Well, one of the greatest parts about the teaching profession is that you can steal things from other teachers and implement it. I would like to give a round of applause to Katia Hildebrandt and Alec Couros for creating this rubric for our Major Project.
As a new teacher, I am aware of a multitude of assessment strategies that help students succeed. I have tried a lot of different strategies in my classroom: peer evaluation, fishbowls, checklists, questioning, exit slips, but nothing comes close to the love I have for rubrics. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are downsides to every assessment strategy— rubrics included. Sometimes they hinder students from taking risks in their assignments and the end results are very formula. However, I have found that rubrics have drastically helped some students who struggle the most.
It gets especially tricky when trying to create a rubric that values process more than product. So, I thank Katia and Alec again because I don’t have to start creating a rubric from nothing. I basically adapted their rubric to fit the Assess and Reflect Outcomes in ELA 20/30. I left a lot of the same details, as the project is similar to what people are doing in EC&I 831. I am trying to resist the urge to put a lot of detail into my rubric so that I can allow students to focus on their strengths. I will most likely need to adapt this based on the responses I receive, but that’s all part of the teaching game.
I have also changed the date for when students write posts for their Major Digital Project. At first, I thought it would be a great thing for students to do on Friday. However, I found that students sometimes forgot to work on their skill; allowing students to write posts on Monday gives them the ability to practice on the weekend. This seems to be working much better so far.
We are also currently learning how to properly integrate quotations, so I will be requiring they practice that skill on their blog posts. They can look at different readings and integrate quotations from experts in their chosen skill, or a quote that explains the process of learning something related to their skill.
Frustration of the Week:
Photo Credit: Robin Hutton via Compfight cc
My blog hub is not showing all of my students posts. I really wanted this to work seamlessly so that students could see and write comments on each other’s blogs. I set it up by getting students to fill out a Google Form that required them to put their blogs: wordpressblogs.com/category/koskieela/feed.
However, only a few of my student’s posts have been showing up on koskieela.ca so I am going to prevail this week and figure it out!
- Koskie Out!
KATHERINE KOSKIE 
That is awesome that you could modify the rubric to work with your class! I love being able to use pre-made documents as a starting point. That is the beauty of open education and people labeling their work creative commons. Sounds like your project is coming along nicely. I can totally understand the frustrations of your blog hub not working. I hope you are able to figure it out!
Yes as I was in the teacher ed program, they always said to “never re-create the wheel”. I try and change shared resources up all the time and make them suit my needs as well! Good Luck with your project :)