Ch. 3 - Rubrics - An Overhaul Is Needed (on my end)

I'm going to say it again.
This book could not have come at a better time!
It totally fits our slope PBL/ALU project that we are doing.
And I have to admit,
I am changing a few things along the way.
Not major things that are going to frustrate the students.
But little things to make it better.

For example my rubric.
I started with this.
I took pieces of it from a sample rubric I read about in Chapter 1 about ski slopes.
Hey...it kind of fit.
I molded it a bit to make it work.

But as we reviewed it in class,
I was even a bit confused as to what I was wanting.

Friday, I found myself writing up this list on the board.

I did wonder if I was helping them too much along the way
By providing them with a scaffolding to catch them in case they fell.
However, it caught me and saved my rubric
As I realized that everything on the board should be included in easy to read language in my rubric.

And THEN after reading Chapter 3,
I knew I had to revamp it to make it fit our needs.
It ended up shorter,
And hopefully better.

These are the steps I followed as outlined in the book.

Step 1:  Identifying Grade-Level Performance
I wrote down what the main objectives for the project would look like content-wise.
I allowed for choice among the final product.

Step 2:  Defining Rubric Categories
I loved the Novice, Apprentice, Practitioner, and Expert levels.
I focused on the Practitioner category for my grade-level performance objectives.

Step 3:  Moving from Novice to Practitioner
I rewrote these categories to make it a more natural progression.

Step 4:  Writing the Expert Column
The expert category I saved for the pieces that moved thinking above and beyond.  For instance, learning a little trigonometry to find the angle of the staircase and/or incorporating a landing into the staircase.

I liked how we are to write it as objectively as possible.  Focusing on clearly defined criteria that means the same thing to each reader.

In class, we reviewed the overhauled rubric and students were able to see where they landed on the learning continuum.

I loved this approach, because it gave students that much-needed map of where they were going.  It gave me an opportunity to have a math conversation with my students as they explained the math they were doing.  And in essence, I am grading as we go.

My goal as a teacher, which is the same for each student, is to have them arrive in the practitioner column.  My question is this:

            How do I light the fire under students that still have no motivation or a felt need to learn?  They
            simply do not seem to care.