Setting criteria with students

I was fortunate to attend an Anne Davies conference in August with a few wonderful colleagues from my school.  As my school district has done much work on assessment, much of the conference was reaffirming and a reminder of powerful best practices.  One that I was excited to learn about is a twist on my practice of creating rubrics with students.  I have been doing this for years, but the method Anne taught us takes the students away from grades and focuses more on student analysis of their essential learnings. It frustrated me when I spent time with my students creating rubrics and providing written feedback to their work when all they would do is look at the number when they got their work back.  "I got a 3; that means 75%)  Urgh!  Much of Anne's work presented at the conference focused on creating criteria with students around the outcomes from the program of studies with no numbers attached (including a 1-4 rubric scale).

With my grade seven students, we co-constructed criteria on what it means to collaborate.  My school  has a strong focus on 21st century competencies that provide a strong base for project based learning.  I am hopeful that having the students consciously think about what it means to collaborate before we begin our first project will result in deeper learning for all.

With my grade nines, we co-constructed criteria on what a lab write up should look like.  As we are starting our year with chemistry, it was a logical fit.  Students then self assessed their first lab against their criteria and made improvements.  The resulting lab reports were of higher quality than I usually see at the start of the year.  More importantly, however, the students can articulate what their strengths and areas of challenge are when designing and conducting a lab.  We will continue to work through similar processes as the year progresses.  It seems to be quite a successful strategy thus far.

Criteria for Lab Write Up

Criteria for Collaboration

Criteria for Communication