Week 5-5th Grade Buddies and Collage Making / Rubric Writing 101

The highlight of this week was our field trip of course, but look for a post ALL about that to be coming soon!  Another highlight was that we got to meet our 5th grade buddies from Mrs. Osborne's class!  All year we will get to do activities with our buddies.  For this visit we decided to show off our reading skills.  They read a book to us and we read a book to them.  We can't wait for them  to come back and visit again in October.

Students also really enjoyed making their community helper collages for social studies.  Before we began working on our posters we discussed how they would be graded.  In the Papillion-La Vista School District and in schools all over the country, children are graded based on proficiency levels instead of the old A, B, C, D and F system.  Our district  uses numbers that correspond to the following proficiency levels:  beginning (1) progressing (2) proficient (3) and advanced (4). These are the indicators that you will see on papers that come home and on their report cards.  Teachers often use a document known as a rubric to help them determine proficency levels.  Put simply, a rubric is a guide that outlines what the student must demonstrate at each level.    I am a firm believer in the idea that children can achieve anything, but that we must make our expectations known to them!  This week I explained to the students what a rubric is and what each level stood for.  We then worked together to list the exact features that their collages should include to earn a 1, 2, 3, or 4.  When their collages were done they helped me to grade them using the rubric.  They were able to understand what their grade was and why they earned it.

 I am including a few sample rubric for you to look at.  Please do not hesitate to call me or email me if you would like more information or if you would ever like to see the rubric used to grade an assessment.  You can see a copy of a basic rubric here.  1st Grade Grading Rubric  I created this one to use with kids because they can relaete to the different faces.  A specific rubric also includes exactly what the student is expected to show for that assignment.  You can see a copy of the rubric for our first math assessment here:  Math Rubric 

Love,
Mrs. Heath