Dear at-home-teachers,
Thank you all for coming to our curriculum night. It was lovely to meet you and fun to see the kids so excited to give you their classroom tour. I'm still smiling!
I hope I didn't confuse you with all our routines... I know we have quite a few and I threw them at you all at once. I'll post information here as it becomes relevant, and please feel free to email me for clarification at any time. As I mentioned, the rubric for our September dictée is coming home tomorrow. Here is the information that I shared tonight:
Thank you all for coming to our curriculum night. It was lovely to meet you and fun to see the kids so excited to give you their classroom tour. I'm still smiling!
I hope I didn't confuse you with all our routines... I know we have quite a few and I threw them at you all at once. I'll post information here as it becomes relevant, and please feel free to email me for clarification at any time. As I mentioned, the rubric for our September dictée is coming home tomorrow. Here is the information that I shared tonight:
The task: At the end of each month 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 practice.
The rubric: The
rubric you are receiving 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 practice 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
practice. The comments in the rubric will indicate where the practice is most
needed. Level 1 means that we could really use that extra help from home
because we’re falling behind. I’ll be in touch if there are repeat level 1s in
a subject area.
In the center 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.
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 periods appropriately or spell any
words correctly. This is level 4 stuff since I haven’t put much of an emphasis
on it in class yet.
Clear as mud?
Now that you’re an expert in rubrics, enjoy the
one you’re getting tomorrow. 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