This week was an interesting perusal through many valuable resources on the topic of Rubrics. Not only was it a great refresher on how to "rubric", but I also gained a better understanding on how to use Rubrics as applied to Grading with a Rubric. I think rubrics are an instrumental way of grading and definitely easy to use for teachers and students. As I was doing my undergrad, I was very unfamiliar with Rubrics and to tell you the truth they were a scary "new" thing for me. I have since broken out of that mindset and enjoy using Rubrics for a variety of things in my classroom.
This week, I have been grading a Greek Mythology Webquest project and as I was in the process of converting grades over, I caught myself doing percentages. So some kids passed and others failed! Realizing that this is not how I was supposed to be doing it (I knew this and forgot) I went back and corrected their grades. Now it is more evenly distributed and no one failed unless they did not make the effort to do what they were supposed to do. I do know how to do it though and must have been having a brain fart. :)
Several of the Rubric sites, I bookmarked for future reference. There were several though that I thought were very repetitive and provided very little insight beyond the terminology. I did however, really enjoy and benefitted from this link.
I also created an account with iRubric and shared it with fellow teachers at school who are fans of creating rubrics. The one thing that I found to be AWESOME with iRubric is that is extremely versatile when it comes to classroom uses and management. I was also quite impressed with its extensive collection of Rubrics created by other teachers on a plethora of topics separated by content area.
Happily, my curriculum page has been coming along quite nicely. One question that Kelvin asked me about it was why the separation between Standard and Advanced classes for the final project. Well to answer that question, at this point, I do not have the resources or the capability to take them to the lab to create all of the required materials. With the advanced students, 9/10 kids have a computer at home or have access to one. For the first attempt with this project, I want to have a small percentage of my 106 kids doing the digital version before I relinquish the awesomeness of this project to all of my students. If I am still teaching Language Arts next year, then I will probably do it with all of my students. :)
Here's a link to my updated Rubrics Page.