[ola] Re: rubrics, please

  • From: Nanosh Lucas <nanoshlucas@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:49:44 -0700

Thanks, all. This discussion is very helpful to me. Here are those performance 
guidelines, I believe. 
http://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/actfl-performance-descriptors-language-learners

After looking at resources that have been thrown my way, I'm convinced that 
collaborating with students on creating slightly more specific rubrics with 
student-created wording (I dig the aapl site for that) is the way to go. The 
process allows both student and teacher to prioritize based on what is going on 
in the class, and it allows us to familiarize ourselves with the proficiency 
guidelines. For example, students in one class felt eye contact was important. 
When I pushed them, they came to the conclusion that eye contact is an 
important part of engaging the audience, so we changed it to a category called 
"audience engagement." We then eliminate value-laden and meaningless 
phraseology, supplanting them with measurable behaviors by removing almost all 
adjectives - "maintains excellent eye contact" turns into something like 
"Frequently looks at people from the neck up. Scans the room. Responds to 
audience's body language by changing posture, inflection, or nearness to 
audience members when appropriate." Students now have an objective to work 
toward and specific behaviors that will increase the effectiveness of a 
presentational assignment. Whatever grade you assign each column is more of an 
issue within your school, I suppose.

I'll send out what I have shortly. It is not the most exciting conversation 
I've had with students, so we are taking a short break from it. But a colleague 
recommended having students do a pre-activity making funny rubrics that used 
specific language to describe whatever criteria they'd described (Superheroe - 
tight spandex, logo, clean underwear on the outside, cape, vibrant colors, 
mask, attractive). That turned out to be fun, but the resulting discussion went 
back to being a little dry in some classes.

Looking forward to reading more ideas on this,

Nanosh

On Mar 13, 2013, at 8:43 AM, Arnold Bleicher <arnoldb@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Good point Carrie. Yet the Performance Descriptors are based on the 
> Proficiency Guidelines but are incremental steps along that path. Performance 
> is more closely tied to classroom curricula where proficiency is not. 
> 
> And just because it might be a challenge to make the switch from grading to 
> performance outcomes does not mean it's not worth the continued fight to do 
> so. Like I said, we have to keep pushing that door open and it takes time and 
> persistence. 
> 
> arnold 
> 
> From: Carrie Duff <cduff@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: OLA Listserve <ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 5:52 AM
> To: OLA Listserve <ola@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [ola] Re: rubrics, please
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
>

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