Thank you so much for coming out to Dewson's curriculum night! I hope you had a great time on your classroom tour and enjoyed looking at your student's hard work. It was lovely meeting all of you and watching the tour guides be so excited to show you around.
Last evening I gave a short presentation on how to read a rubric. Your child's first writing rubric came home today. I explained to them the purpose and goal, so they should be able to explain it to you, but here is the break down in case you missed it. I think you'll see why it was easier to just tell you about it in person...
The task: Every month or so I will do a little check-up of how we are doing with our writing. I do this by reading a sentence out loud slowly and repeating it several times, while the children try to write it down using the sounds and writing conventions we have learned. This will certainly not be the only assessment of writing (bigger projects are much more fun), but it will act like a running record, and will hopefully show progress over time, and highlight areas where we need extra practise.
The rubric: The rubric you received today reflects the expectations for this point in the year. In a couple months, the expectations will be different and greater, since we will have had more instruction and practise by that point. By the end of the year, the rubric will likely look quite different. Always remember that several marks go into a grade when it comes to report cards, and in this case, I am most interested in using the rubric to guide my lesson planning. Therefore, I have not given an overall mark, but have circled the areas that apply. It is common for students to be strong in some areas, and need work in others. Again, as you collect these rubrics, look for patterns, and decide if maybe there is something you’d like to help with at home.
In the left-hand column of the rubric are the areas that I am assessing: Sounding-out, Punctuation and Printing. Along the top row are the 4 levels that work may fall into. Achieving a Level 3 means that you are meeting expectations. You are showing that you have followed instructions and have understood what was taught. This is really good! Celebrate it! Level 3 is like getting the letter-grade ‘B’. Achieving a Level 4 means that you have gone beyond expectations. This is hard to do because it means that you have made a connection with your own prior knowledge and applied it to the task, or you have remembered something that was mentioned in passing, but was not explicitly taught. Level 4 is like getting the letter-grade ‘A’. Level 2 means that you are approaching expectations. Please don’t worry about a level 2 (which would be like the letter-grade ‘C’), it simply means that we need a bit more practise. The comments in the rubric will indicate where the practise is most needed. Level 1 means that we could really use that extra help from home. I’ll be in touch if it looks like a student may receive a 'D' on the report card.
In the centre of the rubric are comments that indicate why work would qualify as that level. I circle the comments that apply for each area. It is possible to nail sounding-out skills, but need to work on the neatness of printing, for example. This is what makes a rubric so handy - it really points out areas of strength and weakness. It also gives a good idea of next steps. Just look at where we are now, and move over to the right one column. Maybe that can be our goal for next time!
Today’s rubric reflects only what we have worked on thus far. At this point, I expect for printing to be legible and in the lines. I expect for students to use the correct letters when they hear the sounds ‘a’ and ‘e’ since we have spent time on those sounds, and hopefully use beginning consonants that make sense, even if they are not exactly the right ones (e.g., ‘ca’, ‘sa’ & ‘za’ would all be pretty good attempts at the word “sa” because they can all make that approximate sound). You’ll notice that I do not expect for students to use capitals and lower-case letters appropriately or spell any words correctly. This is level 4 stuff since I haven’t put much of an emphasis on it in class. I definitely do NOT want correct spelling to be a "thing" that prevents children from doing their best sounding out. We want everyone to feel like a successful writer, and they ARE!!
Clear as mud?
Now that you’re an expert in rubrics, enjoy the one you got today. You can keep it, it’s a copy. Please approach this rubric positively and be sure to look for the good things your child is doing before you look for where you can help!
Yours,
Tamara