Rubrics

Rubrics are:

Summative - provide info about student's knowledge Formative - proivde info about strudent's strengths and weaknesses Evaluative - provide ways to create instruction that better fits each student's needs Educative - helps students understand how they learn science

Holistic Rubric

= provdes a single score based on an overall impression of a student's performance on a task = Use when you want a quick snapshot of achievement; when a single dimension is enough to define quality + Advantages: quick scoring, provides an overview of student achievement - Disadvantages: does not provide detailed info; may be difficult to provide one overall score

Constructing a rubric

-know the goals for instruction. what are the learning outcomes? -decide on the structure of rubric (holistic/analytical) -determine the levels of performance (specific to each criteria) -share the rubric with your students (let them see, discuss, or even design it prior to performing an activity)

There are 2 predominant types of rubrics

1. Holistic rubric 2. Analytical rubric + general and task-specific

General rubric

=contain criteria that are general across tasks =USE when want to assess reasoning, skills and products; when all students are not doing exactly the same task. + Advantages: can use the same rubric across dif. tasks - Disadvantages: feedback may not be specific enough

Analytic Rubric

=provides specific rubric along several dimensions =provides a specific score along each of several dimensions =USE when you want to see relative strengths n weaknesses; when you want detailed feedback; when you want to assess complicated skills or performance; when want students to self-assess their understanding/performance + Advantages: More detailed feedback, score more consistent across students & graders -Disadvantages: Time consuming

Task-specific rubric

=unique to a specific task =USE when want to assess knowledge and when consistency of scoring is extremely important + Advantages: more reliable assessment of performance on the task - Disadvantages: difficult to construct rubrics for all tasks

Rubrics

evaluate the student's understanding of a scientific topic by levels of performance on certain criteria. Can evaluate the depth, breadth, creativity and conceptual framework of an essay, presentation, skit, poster, project, lab report, portfolio, etc.