Design an assessment rubric

Hello everybody!!

Today we are going to learn a bit more about what is an assessment rubric and how can we use it. As you can check in my last posts, I turned two flat activities into super learning missions to make the students thinking about the learning process and designing more visual artefacts in order to they can enjoy creating. Now, it is time to evaluate one of those learning missions through an assessment rubric.

For those who had never heard about a rubric, this post will clarify the concept. An assessment rubric is the most objective tool used to assess the achievement of the goals proposed.  This tool can be used for many purposes such as evaluate the participation, the attendance, as a self-reflexion, make changes…

Furthermore, a rubric may consist of four elements:

1.       The aspects of the learning process that we want to assess.

2.       Well defined criteria describing each specific aspect to be evaluated.

3.       A scale of ratings.

4.       Clear and easy descriptions that concrete the performance level.

It is important that you take into account the goals that you are going to evaluate, when are you going to do it and how.

According to these criteria, it is time to create my own rubric to evaluate my first super learning mission in which students have to create a comic to show the different Prehistoric times. As you can remember, kids should make pairs and decide which period of time they want to describe through a comic using Pixton. Then, they have to spread their work in their learning diaries to the rest of their partners.  I choose this task because I think that evaluation is important in this process since students need feedback on their learning mission.  Moreover, it is important that we clarify the things that we want to evaluate before they complete the task, so students can take into consideration those aspects before starting the activity.

I have considered all the goals mentioned in my last post:

-          To know and to use different vocabulary related to the topic.

-          To be able to talk about the past using past forms of the verbs and time expressions.

-          To know how to collaborate in groups and develop social skills.

-          To promote critical thinking and English skills.

-          To know how to work with ICTs in an adequate way an how to manage with different interactive tools.

Before sharing my rubric with you, I want to specify the criteria and the steps that I have followed to do my rubric using this Emaze presentation. You can also check it by clicking on this link.

The criteria that I follow is:

1.       Content and vocabulary: I would like to know if students have acquired the content related to the Prehistory and its different time periods. Moreover, I will assess at this point, the use of different vocabulary related to the topic we saw in class, such as tools, past verbs, animals, people, materials…

2.       Alignment with the activity: I would like to know if students understand what they have to do and the main purpose of the activity. I also assess if they fit the comic with a proper description of the period of time they had chosen using different vocabulary and landscapes.

3.       Organization and effort: I would like to know if kids know how to work in pairs in a respectful way, giving support to each other. Besides, I will assess the organization of the work through their previous drafts and the personal effort made in class.

4.       Final artefact: I would evaluate the final comic. I want to know if students’ comics are original and if they have used the online tool effectively. Furthermore, I will assess the attention in class and if students have learnt how to manage with the tools.

5.       Mechanics: I would take into consideration the spelling and grammar mistakes they have made in their learning diaries and how they have spread their work in their blogs.

Considering all this, I made my own assessment rubric to evaluate my first learning mission. I chose Quick Rubric to do this because I realized that this tool was the best option for my purpose.  With Quick Rubric you can make an appropriated rubric in a few minutes since you only have to fill in a table in a simple way. Here you can see an example of my rubric to evaluate one task of my OEP.

To conclude, I would like to say that this challenge was the easiest one because I could find a tool to make rubrics in an easy way. Thus, I highly recommend you to use this tool if you have to make your own rubrics. If you have the criteria clear, you will have it done in a few minutes and you can spend the rest of the time thinking about new ways to improve your project or challenges.

With this rubric, I will conclude with my prototype project. In my next post, you will see a self-reflexion on all my learning process and how I will explain it through an online class.

I hope you have enjoyed and I would like to see your comments and suggestions!!