubric. The original version of the rubric was created for a math class. I changed it to work for my classes in Spanish.
- I change the proficiency levels based on the level I am teaching. I may even choose to change it for students who are more advanced as the year goes on and are able to perform at a higher level. I may even make some with communication goal specific language in there (interpretive/interpersonal/presentational/culture) but for now, this is what is working for me. Do you see how simple this rubric is? You are probably wondering how this would possibly work. Let’s move on and see.
2. Create Can-Do Statements for the first Unit of learning. Some examples of my Can-Do statements for Unit 1 Spanish 1 are :
3. Now, let’s make an assessment.
First, I ditched the 3 page 50 question unit 1 assessment I used to give kids (don’t come for me, I have grown).
Next, I used the assessment feature in Schoology. The assessment feature allows you to attach rubrics and learning targets directly to the questions and you can display them to the students.
As far as I know, you cannot attach both a rubric and a learning target to a question (I am a newbie in Schoology). If you can and you know how….let me know. I am a newbie to Schoology. You can attach a learning target to a rubric but this would mean that I would need a different rubric for each learning target and that is just silly because IT IS THE SAME RUBRIC FOR EACH LEARNING TARGET!!! No need to have 1000000 rubrics saved in Schoology.
I do communicate with students how I grade with the rubric, even if it is a multiple choice. I don’t give multiple choice questions all that often because I try to shoot for more performance-based assessment questions and activities, but when I do I still use a rubric. Post the rubric to your LMS and they can reference it at any time. You could even make it into a poster!
I attached the learning targets directly to the questions in the assessment because the rubric is the same. If a question aligned to 1 Can-Do statement, then it was worth 1 point. If it is aligned to more than 1, it corresponds accordingly. I add the learning targets into custom folders in my resources section in Schoology. This is the easiest way I can keep track of them.
I chose to attach the learning target because I wanted to utilize the Mastery feature in Schoology to see where we are as a class and where students are individually with each learning target.
When I grade, I look at the rubric to see what a student scores. If you looked at it and were wondering why a question is worth 10 points, it isn’t. 10 = 1 point.
Why is this rubric so special?
1. A child cannot score a 0 on an assessment question/task unless they literally didn’t put a single thing down on their paper.
2. This rubric helps ME (it doesn’t have to work for you) be a more fair grader IMO. I think having something set in stone for every assessment and activity sets you up for success when grading.
3. It is subject to change and improve over time. I can also change the language to get more specific with learning targets.
Remember, this is something that works for me and my school and it doesn’t have to work for you. As time goes on, I am sure this rubric will evolve and change over time. For now, it has aligned and simplified my grading practices and made me a better grader. What would you add to this rubric? What would you keep? Let me know:)