[ola] Re: rubrics, please

  • From: Carrie Duff <cduff@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "<ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>" <ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:52:05 +0000

Let's not forget the ACTFL Performance Guidelines for K-12 learners which are 
more geared for rubric creation than the Proficiency Guidelines.  The former 
are designed to set learning goals and tangible outcomes, the latter for 
assessing performance of learners in real-life situations.  The Performance 
Guidelines provide a lot of rich language for distinguishing progress in 
Interpersonal, Interpretive and Presentational tasks.

Carrie

On Mar 13, 2013, at 8:32 AM, Ashley Uyaguari wrote:

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

Carrie Duff
Francis W Parker Charter Essential School
49 Antietam Street
Devens, MA  01434
cduff@xxxxxxxxxx<mailto:cduff@xxxxxxxxxx>

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