I am interested in authentic assessment in the library setting. What I would like specifically is to hear about others who are interested giving students credit for the work they do in the classroom as a group. The problem lies in how we are to assess the work they are doing which is worth our attention and grading.
I have been researching how other teachers are dealing with the issue of authentic assessment and how they might be incorporating this type of assessment into the curriculum of the classroom. Let me know what you think and what you are doing to change the way students are looked at in the classroom setting.
Comments
One way that we have found to effectively assess student work is through the use of rubrics. When students are shown the rubrics before learning occurs, then they are aware of how they are being graded. It makes grading projects much more fair and non-biased. It is also a great way for cooperative groups to grade the input of all the participants.
There are several tools online that are good to use as a starting point for creating rubrics -- the one that we use the most is rubistar which can be found at the following site:
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
Hope this is helpful!
Becky, NBCT
On the one hand, I absolutely love that library is given the recognition it deserves; on the other hand, assessing has taken over what little free time I have. I teach grades 1 through 8 but assess only for students in grades 5 through 8. We are a small school, so I am grading for about 220 students in those grades.
I am fortunate in that I am able to supplement what is being done in the classroom or I can go in my own direction. Some of the work that constitutes assessments are sources and Annotated Works for major research assignments, assignments relevant to the unit being taught (e.g. censorship), postings to blogs and wikis and anything else I can think of that measures the learning that the student has achieved.
The library grades follow a numeric scale but are assigned letter grades for Exceeds Expectations, Meets Expectations, Improvement Needed and Unsatisfactory. The students receive rubrics with all assignments so that they know how they will be assessed. I make the Exceeds assessment optional; they need to do a little more for that grade.
The Library grade does not compute into their gpa but an "I" in library can keep a student from getting honors.
I think the fact that they are graded gives the students the understanding that what they do in the library is both valued and important and for the most part, they take it seriously because there is serious learning (and teaching) happening every week.