In this day of high-stakes accountability teachers must implement effective assessment strategies to meet intended performance outcomes, determine what students know, and clarify which instructional approaches are most successful at raising achievement s . Yet there's more than one way to gauge academic strengths and weaknesses. To learn more about assessment techniques that monitor, evaluate and guide both instructional practice and student learning, visit the following Web sites:
Rubistar Rubrics are teaching tools that provide guidelines (often written) to support student learning, evaluation and accountability. At Rubistar, you'll find several excellent assessment tools that help clarify expectations and project benchmarks. You can create your own project-specific evaluation guidelines or view and edit rubrics created by other educators. Search for rubrics by topics such as oral projects, multimedia, math, research, writing, reading, art, science and music. Design your rubric with as many assessment criteria as you need to get students to do their best work. Export your rubric as an Excel-compatible worksheet, print it for reference, or post it online for others to see.
Rubrics-Writing and Grading Rubrics For a collection of English Language Arts grading tools and help with setting up objective grading practices, visit this mini-portal featuring numerous articles and resources to help with rubric design. Sort the resources alphabetically or by category. Learn to design writing rubrics for essays, debates, biographies, expository writing, persuasive essays and more.
Rubrician.com Designed by educators for fellow teachers, parents and students interested in a guide to creating project-specific evaluations, Rubrician.com features several rubrics for a variety of subjects, including language arts, math, performing arts, physical education, social studies, technology and science. Click a topic in the table of contents at the left, then view that topic's numerous offerings. For example, there are nearly 50 rubrics in the technology area for projects ranging from PowerPoint and multimedia presentations to Web page evaluation and electronic portfolios.
Kathy Shrock's Guide for Educators: Assessment & Rubric Information Kathy Schrock and her comprehensive guide to formative and summative assessments are still going strong since last we reviewed this amazing collection a few years back. Schrock offers links to a treasure trove of useful evaluation tools and rubrics. Specific items of interest include student Web Page rubrics, subject specific rubrics, Web sites offering tools for rubric building and support, technology assessment rubrics that measure educator skills, and much more. There's even a category called Report Card Comments and Progress Reports where you can go for sample report cards and boilerplate comments to use as student report card starters.
Rubrics (Education) from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Carrying on the tradition of free access to knowledge, Wikipedia's Web-based encyclopedia offers in-depth articles on a wide range of reader generated topics. This encyclopedia's entry on Rubrics explains what assessment rubrics are and provides a link to the topic of alternative assessment. Learn about the value of student portfolios as an alternative assessment and find out what educators mean when they refer to summative assessment as an evaluation strategy.
Creating Rubrics: Tools You Can Use This Education World article explains the value of creating objective assessment tools that students can use as guidelines for project evaluation. It also features a link to David Warlick's Landmark Project Rubric Builder, where you can go to create project-based rubrics or search by keyword to view rubrics constructed by other teachers.
The Definition of Performance Assessment When students demonstrate knowledge by applying learned skills to real world tasks, their work takes on personal significance and is more apt to stay with them even after they complete the class or leave the school. Find out more about performance assessment--what it is, how it differs from conventional assessment, why schools should support it, why students like it, and how teachers can develop performance-based activities at this ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) Web site. You'll also find links to articles and sample chapters from related ASCD publications.
Assessment Terminology: A Glossary of Useful Terms Visit this New Horizons for Learning site for a list of current (2002) educational assessment terms and practices, from "a" (accountability) to "v" (validity). The glossary contains easy-to-read definitions compiled from several sources, including the work of performance-assessment guru Grant Wiggins' Glossary ofUseful Terms Related to Authentic and Performance Assessments. Other assessment glossaries are available from Glossary of Useful [Assessment] Terms and UCLA's CRESST — Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing.
Just for Teachers For the last 20 years, UCLA's Center for the Study of Evaluation and the National Center for Research on Evaluation Standards and Student Testing have conducted research, implemented program evaluations, and developed research-based assessment using technology as an assessment tool. At this Web site, teachers of K-12 students can read policy briefs, newsletters and other articles, plus download a Quality School Portfolio Resource Kit to gather data on instructional practice. Scoring rubrics for students of English Language Arts in grades 2-9 are also available for downloading.
Assessment The George Lucas Educational Foundation has compiled an electronic library of articles, research, video clips and resources to help K-12 teachers measure student understanding. These resources provide a counterpoint to the battery of standardized assessment tests that students must take each year to measure performance. Find out more about project-based assessments, learn how to create evidence-based assessment, and listen to an interview with performance-based assessment expert, Grant Wiggins. One of my favorite resources at this site is a story (complete with video clips) titled " Urban Academy: Where Testing is Anything But Standard". It's about the successes of a small but culturally diverse school in New York City.
Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask While the Internet has become an information source for just about any topic, most of its pages are self-published. How do you and your students judge the validity, integrity and currency of a Web site? Visit this site for a list of questions you can ask, indicators you can look for, and steps to take to investigate the quality and authenticity of Web site contents.
Best Practice Rubric DesignRubrics.com develops commercial assessment software to help teachers align academic standards, performance tasks, scoring guides and classroom lessons. At this site, you can purchase that software. In addition (or alternatively), you can take advantage of the site's free but effective generic protocol for rubric design to promote high quality achievement and continuous development. You'll also find more than 24 sample rubrics for preview. Topics include: Map Basics, Silent Writing, Science Models, Biographical Report, Cooperative Group Work and Measurement.
