Blog: 18-19
Morgan Kueter:
I am a first year science teacher at Fossil Ridge School. This blog is designed to archive my struggles and successes as I implement new technology into my classroom.
I am a first year science teacher at Fossil Ridge School. This blog is designed to archive my struggles and successes as I implement new technology into my classroom.
1. Description, What happened: At the end of each unit I try to create a summative project as well as a test. This is so that if students are not great at either projects or tests they still have the ability to be successful in the class and demonstrate their understanding of the unit. In the last unit the project that students were to create was a choice-based project researching the effects that given disease have on the cell membrane and how things are transported within a cell. Students choose the disease that they would be researching from a predetermined list, they then had 4 options of projects to do. All projects had the same content requirements, the medium however was student choice. They could create a poster, a brochure, a book, a diorama, or a video presentation. Students were then given a week in class to complete the project. Over that week students also completed a student-teacher conference with me in order to get feedback on their project and to check in on their overall success in the class. These conferences are completed each time the students work on a large project, to ensure that I am regularly communicating with each individual student. The focus of the conferences this round was understanding rubrics and how they apply to the way projects are graded. 2. feeling: Overall, when students turned in their projects I was very happy with the majority of the projects and were impressed with the way the students went above and beyond the minimum requirements. Part of their grade was to challenge themselves and take risks. I found that students really embraced this and found new and innovative way to push themselves. There was some project however that could have used some improvement. With the focus being on the rubric I felt that it was more thought out than previous rubrics and that I gave more meaningful feedback as to how students could improve on future projects. I have been trying to provide more feedback, specifically on project so that students can continue to improve and so that they can get used to my thought process when grading and apply that later. I also thought that the challenge section of the rubric was a great addition. In this class I have a wide range of grade levels and student abilities. Having students assess where they pushed themselves to take risks I think really helped the overall quality of every project. 3. Evaluation, What was good and bad about the experience: The good things that happened is that I was more diligent about giving well thought out meaningful feedback that students could use in the future. I also think that it was good to focus on the rubric during student teacher conferences. This emphasis gave students insight into what I consider most when I am grading. The bad thing is that there were some students who still did not understand why they received the grade they did when rubrics were handed back to students. While I think their misunderstanding took place because they had not yet read through the comments and the notes that I had left on the rubric, it is still concerning to me that there was this much confusion. 4. Analysis, what sense can you make of this situation: After handing back the rubric I got some student and peer feedback about how to improve the rubric. I found that there are some sections that students thought were more subjective, and as my students are still learning my expectations when grading this can create some confusion. Some peer teachers suggested adding more clear descriptions by using numbers of times there are errors or adding phrases such as “going above and beyond”. The confusion mostly occurred in my students who regularly do the bare minimum required. For me doing the bare minimum is C work, not A work even if all the requirements are met. This is something that I can explain better in the future. There is also I have found there is a culture created at Fossil that an A is average, not a C. These students are so used to getting A’s just for meeting basic requirements. Therefore, I am fighting an uphill battle having that not be my expectation in class. 5. Conclusion, what else could you have done: Overall, I think that by discussing the rubric in student teacher conferences and emphasizing it throughout the project helped improve the quality of the majority of projects. For those few students however who are still trying to find every way to do as little as possible to get a good grade I need to be more specific and clearer about my expectations. I will do this by including more descriptive language in my rubric, as well as encourage these students to have one on one meetings with me. This way we can talk about how I graded their project and have them identify where exactly they think they deserve more credit. This will hopefully help them identify where improvements can be made and how they can continue to improve for future assignments. 6. Action Plan, if it arose again what would you do: For future rubrics I am going to try and add more descriptive wording and to be clearer with my expectations. For most students by adding the challenge section they did go above and beyond to try and get that A or B. I will add to the student-teacher conference sheet a section about effort, so that students can identify how that plays into their overall grade. I will also continue to meet with the students who want an A for minimal effort in order to demonstrate that in my classroom a C is average, not an A.
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