Rubrics and the independent learner

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Abner Oakes

In my post from September 9, I talked briefly about rubrics; in short a rubric is a scoring tool that many teachers use to measure the quality of student work – to grade that work. They are used for more subjective assignments such as an essay or project – you don’t create a rubric for a vocabulary quiz – and a rubric has primarily three parts: dimensions on which the work is measured; a rating scale for each dimension; and definitions or descriptors that elucidate what is being measured, to fit within the rating scale. Click on the visual below to see a rubric template.

A template for building rubrics

There are many places on the web to find rubric templates, sample rubrics that teachers have created, discussions about rubrics, etc. Google yourself crazy on that topic. But let me highlight what I feel to be most important about rubrics: They help shift the locus of power in the classroom, if used as yet one more way to nurture independent learners.

Too often students don’t know what’s expected of them when assigned a project or paper; they are asked to write an essay on The House on Mango Street but without well-defined standards for how that final product will be measured. No wonder students often say, when they get back graded work, “I got a B.” That language needs to shift, to a verb that I hear from time to time when traveling in schools in the southern US: “I made a B.”

Students should always get a rubric before they start their work; in fact the best rubric is the one that they have created with the teacher. The teacher might begin that process by sharing exemplars with her class, to spur discussion about just what makes for a really effective paper on The House on Mango Street – or a Prezi show on the life of a cell or an oral presentation on a US state. As they talk, they build the rubric together: what will be measured, how it will be measured, and how much emphasis will be given to what is measured. You can imagine the ownership that students feel after completing this process and their deep understanding of just what will make for an effective final product.

That issue of ownership was on display when, several years ago, I talked with a 5th grader at an elementary school in Elkton, Maryland, a school filled with teachers that were using rubrics very effectively. This boy and I were talking about final products that were up on the wall outside his classroom, he showed me his posted and graded paper, and I remarked that he had done well, save for one section, where he had made a zero on that portion of the rubric (a score of four was the best). When I asked him what had happened, his answer went something like this: Yeah, I know, but I got up this morning to finish this and did not feel like drawing the map that I needed, but I knew I was gonna get a zero, and I’ll just have to plan better next time.

Yes, I bet his parents groaned when they heard that explanation – but I smiled and I bet his teacher smiled too: This 5th grader owned that assignment. Sure, he didn’t make the greatest choice, but he understood and accepted the consequences. And no doubt, with the help of his teacher, he learned more by not doing that map than he might have by doing it. Not only was he engaged in that assignment but, more importantly, he was also engaged in thinking about the assignment, and I know that a thoughtful teacher and the use of rubrics got him there.

So, sure, ask your daughter’s teacher about the use of rubrics in class. Then ask: How will you guide students so that they can generate their own rubrics?

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Book distribution programs and their impact on kids

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Abner Oakes

Yesterday, I attended an event at the National Press Club, the release of a report commissioned by Reading is Fundamental (RIF) and conducted by Learning Point Associates (LPA). (Full disclosure: I managed this project when at LPA.) For those that do not know, RIF has been around since 1966 and gives free books and other literacy resources to children and their families in underserved communities. A great stat from RIF’s website: It “provided 4.4 million children with 15 million new, free books and literacy resources last year,” about the number of volumes in the Boston Public Library.

In short, LPA’s report, an incredibly exhaustive meta-analysis of research around book lending and ownership programs, shows that programs like RIF, Reach Out and Read, and Everybody Wins impact children in four ways:

  • They improve the reading performance of children, as the findings suggest that providing children with print materials helps them read more effectively.
  • They help children learn the basics of reading; with these reading materials, children develop basic reading skills such as letter and word identification, phonemic awareness, and completion of sentences.
  • Children in these programs read more and for longer lengths of time, and there is more shared reading between parents and children.
  • Lastly, children in these programs show improved attitudes toward reading and learning; with greater access to books, children show more enjoyment for them, reading, and academics.

Powerful stuff.

So, do you have a book distribution program in your community? If not, start one. Book distributions can take place in schools, childcare facilities, health clinics, public libraries, after-school sites, and other education and community-based settings. Check in with someone at one of these places, to see what they know and how they can assist. Even call one of the national partners mentioned above, to see if you’re eligible. There’s much to gain, it seems, from that simple act of giving a child a book.

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Tuesday Tidbits, September 21, 2010

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Abner Oakes

Yesterday, our school district sent home a schedule for its Parent Academy, workshops that give parents “the tips and tools to help their children be successful in school.” There were 34 listed, from a question-and-answer session with district staff at a local Walmart to one called Brush Up on Algebra with The Math Dude to a more traditional session called Understanding the Maryland School Assessment to a behind-the-scenes tour of the district’s bus depot. I better attend the workshop Learning to Use Social Media.

What parent workshops are offered by your school district?

Shameless self-promotion: Want more of The Math Dude? See this webcast that I did with him, Harvard’s Jon Star, Jim Rubillo from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and others on algebra, called Making Algebra Work: Instructional Strategies that Deepen Student Understanding. And if that floats your boat, see this one on fractions, called Beyond Slices of Pizza: Teaching Fractions Effectively.

Is your school a US Department of Education Blue Ribbon School? The 304 2010 recipients were announced two weeks ago.

Lastly, an op-ed in last week’s Education Week alerted me to this group, Attendance Counts; in the piece the group’s director Hedy Chang debunks five common myths about school attendance. I liked what she said about this myth, that there’s “not much schools can do to improve attendance; it’s up to parents.” She wrote: “While parents are certainly essential, schools partnering with community agencies can make a real difference when they work together. Some solutions are universal: educating parents and students about the importance of attendance and ensuring that every absence receives a response.”

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Mucking around

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Abner Oakes

I want to attend Gever Tulley’s Tinkering School, a summer camp during which kids build things. Here’s his TED talk on the place:

It reminds me of what a former colleague said once about elementary school science class – at least what should happen in an elementary school science class: Mucking around. That students, with appropriate direction and coaching from a thoughtful teacher, should be given the time and space and materials to muck around.

I wish that happened more in schools – and not just in science class. I understand the pressure that many teachers feel – that they need to move through the curriculum at a certain pace, with only so many days to get through so many pages of a pacing guide or scope and sequence (a document that outlines what is taught and when it is taught during the school year). This pressure is particularly acute when the end-of-year standardized test looms.

But I know that mucking around happens: I have walked through many inquiry-focused classrooms that buzz with activity – even a healthy dose of chaos – and I can tell that a skillful teacher is in charge, one that has developed the right project for or with her charges, with the right questions for them to pursue (or develop themselves) and the right supports and structures, to ensure that students are challenged but never left to flounder.

I can bet that these teachers started teaching mucking around the very first day of class, developing in students the skills and habits of mind to make them good muckers; I bet too that these teachers had a plan on paper or in their heads on how to give their charges continually increasing responsibility for their own learning. Yes, mucking around happens, and it happens most effectively when careful planning undergirds it – planning that even allows for the detours. the dead ends, the U-turns, and the new back roads and towns discovered on the way.

So, I like to ask teachers: What are you doing day-to-day, week-to-week, to build the autonomy of your students? What are the steps you’re taking to turn them into independent learners? To teach them to revel in and be successful at mucking around?

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Parent involvement

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Abner Oakes

See this piece from a past place of work. Called What Schools Want Parents to Know, it “summarizes five important points about involvement that every parent should know:”

  1. Multiple studies show “that the involvement of parents and families in the schooling of their children makes a significant difference:” those children are “more likely to earn high grades and test scores, enroll in higher level programs, and be promoted.”
  2. “For parents, being involved doesn’t have to mean being at school every day. In fact, it doesn’t necessarily mean going to the school at all.”
  3. Parents need to think of themselves as clients or customers of the school and school district, and like any consumer-based enterprise, “schools do better when they hear from customers with questions, comments, and constructive criticism.”
  4. “Many schools have changed their view of involvement from the notion of ‘parent as helper’ to ‘parent as partner’ by developing ways to share decision making,” and studies “indicate that creating these opportunities encourages parent involvement and may even have a positive effect on” achievement.
  5. “High-performing schools are student centered,” with those that work in them concentrating fully on the needs of students. The same should be true of parent-school relationships – focused on the needs of students.

Not terribly earth-shattering, but it’s good to be reminded. See the bibliography at the bottom of the piece if you want to dig more deeply.

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Posting student work

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Abner Oakes

I got a question from a friend (and parent) about student work on the hallway walls of a school building and told her that original student work should be all over the place – as long as what is posted abides by the school district’s fire code. See this August 2010 article about Leander Independent School District in Leander, TX; local fire code states that no more than 20 percent of any classroom or hallway wall may be covered with teaching materials or student work.

What’s posted should not be just random work or Xeroxed sheets. In June I visited an elementary school in another state where the students had all filled out the same Xeroxed worksheet, the teacher had marked them, and then these sheets got plastered on the wall outside the classroom – just slightly different iterations of the same work, over and over and over again. See our student work, this display seemed to say. To me it said, See my lazy attempt at displaying student work. (I’d even suggest that it said, See my lazy teaching. But I will give this teacher the benefit of the doubt, since I spent no time in that classroom.)

For the posting of student work to have any value, that student work needs to be original – those poems on which the kids were working, their photographic essays, the flags that they created for their imaginary countries, with an explanation of each part of that flag – and the kids need to know that the work will be posted before they start on the project. Ideally it would be great to have drafts of that work with the final, so that its progression can be viewed. Post the rubric used to measure the work (more on rubrics later), the state standards to which the work corresponds, and all work, not just the best. Yes, a classroom culture needs to be created so that students are OK with posting their less-than-stellar work, but it has huge value.

For me the posting of original student work makes public the learning that is happening in the classroom. Students know that there will be more eyes on that work than just those of the teacher, and as a classroom gets into the habit of posting and discussing that work, I have seen the quality of it improve and, more importantly to me, the conversation around just what makes for quality student work increase and become increasingly sophisticated – yes, even for elementary school kids.

And, anyway, I love being in a school where students from other grade levels, as they walk down the hall, stop to look at a project from another grade level. Oh, they say, that’s what we get to do next year. Or: Hey, we did that project last year – cool!

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