I know an "A" when I see one...or do I?

Copyright Sage Ross (some rights reserved)

Assessment is easily one of the hardest parts of teaching. Sure, getting your lesson plans together can be pretty difficult, as is determining and collecting all your necessary resources. But, when it comes right down to it, truly understanding how well a student is or is not learning is pretty darn tough. Obviously, if your assessment method of choice is a quiz or multiple choice test, the numbers do the determining for you, but then you have to figure out what questions to include. However, in the world of language arts which I have taught, tests are rarely your main assessment tool. Usually, assignments like papers and projects are the norm, with very defined goals that help the teacher figure out a final score. These could include criteria like how many paragraphs/pages are there, is there a clear thesis statement, and was an argument persuasive enough. Overall, though, assessment is such a tricky word. Not only does it mean the manner in which a teacher grades a student, but also method and product that student creates. In other words, when a teacher gives a student a paper to write, it is the paper itself and the grading criteria that the teacher uses which that creates an assessment. So not only do teachers have to choose wisely on what kinds of assessments to give, but how to deal with them when they are turned in.

All this brings me to rubrics. Oh, rubrics, those handy-dandy little charts (not always, but often) that so neatly and concisely outline what exactly makes an “A” paper so exemplary. I've made rubrics before, of course, and they have varied in complexity from simply determining if a student has turned it in with their name on it, to the staggeringly Byzantine in detailing the contents of ten different pages of a grant proposal. And yet, regardless of the depth, they all served the same purpose: making sure every student's work is grading accurately and fairly.

This week, I had to put the cart before the horse, as it were. What I mean by that is that normally, when a teacher is figuring out a nice, juicy authentic assessment to give their students (one with real-world applications through the performance of a task), they also pin down exactly the grading criteria in a pretty little rubric before ever presenting the project. Now that I've proposed my project, found the resources and presented an example, I'm pulling all the way around to create the rubric.

There is method to this unusual progression, however. When I first designed my digital storytelling project, I did include some required elements for my make-believe students, and I knew that these would be the main grading criteria. Also, when I made my example, I tried to put those criteria into action in a way that would make weeding out the “A”s from the “D”s much easier. Therefore, when this week's goal of creating a solid, professional rubric for my hypothetical students, the task wasn't too taxing. I simply had to put everything I've done into precise language, debate with myself over percentages, and make myself a table.

Some hours later, after reviewing the assignment instructions and my own previous postings, I was confident in mine having created a clear and easily usable rubric for use by anyone doing a similar project. In order to make this embeddable (I honestly didn't think that was a real word until I typed it), I took my instructor's suggestion and went to iRubric (having used Rubistar in the past and not really liking it) and filled in all the appropriate boxes.



In terms of content, I will not try to deny I borrowed from the rubrics Dr. Thompson has provided so kindly throughout the semester, and this is because he has clearly honed these things down to a science. In fact, I have said it over and over again, but when you are teacher, and someone has already figured it out and it works, then give credit and make use!

I tried to make my rubric fair and even, given equal weight to both content and creativity, as the lacking of either would make for a very bad presentation indeed. I did, however, separate out the content area to two categories to make sure neither was skipped or sacrificed in the grading process. And, of course, I cannot overlook the importance of proper spelling, grammar, formatting and citation. Nothing throws me off quite so much as a typo that can easily be fixed.

In the future, I will proceed in the correct manner by designing my rubrics (in detail, this time) as I create the project, and present both together to the appropriate students. Because, in the end, there's no sense in putting the cart before the horse unless you want a hoof in your face.