A Study in Rubrics |
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In order to test the viability of the initiatives of the moment—PBL and 4 Cs—and determine how doable they are for the average moderately trained elementary educator, it was critical to follow and analyze each step of the planning, implementation and reflection process. I collected PBL planning meeting notes, conducted surveys of teachers, asked teachers to participate in focus groups during their grade level team meetings, started an Edmodo group for the participating educators, interviewed several of the participating teachers and consulted with administrators at both sites.
To begin the study, I first needed to participate in two of the Napa Valley Unified School District’s “4 Cs Rollout Team” collaboration days in the fall. This task of this “expert team” for the first two days of collaborative work was to answer the question: What are we measuring? Our assignment was to create user-friendly 4Cs measurement tools (refined from the Ed Leader21 rubrics) using matching “I can” targets, so that all our schools would have a similar understanding, of what each “C” looks like at each level of proficiency and the system to implement and account for mastery of these skills at each grade level. The expert team worked first as whole team aligning the work purpose and product goals, then we divided into four separate teams (1 for each “C”). Finally, we reconvened as a whole group and engaged in a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) of each team’s work. The expert team used Google Docs, Edmodo, and structured templates and tools, sharing on-line to increase productivity and model effective uses of web 2.0 tools. Several considerations and stipulations were addressed during these two collaborative days, including: the tool must be both formative (show growth within a year) and summative (show progress from year to year), the tool must allow for students to show evidence of their growth towards learning targets, the tool must support educators’ ability to provide targeted feedback and intervention as needed, the tool must provide opportunities for student self-reflection and goal-setting, the tool must be able to be used interactively inside a technology-based platform, and finally, the tool needed to include performance indicators on a scale of 4 to “Not Yet” which would simply imply that the student at the “Not Yet” performance level was striving to demonstrate that particular skill, but had not yet demonstrated it. |