LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

Educational Services Division

Professional Development Protocol

D.Scoring Student Work Systematically:

#1 RUBRIC SCORING PROCESS

1.OBJECTIVE: Score student work with consistency using rubric/scoring guides to evaluate performance

2. RATIONALE: Provides two benefits to use criteria for evaluating student work and making them available to students, fellow educators, and parents:

a. First, it promotes quality performance by clearly defining the characteristics of the work to be

achieved.

b. Second, it provides specific and useful feedback for consistently evaluating student work and identifying areas of strength and weakness in order to determine appropriate future instruction.

3. MATERIALS:

· “Teaching with Standards in the Classroom” by Jill Barnes (D1-1)

· “Focus on Clear Expectations” (D1-2)

· “Rubrics” from Assessing Student Outcomes (D1-3)

· “Procedures for Creating a Scoring Guide/Rubric” for Culminating Tasks” (D1-4)

· District’s “Generic Scoring Guides” for oral presentations, visual, written in arts, performance in arts, career preparation, health, history/social science, language arts, mathematics, physical education, and science (D1-5 through D1-16)

· “Process for Scoring Student Work with Rubrics” (D1-17)

4. PROCEDURE:

Timing

a.Discuss the impact of rubrics based upon the article “Teaching with

10 mins.

Standards in the Classroom” (D1-1) by Jill Barnes.

b. Compare elements identified in “Focus on Clear Expectations” (D1-2)

5-10 mins.

with experiences described in Barnes’ article.

c.Review “Rubrics” excerpt from Assessing Student Outcomes. (D1-3)

3 mins.

d.Discuss practices for developing a rubric for a standards-aligned

5-7 mins.

task using “Procedures for Creating a Scoring Guide/Rubric for

Culminating Tasks.” (D1-4)

e.Pair with another educator and select one of the “Generic Scoring Guides”

20 mins.

(D1-5 through D1-16) appropriate for a lesson you are going to teach; collaborate

on the development of a scoring guide for all four levels of the performance.

f.Develop a timeline for meeting together to assess student work

1 min.

samples using the rubric.

g.Use “Process for Scoring Student Work with Rubrics.” (D1-17)

Follow-up

session TBD

(continued on reverse)

5. NEXT STEPS:

Continue to assess student work in collaboration with colleagues using:

· “Process for Scoring Student Work with Rubrics.” (D1-17)

· Interactive website for scoring student work: http://assessments.cse.ucla.edu

Adapted by Evans

D1-1

Council for Basic Education

 

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Teaching with Standards in the Classroom

by Jill Barnes

Standards. The word brings to mind visions of spinster schoolmarms brandishing unjustly sharp pointers intoning, "Write one hundred times..."

Those standards have been supplanted by a type of standard with an infinitely brighter future: our new national student learning standards. Many teachers cringe when hearing the term standards, but most already teach the content in these standards. In a middle-school English classroom, it's hard to teach something that is not covered by one or more standard. I have not considered my classroom standards-based, however, because there was no conscious effort on my part to align standards with learning.

To begin moving my classroom toward being consciously standards-based, I decided to create a unit designed to specifically address one standard. I chose to work with our district's language arts standard number 26 which states, "Gather, evaluate, and integrate information from multiple sources, such as firsthand experiences, computers, and library/multimedia centers, to prepare reports and presentations." At the time, my students were reading Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George. It is a gripping survival novel about a thirteen-year- old Inuit girl who is lost on the Alaskan tundra and befriends a pack of wolves. It is a well-crafted story, but one which my students have a difficult time relating to, as they cannot identify with Julie's situation.

I teach seventh-grade English in the Los Angeles Unified School District. My school has a diverse student population, many of whom have learned English as their second language. My classes average a fourth-grade reading level. Most of my students have never seen snow, so it is difficult for them to conceptualize the character's cold world-a world without roads, trees, or convenience stores. In order to increase my students' empathy with the character of Julie and to facilitate understanding of her surroundings, the students need to research the unfamiliar story elements of the weather, wolves, and the different lifestyles lived by those in Alaska.

The other reason I chose to create my standards-based unit on research was to challenge myself. I had found it difficult in past years to get students enthused about research, particularly within the context of a literature-based curriculum. I found a successful formula when I created the newspaper project, which combines newspaper-style writing with the background information needed for students to get the most out of Julie of the Wolves.

The unit uses student research to create a newspaper for a fictional Alaskan town. Each student designs his own masthead and name for the paper, and each newspaper is required to contain three factual news items, which students rewrite from articles found in a local paper. The newspaper must have two photos or pictures with captions, an article on wolves, an article of Alaskan historical interest, a human interest story based on events in Julie of the Wolves, a weather report for the state of Alaska, and an original cartoon with an Alaskan theme. Each newspaper also includes a how-to article or a recipe using Alaskan ingredients.

I designed this unit so that students would be required to use several different types of references-it wouldn't be a typical report, with information paraphrased (at best) from an encyclopedia. Instead, students would need to use newspapers, cookbooks, CD-Roms, and the Internet, as well as the trusty encyclopedia.

We began with the newspaper layout. The format was a four-page newspaper, with news items and the article taken from Julie of the Wolves on the front page, along with at least one picture. The interior and back pages were up to the students to arrange, as long as all the rest of the required items were included. I displayed several sample layouts as examples.

Each student was also required to bring in one newspaper to use as a guide. I realized how little experience my students had with newspapers, and this year, I will arrange to spend more classroom time with newspapers before the start of the project. Students loved working with real blank newsprint, each paper requiring only one large sheet when folded in half.

Students' pride in their work was augmented by the clear expectations of the task. Guidelines were set, with deadlines for each part of the project calendared well in advance. What helped the students most was the rubric that I created to grade their projects. I have used a rubric for years to grade student writing, but writing such a task-specific rubric and sharing it with students ahead of time (they each had their own copy) was new to me. I had to break myself of the thought that this was somehow cheating, to provide them with my expectations ahead of time. In creating our rubrics at the district level, we were told to use a four-point rubric, so that what we created would be in line with national standards.

I developed a rubric with a grading scale from 1 to 4, with a score of 4 containing all elements of the assignment and a score of 1 containing only a few of the required elements. In addition, a 4 newspaper demonstrated thorough research using various sources, and an appropriate newspaper format written in his/her own words. A 4 newspaper needed to be imaginatively and appealingly presented and to employ all the conventions of standard written English. Newspapers receiving scores of 1 to 3 had problems in each of these areas.

When grading the newspapers using the rubric, I found I needed to shift my thinking once again. Some newspapers were visually stunning, but a close reading revealed much copied information. Other students had very good information buried in a cramped or disorganized paper. Most students copied at some point in their paper, and this kept a fair number of papers from scoring in the upper half of the rubric.

The problem of students copying directly from the source can be alleviated by introducing shorter research tasks earlier in the semester. This will also help to reduce the student anxiety that comes from working with reference materials. If research is introduced well ahead of the unit, then the teacher will not need to teach many new skills during the course of the newspaper project. In this way, the scope of the newspaper project may be grander than that which we usually attempt in class, but the skills within that project are familiar.

This research project was a success for me, as the student work was produced individually, and the final product was written. Student understanding of concepts presented in the novel was greatly enhanced. For the first time, students understood how barren the North Slope of Alaska is, and how desperate was the predicament of the young girl in the story. By changing the specific tasks required in this project, this unit is easily adapted to other novels featuring exotic or unfamiliar settings and lifestyles.

I have regrouped much of my classroom teaching to fit better with the district, state, and national standards, and have found that in most cases standards-based teaching is easy to implement. The new standards can help organize a classroom and provide an instructional framework for new teachers. Soon teachers will reach for the standards as easily as they reach for the chalk.

Jill Barnes teaches seventh-grade English at Richard Henry Dana Middle School in San Pedro, California.

This article appeared in the November 1997 issue of Basic Education.

Return to CBE Home PageReturn to List of Reports and Articles

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D1-2

Focus on Clear Expectations:

1. Standards that include models of student work are available to and discussed with students.

a. Standards and rubrics are posted in the classroom and discussed with students.

b. Students work with portfolios that contain the standards and rubrics.

c. Students in the class can describe the substance of what they are trying to learn.

d. Students can show examples of their work and describe the criteria they are trying to meet.

e. Students are involved in explicating the criteria for work that meets the accomplishment standard (e.g., charts or rubrics are stated in student terms).

f. Teacher feedback is given to students in terms of the standards and rubrics.

2. Students judge their work with respect to the standards.

a. Students use rubrics to judge their work products.

b. Students engage in peer conferences in which clear criteria are used to evaluate and revise work.

c. Students engage in teacher conferences in which clear criteria are used to evaluate and revise work.

d. Students select work for portfolio submissions based on explicit criteria.

e. Students know clearly when they have and have not met the intermediate expectations and standards.

3. Intermediate expectations leading to the formally measured standards are specified.

a. For every grade level, a sequence of expected concepts and skills is specified that leads explicitly to the formally measured standards.

b. For each element in the sequence, there are rubrics and models of student work.

c. Teaching is conducted in a way that highlights the important concepts and skills that students are expected to learn.

4. Families and community are informed about the accomplishment standards children are expected to achieve.

a. Good work displays for families and community take place regularly and are well attended.

b. There are occasions when students explain to family and community their work and the criteria for judging it.

c. Parents know the standards and intermediate expectations toward which their children are working.

d. A reporting system exists that explains how students are doing in relation to the standards and intermediate expectations.

~2001 University of Pittsburgh

Apodaca

Institute for Leanin

D1-4

Procedure for Creating a Scoring Guide/Rubric for Culminating Tasks*

Excerpt from: Assessing Student Outcomes, Marzano, Pickering, McTighe, ASCO (1993)

“A scoring rubric consists of a fixed scale and a list of [criteria] describing performance for each of the points on the scale. Rubrics also promote learning by offering clear descriptions of expectations to students for agreed-upon standards. Rubrics should be explained to students

along with the assignment of the culminating task.”

As you construct your own culminating tasks, you can adapt one of the generic rubrics to assess students' achievement of the specific standards included in the task. The scale runs from 1 to 4, with 4 describing the highest level of performance and 1 describing the lowest level of

performance.

To create the scoring guide/rubric:

1 .Select a copy of the generic scoring rubric appropriate to the identified culminating task.

2. Determine which of the following four dimensions identifies criteria critical to the successful

completion of the task.

Content: Indicators describing the level of quality of the conceptual knowledge or skills of the standard that the student achieves in completing the task.

Organization: Indicators describing the level of quality of the structure or framework used by the student to communicate the knowledge or skill defined by the standard.

Conventions: Indicators describing the level of quality of the mechanics or skills of a discipline which the student uses to process and convey the knowledge defined by the standard. (e.g. grammar and spelling for writing,. basic computation for mathematics).

Impact/Style: Indicators describing the level of quality of the impression made on the audience or observer by the details, pictures, words, data, spatial arrangements, etc., which the student selects to convey the knowledge or skill defined by the standard.

3. Within each dimension highlight or circle each criterion that is relevant for the culminating task. Make certain the relevant criteria are identified for each of the score points.

4. Identify those criteria specific to the task which are critical to the successful completion of the task and are not found on the generic rubric sheet. In the final column on the generic rubric sheet marked Task-Specific, write those task specific criteria in rubric form for Level 4, being sure that the criteria reflect the language of the standard being assessed.

5. Write the criteria describing the other three levels of performance for each of the task

specific rubrics developed for a Level 4 performance. Enter these in the appropriate spaces in the final column of the generic rubric.

6. Combine the highlighted or circled generic criteria from each dimension with the task- specific criteria written in the final column to form the scoring guide for the identified culminating task; write the scoring guide in the ..Assessment" section of the Standards- Based Instruction Model.

*Developed by the Council for Basic Education