Here is my thought after our class on rubrics and chocolate chip cookies: It is all relative to the teacher what will make, say, a good analytical essay or a argumentative paper. What will be a perfect essay for one teacher may have either excess parts or parts lacking from the perception of another. I think that is why it is of the utmost importance to talk to our students and give them our rationale behind each component of the rubric, the point system, and most importantly, WHY we even are implementing a rubric. It wasn't until college that I even cared to glance at the rubric the teacher gave me along with an assignment, mostly because rubrics just seemed like rules and regulations that I wanted nothing to deal with. As long as I answered all the questions the assignment asked, I felt a rubric was unnecessary and a waste of time to look at.
I am not totally aware as to what the students point of views are on rubrics today, but we cannot assume simply handing them a rubric with the assignment will be enough to get them to follow it. I think about it from the teacher's perspective as well; think about all the time it takes to put together a rubric you feel proud of, that connected with all your objectives, and that was aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Then you hand it out your students, announce to your students "follow the rubric for this assignment," and walk away happy, thinking that students will do exactly that. I find that very hard to believe. I honestly think that unless students understand the importance of a rubric, they are not going to look at it the way we want them to. Our time will be wasted, and so will theirs, because they will be writing an essay that doesn't meet the full criteria, and they will not be working to their full potential.
I guess I am simply saying, explain why a rubric matters, so they understand how beneficial it could be for them to utilize. I looked at rubrics as an enemy in high school, and it took me a while to realize that rubrics can be your best friend, and by following everything the rubric says, will grace you with the potential to exceed expectations efficiently. The first time you hand out a rubric, spend some time talking about it with students, make the rubric easy to access and less dreadful to look at. Show them the effort you put in to make it, and how easy it is for students to achieve if they follow it. This just makes me think that teachers should do themselves and their students a favor and explain their rationale behind everything they implement in the classroom, so students know why they are doing it and how its not just busy work or time-wasters, these things matter!
I can totally relate to your high school experience, because I used to do the same thing. Often teachers would give us an assignment with a list of requirements but also a rubric. In my mind the rubric was for the teacher to use when reading our papers. For a number of classes I didn't bother to look at the rubric after I received my grade... I got an A everything's perfect. I even noticed that the rubric's criteria would often be additional requirements that weren't objectives from the assignment. To clarify, the rubric would look for spelling and punctuation and formatting, but to use our cookie activity, you could fill most of the rubric out without "tasting" it... or reading it!
ReplyDeleteHey Ryan,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with what you wrote. Explaining the use of the rubric is something that no one really explained to me in high school. I'm definitely letting my students know that a rubric isn't only to help me grade, it is also for them to use it as a guide for their assignment. I wish this was explicitly said to me during high school because in college I had to learn the hard way.
-Adrián
I also didn't learn this lesson till this semester. We have been given self-check rubrics to help us make sure that we are including everything we need to in our assignments. I still don't like rubrics, though. Especially when I was grading myself, I never wanted to give myself full credit for a section because I didn't want to come off as being full of myself. I worry that this will happen, and that it does happen, when teachers grade students' work, not giving them the full credit because they don't want to and because something can always be better. I find rubrics to be more of a way to criticize rather than praise (for lack of a better word). I mean, at least we are learning how to create "good" rubrics, but I think they should be used as guidelines, not grading scales.
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