You may remember hearing about the extended endings to the story Citrouilleville that we wrote around Halloween. I have finally taken them off the wall and am sending them home with the rubric this week. This rubric is quite different from the rubrics we have been using for our dictées. Keep in mind that our stories were written at a time when we were still working on basic sounds, and could not do the amazing sounding out that we can do now. Therefore, the writing mark for this project does not come from a sounding out effort (I wrote most of their ideas for them), but from their creativity and independence when it came to generating ideas for their story, which itself is a difficult task. We brainstormed many ideas together, and students were free to use them. To earn a level 4, students had to think outside the box a little and come up with something different, or with a twist, without my help. There is also an art mark for this project, as the illustrations were made collage-style, and I encouraged students to take their time and add as much detail as they could.
The other area that was assessed using this rubric was the students' oral presentation of their story. Each author read their story aloud to a small group of classmates. We discussed how to hold the booklet so that the audience would be able to hear their voice, and how to speak with a clear and strong voice. This was our first attempt, so don't worry if the mark is low. This task was also challenging because students were often unsure of what they had written. You will notice that there is a separate comment in each box for how they did with reading their story independently. Again, please don't worry if your child has a level 1 in this area. In retrospect, it was a little early in the year for me to expect children to read anything without lots of assistance, so I will not be using this mark to calculate their next reading mark. We'll go with more recent assessments when the time comes.
From my perspective, this rubric is an opportunity to see how your child is doing in terms of how much effort they are putting into their work. Do the illustrations look like your child's best work, or do they seem rushed? Does the rubric suggest that your artist worked independently, or did they need lots of suggestions in order to keep the ball rolling?
I really hope you LOVE looking at your writer's story. Maybe they can read it to you, or explain what happens. I think they're all fantastic!