creating a rubric

Last week Gabbie, Candace, Professor Mace and I reviewed the assessments we had made two weeks ago and the revisions we made last week. This weeks assignment was to create our own rubric for our assessments so we had an idea on how we would grade them.

This was very interesting because, I did not realize how many different answers children can give to me bases on my questions. I tried to narrow down my questions to try to gain a better focus on what kind of and answer I wanted to receive.

My rubric was rated on a scale of 0-3 zero being no credit and three being the most credit you can obtain on that problem. I broke down what I thought each number would represent in my assessment for each question.

This was kind of eye opening for me because I didn't really know how many ways one child can answer a question. It was very difficult to try to narrow in the focus of what kind of answer I was looking for in my assessment.

Last week Professor Mace, Gabbie, Jen, and I worked through each other's assessments. We each attempted to solve and answer each of the questions on all of the assessments. We discussed how there can be multiple ways of answering just one question. It all depends on the wording of the question and how the students each interpret the questions. This week we decided to create our own rubric to be able to grade the assessments fairly and efficiently.

I was not really sure where to start with creating my own rubric. I knew I needed a grading scale so I chose the numbers 4-0 to categorize and predict the answers that the students would give for each question. I could have used words to describe each of the categories but I feel as though numbers were a better choice because I was able to describe what answers would be accepted under each number. I started with 4 and worked my way down to 0 for each of the four questions.

Category 4 and 0 were the easiest to write descriptions for because they are both the extreme ends of the spectrum. Category 4 is the highest score that the students can receive for each question. Category 0 is the lowest score students can receive for each question. The middle categories had to be the hardest to create. The descriptions had to be very specific and broken down so that students received points for answering certain aspects of the question correctly but lost points for other aspects of the questions that were answered incorrectly.

I had to be fair when determining if the student got the overall answer incorrect but all the mathematical work was shown correctly or the explanation showed that the student had the correct answer but wrote the final answer incorrectly. The students could have made a small mistake but with the work shown it would make it easier to be able to determine whether the students understood the concept or just made a small mistake. It also makes it easier to grade and allows me to give the student as many points as they earned based on their mathematical work and/or explanations.

Creating An Assessment Rubric

Last week, the group and I worked through each others assessments to prepare ourselves to create a rubric. Seeing how other people would answer our revised assessments was particularly helpful because we were able to see how others may have interpreted the question and if the phrasing of the questions correlated to our objectives. This made creating a rubric much easier because I felt much more sure of what I would be looking for while grading. It also allowed me to see how two different people would answer/interpret the same question differently.
This activity prompted me to make some changes in my assessment to test the knowledge of my students. I added a clarifying aspect to the first question. "If there are seven pairs of cheese sticks in a bag, what is the total amount of cheese sticks in the bag? Draw a picture to support your answer or explain how you got your answer." In the third question, I added a second required answer and a clarifying aspect to the question. "Use repeated addition to create TWO number sentences that represents the amount of phones above. Mark the pictures above to show how you got your answer."
After making these changes, I created the rubric. Each question had three categories (beginning, developing, and proficient) of grades you could get. I didn't give them number grades because I feel as though they may interpret that as the unchangeable value of themselves and/or their knowledge rather than seeing it as areas they may need to improve upon in the future. I would also give my students an opportunity to take the test again if they didn't like the grade they were given. Depending on how my report card would be set up, this grading system (with a lack of numbers) may not work, but that is an issue for another day.