Sunday, November 4, 2007

Rubric Assessment Tool - Flat Stanley Project

The most important criteria for grading my students for their participation in this project is the friendly-letter writing part of the Flat Stanley Project, in which the students had to choose at least 5 different topics to discuss in the letter while also explaining the purpose of the Flat Stanley Project to the recipient. I hope that through this project, my students were able to gain a further understanding in the planning, writing & mailing process of a friendly letter, since the Net Gen students are no longer used to the proper use of snail mail after the traditional postal service has been replaced by e-mail.

Using a rubric is an excellent source in assessing students' work since it provides a clear, detailed explanation of what is expected from the students in the assignment. If the rubric is presented to the students in the beginning of the project, it will also act as an effective guideline for the students to follow as they are planning and completing the project. As for the teachers, the clear descriptions provided in a rubric will help the them stay focused on what they are looking for in the students, and not use any biases and/or mistakes in assessing their students' work.

I used Rubistar to create my rubric, and the website was extremely user friendly and convenient. It already had the basic criterias laid out for me to use, in my case letter-writing,
and it also made it available for me to make changes in the descriptions that they've provided to better suite our class project. One flaw in the website could be that the limited number of formats available online, but teachers can always create their own rubric using the format that is available on the website.

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