The Rookery

Sometimes, when people find out I teach in a school without grades, they wonder aloud how students know how they're doing.  It's a fair question.  Most of us had school experiences in which grades were used to rate our performance.  Even in elementary school, I was given a star or a sad face next to a negative number as evidence of my achievement or lack there of.

What I've come to realize as a progressive educator is that grades are a very blunt instrument.  They don't help a child understand how to move forward or what to work on next.  They don't help a child identify the strengths they can build on.  They exist solely to define past work as "good" or "bad."  As a teacher, I want assessment to do more.  I want it to help a child succeed in the future.

Instead of grades, I often use rubrics with children.  A rubric identifies key elements that should be in a piece of work and specifically defines different levels of competency.  Detailed rubrics can give children a good sense of where they are now and where they might go next.  Sometimes I go through a rubric with a child and we find evidence of strength and opportunity together.  Sometimes, children use a rubric to assess the work of another child or their own work.  Peer and self assessment are crucial.  Learning how to look at our own work objectively is not easy and it takes a lot of practice.

When I design a rubric, I make sure that students know that I do not expect them to show the highest level of competency in all areas.  I am clear that some skills I would not expect them to tackle until they were much older.  Similarly, we often think about what a rubric for younger children would look like – the 4th grade "just right" skill would have been above and beyond expectations for a 2nd grader.  This helps them see learning as a continual process, and rubrics are one way we can figure out what we want to work on.

Although I know the power of rubrics, I am still struck by their affect on student work.  When the 5th graders were preparing their Wolf Ridge speeches, I had the 4th graders use a simple rubric to help their mentors improve.  The 5th grader gave the speech while the 4th grader assessed their performance using the rubric below.  Every pair was completely engaged.  After reviewing results together, many pairs asked for another sheet so they could try again.  Suddenly eye contact was being made, shifting feet were rooted and articulation got very sharp.  Simply practicing would not have achieved the same results.

 This year, we've introduced a rubric for personal projects, too.  We'll be using it with both the 4th and 5th graders as they work on the project so that they have a clear idea of what they can do to be successful.  That rubric is here:  
Download Project assessment rubric 2