Rubric's Cube

This week I wanted to address a problem that some of you have e-mailed me about; RUBRICS.

I've been teaching in an integrated setting for almost four years. During that time I feel like my colleagues and I have had considerable success teaching students standards-related concepts connecting the arts to English as well as Mathematics. Students seem to be in the process of making aesthetic decisions about what they are seeing, what they are hearing, and what they are saying. They are becoming cognizant of their work, and are beginning to appreciate the quality -- or lack thereof -- of their creations. We decided when we began teaching in this model that the creations themselves were not nearly as important as the process. Indeed, some of the student work is, at times, horrible to look at, but when you ask them, "What were you thinking?" or "Why did you create this?" they will answer you with solid rationale which shows a level of meta-cognition.

My greatest critic is also a good friend. One of her concerns is that the students are creating things simply to appease the rubric. "What about Art for Art's sake?" she asked me recently. Since the students are operating in a STEAM system she feels that the aesthetic power of the art will be deluded by the students' attempt to add the necessary data to fulfill the rubric for the integrated class. For example, The student creates a great song, but has to add superfluous vocabulary words for an English End of Course Assessment prep item that appears on the rubric. The students force-fit pieces into their art to appease us.

Indeed, we have seen work where this has been the case and it is disconcerting. I recall a video where the students made poor decisions in word-choice for the script as well as poor decisions in orchestration and musical form for the background music of their video. When I asked the students to explain their choices they balked. When pressed they finally admitted that they had made the adjustments to their work when they received the rubric. "We sort of had to make it fit the rubric." they told me. "Next time, throw out the rubric." I told them. Their work was great, but it became like a senseless scene from Dude, Where's My Car when they added the rubric patches. 

I can appreciate why they didn't think about ditching the rubric. It takes trust on their end to throw out the mode of assessment and just work. My partner and I utilize the rubric more as a guide for the students to see both the expectations held over us concerning accountability, as well as the goals that we had in mind when we created the project. Ultimately, the students should feel free to create new and interesting things without the fear of failing. We don't want them to feel inhibited by the rubric should their ideas exceed the bounds of what we've asked. The students, though, are not used to this behavior from teachers, so it should come as no surprise when they cling tightly to the rubric.

How do we utilize a rubric as a means of assessment without the rubric becoming a restraint to the creativity of students? 

There are a few ways to solve this problem:

My colleague, Michael Buck, utilizes a process where the students create the rubric themselves. Michael shares the standards that he intends to hit through the project with the students during the opening days of the project, then asks them to come up with a rubric for which they will be accountable to him for the learning of the standards. He gives them the scaffolding, the bare-bones of the rubric, but they must complete it. The genius of this practice is that it causes students to plan what they want to receive points for. They have to know what they're going to do before they create the rubric so they can achieve the credit. Therefore, they are forced to plan. In collaborative settings a student must first get their plans together, organize their ideas, and come to a consensus with their team before they can create their rubric. Michael has lost nothing in this process because he has established a benchmark of targeted standards right from the start. He then facilitates  each rubric creation - differentiating for ability with the students directly.  

My partner, Sarah Papin-Thomas, came up with a second solution one day while we were struggling to help a student that was in a creative slump. The student had been task-listing the rubrics (meaning that he was using the rubric as a check list). This practice is encouraged in some classes, but not ours. We want the students to exceed our expectations, which are located on the rubric, right? So, we took his rubric away and said, "Just do the project." It was too much. The young man panicked and ended up feeling overwhelmed. In the end his group turned in a poor project that they cobbled together through looking at a rubric - which they got from another student. 

"We need to do something different with this." Sarah said. I agreed. It was then that she thought, "What if the students get to take something off of the rubric?" Sarah's idea was to front load the rubric with standards that we needed to hit, but also with extra standards and little points like, "Project includes original color pictures in display." or "Student cites sources during the presentation."  The idea was that the students would read the rubric line by line to figure out what to cut. We allotted them the opportunity to cut one item per column.  They "cut" it simply by highlighting the item. On presentation day we collected the rubric and graded the student's work holding the very rubric that they had culled. The students loved this idea. It offered them the structure that they wanted, but it afforded them some choice in their own assessment. 

The downside to culling the rubric was that students began to task-list more. Our solution had the opposite effect. Students became so focused on  the bullet points and what they could cut, that the rubric became preeminent. Still, if you are having trouble getting students to read your rubric - this may be the option for you? Our problem, though, still had no solution. Again, my partner and I went back to the drawing board. She came back with this logic:

Goal: We want the students to feel free exceed our expectations on the rubric.

Knows - 

• The students use the rubric like a crutch to task-list. 
• The students do not respond well to zero structure rubrics. (No rubric)
• We have the option of having them create their own rubric. (like Michael)
• This would force the students to do double duty in our class and Michael's, though. 
• We could... 

The light came on. 

We want them to exceed the rubric, right? We want them to Analyze, Synthesize, and Create. So we offer them credit to synthesize it. We give them points to create additional material for the rubric. They will not create a whole rubric, but they will create portions of it.

There are a few ways to do this... 

First, you can leave blank spots in the rubric and ask them to fill them in. If the column has 7 points in it leave two or three blank and tell them to fill them in. Cover your target standards, but let the students fill in things that they would like to add. This also causes the students to think about whether that rubric item is Competent, Experienced, or Master (or whatever you name your columns) level in nature. Students must consider what they're doing as well as assess where their ideas belong on the rubric. It offers structure, but it also offers them some choice and a chance to be creative. This may work better in lower levels or when you are starting to change up your rubric practice to include student choice. 

Sarah's method was to give the students our completed rubric with extra room in the bottom of the columns. She then asked the students to add to it. Each group had to come up with at least one thing for each column. Most students added three or four. Again, we're talking about students assessing their own work, valuing their learning, and being a part of assessment - skills that they will need when they enter the work world.   

A final way to do this, and we have not "road" tested this, is to give the students a rubric with only one column filled out: the master column (or whatever your highest level column is). Leave the rest of the rubric blank except to note your target standards. This causes the students to consider each standard independently and create column items for them. You have given them a template to work from and shown them the ceiling of the work, but they are to fill in the rest of the rubric, including the standards that you have to teach. They will need to consider those standards at a basic level, but also evolve those realizations to accomplish the interior of your rubric.

For example, if the Mastery level is, "Student will compose a minimum of 40 measures at full orchestration, utilizing best practice in voice leading techniques, and text painting." What would be the Experienced (center column)? What would be the Competent (Furthest left) column? Don't allow students to simply say, "Student did not compose a minimum of 40 measures at full orchestration utilizing..." Instead they should a.) keep it in the positive, and b.) shorten the expectation. It should read something like, "Student composes a minimum of 40 measures." Then evolve to 40 measures with full orchestration. Then add voice leading and text painting... The key is to help them to see the progression - to establish the order of the scaffolding. 

Once they've got this down - FLIP it. Give them the very basic column and ask them to create the most advanced items. Let them decided how to advance the work. This is key, because they will have to do this if they achieve the top level of their professional lives. What do you do when you are the very best? How do you get better? Where do you go from there? Those are questions that we all hope our students end up dealing with in the end. Companies like Apple and Google are dealing with that now. Where do we go from here? I can't think of a better way to set our students up for success, than to prepare them to be innovative. 

Which technique should you apply? I suggest that you differentiate. Who is not reading the rubric? Let them cull. Who is producing great work, but not utilizing the standards? Have them complete a rubric with the Mastery level completed but not the lower levels. Who is ready to take things to the next level? Give them a rubric with just the lowest level filled in or let them create their own rubric completely.

Give this a shot at some point. I hypothesize that your students will exceed your expectations. Let your rubric be, not only a tool for assessment, but a tool for instruction as well. That's what it's all about, right? The assessments and feedback are geared toward the ultimate instruction. Who says that has to happen at the end of the project? 

Until next week...