[ola] Re: rubrics, please

  • From: Ashley Uyaguari <auyaguari@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:32:30 -0400

Hi all,
We've been working on this at our school too. The tough part is that our
schedule is by grade, so we see kiddos in 6th grade, 7th grade and 8th
grade. Some kids in 8th grade, for example, are new to the school and have
never had Spanish before. Also, everyone has had different past experiences
with Spanish.

The way I'm dealing with it now is charting individual student progress
with individual student goals. If a student starts at an NL in 7th grade,
his/her goal is NM by the end of the year to earn an A.

While if a student starts at NH, I'll want to see progress toward IL (I'm
still learning how long that might actually take them). This is the first
year that I'm working with the ACTFL levels so it's tricky. And although
it's not ideal to have the kiddos all mixed in together, I think it can
still work.  So far, kiddos are still making their own progress. I've had
to do differentiating for homework and class expectations for output, but
we're still able to work together as a community.

Now that we are all doing OLA at our middle school and students are having
similar experiences in each grade level, the hope is that we should have
more students at the same level each year (except the arrival of new
students, which will not change at this charter school). At the high school
they will have more luck separating classes by level.
_______________________________
Additionally, I agree with Arnold that if a student meets the goal set for
him/her, he or she should earn an A (Or a "P" at my school). Especially
when we're talking about language acquisition which isn't something that
can be controlled like some other learning; it's a process that takes time.

I also wonder about situations like this: if a student exceeds expectations
by moving from an NL to almost an NH in one year, but then the next year
her acquisitions slows down a little bit. She does still improve and
develop within NH proficiency, but does not meet the next level yet. What
do you do? If you look at her growth for two years, she is exceeeding
expectations. But, for only the second year, it may appear that she's not.

My thought is that it would be difficult for all students to continue to
exceed expectations year after year even if they are excellent students and
consistently demonstrate growth.  Doesn't that growth merit an A?
Does that make sense?

This is a very interesting conversation. Thank you for all of your ideas.

-Ashley

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