3-Step Rubric

Excellence in Education: The 3-Step Rubric

Effective rubrics provide students with clarity ensuring students know exactly what they are doing, how to do it and how their work will be measured.

For years, I created my own rubrics, often creating different rubrics for different assignment choices, even though they were intended to assess the same learning intentions. When grading the completed assignment, I often noticed entire components were missed--Was my rubric not clear enough? Did the students look at the rubric? Other times the completed assignments were often clones because the rubric was overly specific and served only as a prescriptive checklist. In these cases, the assignments did little to improve student performance and understanding

Conversely, well-crafted assignments and rubrics state the immediate goal or the learning intention in a way that every student understands what needs to be done and how to complete the assignment. The Three Step Rubric ensures teacher and student clarity. The three steps ensure quality work, build student self-efficacy, and provide a means to providing actionable feedback. First students, working within the teacher's framework, create a the rubric. Secondly, students self-assesses their work and finally, the teacher assesses the assignment.

Creating the rubric After the teacher shares the learning target for the assignment, student work individually and in groups to create a rubric (individually-groups-class). I used the following questions to guide discussion around the creation of the rubric:

1. What should the assignment include? The focus here should be on the learning goals.
2. What will be assessed?
3. How will the assignment align with standards?
4. How will we measure your (student) achievement and progress?
5. Based on a 4-point scale, what would need to be done to ensure a score for each component? What's the difference between excels, proficient, approaching and needs improvement?

As much as possible I tried to provide students with choice as long as the project enabled them to meet the learning goals; because of this it's vital that students are discussing ways to ensure the assignment meets the learning goal by breaking the overarching goal into smaller and more measurable components that are often more generalized. This means the rubric becomes less of a checklist and more focused on learning. 

Student Self-Assessments After completing the assessment, students use the rubric to evaluate themselves. They must justify and explain their ratings for each category. You’ll find the students to be very accurate with their own evaluations—often even grading themselves more harshly than you would. Of course, a peer editing step can be added at this stage.

Teacher Assessment After they’ve completed their self-evaluation, it’s the teacher’s turn to provide feedback. Instead of making comments on all parts of the assessment and rubric, only comment where differences between the student grade and your grade exist (this is a great time saver!) This process enables teachers to more intently focus their time on areas where disagreement exists and where feedback is most important.

Advantages 

• Setting their own goals helps students get started. It helps them organize and the focus on the task. Students visualize. This is what the assignment is supposed to look like.
• Students focus on important components and standards.
• They can explain and see why the information or skill is relevant.
• By allowing student choice, motivation increases
• Rubrics can be personalized, increasing creativity
• Students are able to accurately evaluate the quality of their work, which enables them to discover ways to improve their performance
• Students and teacher work side-by-side, making the feedback more meaningful.

The Three Step Rubric actively engages students in their own learning. Involving students in the creation of the rubric, assignment completion and self-analysis of their work, ensures that students are appropriately challenged because they know what to do and how well to do it. In turn, they become more active in their learning, building metacognitive skills through self-monitoring and reflection.

Shout Out: Jennifer Timms 

Thursday's showcase was something we can all be proud of. Not only did we have more student work, there was greater variety and depth to what we displayed. We must be proud of the work of our students, knowing that their greatness is only made possible by our work. 

Thank you to Jennifer Timms for her tireless work and organization of this event! 

Birthdays

March 12: Jennifer Meade

Tasks and Important Information
Friday-A Day and Clubs

Honor Society Inductions: Monday at 7

Tuesday: Medford League Basketball

March 4-March 29: Visual Arts Showcase at Stonefields

Staff Survey: vaschoolsafety.info/staff Staff Password: ARC633T

https://virginia.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3s0RFyD1IWTwhwx

This survey is required by the Commonwealth. We are held accountable for participation rates and ALL staff members are encouraged to participate. Please complete by March 13.

March 19: Blood Drive

Important Links

Bell Schedules http://bit.ly/MustangBells 

• This includes links to the Friday calendars and the year-end calendar

Seeking volunteers? ACPS is attempting to expand volunteer outreach and help teachers find volunteers. Here’s a form that takes a minute to complete.

Morning Announcement Stream: http://streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/links.htm

Announcement Request

Athletic team schedules, rosters, etc.

Teacher Manual

Want something included on the Monticello Outlook Calendar, the Monticello website, in the PowerSchool Daily Bulletin, schoolwide Schoology accounts, or the student newsletter (viewed by parents, students and staff)? Please use this link https://goo.gl/forms/bIjfJLKokWPcEHx33 

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