Rubrics: Trial and Error

After grading a stack of biome posters, I went over the grades and comments I made on them.  The grades were abnormally high.  At first I thought this was a good thing.  Then, when students continued to score high I began to doubt that my rubric was an accurate measure of student performance.

High grades are good only when they're a reflection of the student's comprehension.  Upon more reflection and discussion with other teachers I realized that rubrics are more sticky than I realized at first.

As I talked with seasoned teachers, they told me rubrics, regardless of how good they are or how much work went into producing them, are always too lenient the first time around.  Teachers aren't familiar with them yet, and the vague wording needs to be tightened up.  This can only be fixed after they're assigned the first time.

The rubrics were and excellent method of communicating with students.  For each project I was able to give comments and feedback on the assignment, regardless of the grade.  When I handed back the rubrics and the grades, the students received the comments really well.

One thing I would like to try is to have students grade the quality of their own work before I grade it.  One teacher does this with major assignments and she's found that the students have a good estimation of the quality of their own work.  I like that students are reflecting on their own work; it's a good step away from "doing school" and towards internalizing material.

The next time I give this assignment I'll change the wording to be more specific, still give feedback on the quality of work, and try and have the students be reflective of the work they turn in.

White Board: Relative Dating

Here's a whiteboard drawing from today's lesson on the fossil record.  The slide for the topic of relative dating wasn't that good, so I drew this on the fly.

Here, using relative dating, we can determine that the T-Rex skull is older than the human skull but younger than the trilobite.

Teaching First: The Cheat Sheet

We had a quiz yesterday, and I caught a student cheating.

I normally walk around the room during an exam with two intentions.  First, to make sure the students aren't cheating, and second, to make sure students can ask clarifying questions.

As I went over to address a raised hand, I noticed a student, less than 5 feet away from me, pull something out from under the desk.  After addressing the question, I looked again; the student was looking at a cheat-sheet.

After taking the strip of paper, I handed it to my master teacher and explained what I saw.  So, we followed the classroom policy of giving the student a "0" on the quiz, and the school policy of calling the parent and informing an administrative counselor.

I was sad for the student, who just sat there for the remainder of the quiz.  The 0 would kill the student's 96% in the class, which will almost be impossible to recover from before the end of the quarter.  On the other hand, it wasn't an exam, and the student should be able to recover before the end of the semester.  Honors and AP students are under a lot of pressure from a variety of sources; sadly, cheating is a much larger problem in higher classes than the mainstream classes.

Hopefully, the student will learn his lesson.

Sophomore Registration: Mixed Thoughts

Today's lesson allowed students a great deal of flexibility.  Most needed to finish gathering data for a lab, others worked on the analysis questions, and the rest worked on other homework.

Today was also sophomore registration.  This proved to be an unexpected distraction, but it was a great opportunity to talk to and learn about my students.  They are beginning to wrestle with how they're going to get to college.

Student teaching in a freshman honors biology class means most of the students are very driven.  Next year looms with their first AP courses sprinkled within a sea of honors classes.  I am firmly convinced that students need to challenge themselves and take as many honors and AP classes as they can manage. The students themselves are very driven to take the advanced courses, but sadly, are unclear as to the purpose.  Sure, to get into college; everyone knows that.  Then what?  None of the student I talked with knew what they wanted to do when they grew up.

A good college, a good career, a good retirement, and a good twilight of one's life is all very nice, but, for students, these are very distant and impersonal.

Students have time.  Rather than give advice on what will get them into a better college, I recommended things that would help them appreciate the world around them.  And, if that means taking a bunch of AP and honors class, then they should do it.  Sparking student interest seems more valuable than leaning on them to follow a particular career path or get into an elite college.