Module 5 Reflection

This module has helped me think about student-centered assessment in the following ways:

The part of this module that really got me thinking was Step 2 of Activity 1. In particular, I found the questions that the module provided for readers to think about while they create their student assessments very helpful. I have always viewed rubrics as assessment tools that always follow the same formula (in an English Language Arts classroom at least). The sections that are nearly always included are mechanics, organization, and style. Rubrics show students exactly what is expected of them, but they always look so similar from what I usually see. The questions in this module, though, really got me thinking about the ways to really cater a rubric to a project one is creating.

Here are the questions:

Which of these assessments would be most important to you and your students?
What kind of information would you and your students gain by using the assessments?
How would the assessments help students become self-directed, collaborative learners?
How do the assessments assess higher-order thinking, 21st century skills, and a student’s ability to answer
the Curriculum-Framing Questions?
What instruction would your students need to use the assessments effectively?

These questions did one thing in particular for me: they helped me really think about what I needed to assess in my rubrics. I think that a lot of people are going about the rubric thing all wrong. I'm not saying that including mechanics and organization sections is wrong. Those things are important to, but I think teachers need to be thinking more about the skills that the students are learning and using as they do their project while creating a rubric. This may be harder to do for a rubric for a finished project. My rubric for the publication my students will be making, for instance, focuses on the information provided in the publication, sources, citations, and mechanics. I'm primarily looking to see if the students followed directions and if they produced quality information. I think, though, that during the middle of a project teachers could have some sort of assessment in which the 21st century skills that the students are learning are addressed. It would be an interesting to try because it's something I don't feel like I've really seen. Like I've said, most of the rubrics that I've seen in English Language Arts classrooms look very similar.

I feel like this blog has included a lot of rambling, but the point I'm trying to make here is that this module has really got me thinking about what exactly I should be assessing in my rubrics.