Rubric!
In this week class we were all asked to create a scoring rubric for our digital storytelling presentation that our current or future students will create. My first thought was that this assignment would be easy! How hard can this be because I create rubrics through Excel to evaluate my students on their projects or book reports.
First I had to decide which rubric software I would like to take an adventure through. After reading through this week module and carefully considerations, I decided to use iRubric. I found this website user friendly and the video tutorial seems easy enough to follow.
Well I sat down and started at my laptop for 10 minutes before I create my rubric. I look through some sample rubrics to get a better idea of what I could do. I realized that there were quite a huge range of criteria that I could score my students on. I went back and look over the curriculum page that I had originally created for my students. I knew that I wanted to score my students on their research and their overall presentation of their project. It took some time for me to figure out the quality and quantity of slides they should have in their presentation, pictures and producing a video on their African American in the digital storytelling. I also knew for second grade that grammar and spelling was a huge factor. So after careful planning and thinking I actually came up with the criteria for my rubric.
The only two difficult parts I consider impossible was the wording of each criteria. Remember, the rubric that I’m creating was or my second grade students and they range from 7 to 8 years old. The wording of my rubric had to be clear and easy for them to read and comprehend for them to complete their digital storytelling. I find myself deleting and calculating the percentage on the rubric. Hopefully I was able to calculate the total possible points each could receive.
I really find this website quite useful and I hope to continue to use it to create more rubrics for my students and I hope to be savvier with it. Next I plan on embed this rubric on my curriculum page so my students and parents can print it off and it as a guide. I feel quite proud of myself and I know this rubric is not perfect, but I believe I did a great job! Well here is my rubric, please let me know what you think of it!
I found it interesting to look at what you were doing with elementary grade students. I teach high school science, so I haven’t had any experience with younger kids in school. I do, however, have a 5 year old son and a 3 year old daughter who will both be in school soon enough. If you had asked me 5 years ago if I thought a 7 year old could do a project using the computer, I might have said no. But my son can sit down and (without any help from me) log onto any one of 5 or 6 sites for preschoolers and play games, watch videos, or color pages. So I am hopeful that when he gets in Kindergarten that his teacher will foster his creative side by incorporating projects with the computer, too.
ReplyDeleteI like your rubric; I also used iRubric for the first time with this assignment, and I found it very easy to work with and very functional as an automatic scoring tool. I was wondering for elementary grades if it would be possible to include graphics in the rubric. I didn’t look to see if there is any way to incorporate a picture, but it would be cute (and perhaps helpful) if it were possible to add a little picture in each scoring box so the student, in addition to the parent, could see the expectation. You know, something like this:
Well, I tried to paste the image into my comment, but apparently, I can't. Here is the link to the one I was looking at: http://www.caccauldron.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Spell-Check.JPG
I guess it might be too hard to find a visual representation of each of the project requirements, but I just thought it would be neat. I am very interested to see how your final project works in your classroom. Good Luck!
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI also used irubric to create my rubric for this assignment. I felt that irubric was precise and to the point.I think you did a good job on your rubric. You explained your expectations in order for the age group intended to comprehend.I really don't use alot of rubrics in my classroom.Since i enjoyed this assignment you never know.
~The sky's the limit~
I thought your rubric was well planned and seems appropriate for your young students. I think you are smart to make it not too complicated for them. In a sense you are teaching them organizational skills and do not want to overwhelm them to the point that they do not refer to the rubric. I was looking at your Curriculum Page with the rubric now, and just let me say I think you have done a great job!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your rubric with us! I have really enjoyed seeing your project develop over the course of our class. I believe that we have shared some of the same struggles. I too, was very impressed with my accomplishments when creating this project. I really like the idea of allowing your students and parents the ability to print off the rubric to use as a guide. I recently just assigned my students a Civil War project and handed them out a rubric with it. Thinking back to the beginning of the digital storytelling project, I wish I had chosen to use the Civil War. I will use the tools I have learned completing this project in my classroom next year.
ReplyDeleteI also feel that your wording in your rubric is very understandable and is easy to understand. Your students will know exactly what is expected from them and their final project.
I had the same concerns as you as far as making sure that the wording would be understandable for younger students. Mine is for fourth graders and even after the fact and after reading some of the comments on mine I think it may be a little over their heads. It was hard to stay focused on the age group while incorporating all of the criteria needed for the evaluation of their projects. I think you did a great job on your rubric. I ended up using Rubistar and was very pleased with how user friendly it was. I may have to try out iRubric next time.
ReplyDeleteFor this assignment I had the exact same idea that you did. How can it be difficult to create a rubric? I too create rubrics for my students for their expository and narrative prompts. However, I also did not realize the range for a rubric. It is sometimes hard to choose exactly how you want to grade your students, based on several factors.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, I definitely understand your concern about the use of language when working with primary students. It can become difficult to present a rubric to their understanding and vocabulary. It must be user friendly based on grade level appropriateness.
It is nice to see that you had a great experience with irubric. It seems like you may have found a program that you will use in the near future. The rubric looks very nice and appropriate for this project.
At first glance you seemed to have the same problem I did, which was to fit the rubric into the blog. It was a problem very similar to inserting the Prezi into the blog without running over the boundaries of the blog. Now to the rubric, I liked how you set out a defined expectation for the project. It was extremely clear as to what needed to be completed to perform well. I’m not sure about you but I liked the feature where you can click a box and then have the program give a calculation based on your grade weight and points that each component contains.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your decision to use the iRubric program. I think that you planned out and made the rubric grade appropriate. I like how you narrated your thought process to allow the audience to understand why you made the choices that you did. Even though it took you a bit of time to correctly word the criteria you seem to have nailed it. As I taught second grade for a number of years, I thought it was definitely grade appropriate. As it seems that attention span is always against teachers in the lower grades, having a specific rubric to refer back to help the student become responsible for their own project. In contrast it also helps them and their parents to understand why they received the grade that they earned. A last word about the website, you said it made it easy for you to create your rubric. I have to say that this is one website that actually was easy to learn and could immediately cut down on planning time and grading time. Which is a plus for those of us with limited time.