Assessment+(Rubrics)



Effective lesson design using 21st century skills and technologies lends itself well to higher levels of application, rigor and relevance as described in Willard Daggett's Rigor, Relevance Framework. Pushing students to **CREATE** projects that connect with real world applications taps into the pinnacle of higher order, 21st century thinking skills. The difficulty lies in assessing an often unpredictable product and the creativity embedded within challenge based learning. Developing a solid rubric is essential at this level because it eliminates ambiguity and subjectivity and provides authentic assessment to help guide student learning. This page is designed to give you some resources to help you in designing and implementing these rubrics. As we explore new approaches to assessments in our district, rubrics are constantly evolving. This page explains some of that evolution and provides specific examples of rubrics that have been implemented by teachers. Please feel free to utilize these resources and adapt them to your specific needs.

Understanding Blooms

Benjamin Bloom (1913-1999) was a researcher in the field of education, professor in the Department of Education at the University of Chicago. His research helped, among many things, to lead to the establishment of the Head Start Program as well as the most commonly used concepts of determining learning in the educational system. Bloom, along with his partners, worked towards a development of specifications through which educational objectives could be organized according to their cognitive complexity. 1

As it often seems, nothing stays the same and an updated version of the taxonomy was introduced to add relevancy to current educational practices (see Figure). Noted below is a different compilation identifying the six levels of the cognitive domain. These levels are based on the same levels of cognition from Bloom’s Taxonomy, but reflect the revised version completed in 2001. The original language is noted in parenthesis. 1

**Remember (Knowledge Level)** Recall or recognize terms, definitions, facts, ideas, materials, patterns, sequences, methods, principles. Key Verbs: name, list, state, describe, recall, label, retrieve, recognize.

**Understand (Comprehension Level)** Read and understand descriptions, communications, reports, tables, diagrams, directions, regulations. Key Verbs: paraphrase, identify, explain, translate, interpret, interpretation, classify.

**Apply (Application Level)** Know when and how to use ideas, procedures, methods, formulas,, theories. Key Verbs: execute, compute, demonstrate, modify, discover, predict, show, solve, implement.

**Analyze (Analysis Level)** Break down information into its constituent parts and recognize their relationship to one another and how they are organized; identify sublevel factors or salient data from a complex scenario. Key Verbs: diagram,, illustrate, outline, infer, conclude, differentiate, attribute, compares, contrasts.

**Create (Synthesis Level)** Put parts or elements together in such a way as to reveal a pattern or structure not clearly there before; identify which data or information from a complex set is appropriate to examine further or from which supported conclusions can be drawn. //Key Verbs: create, compose, design, reorganize, formulate, write a new ending, tell.//

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">**Evaluate (Evaluation Level)** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">Make judgments about the value of proposed ideas, solutions, etc., by comparing the proposal to specific criteria or standards. Key Verbs: judge, appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, justify, critique. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; vertical-align: super;">2,3

=<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%; line-height: 21px;">**What is Rigor?<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 40%; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: super;">4 ** =

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">While difficult to define at times, grounding ideas about rigor in essential questions and real world applications with multiple pathways to success helped refine our vision. What has worked the best for our purposes is constructing rubrics built around curricular grounded areas of assessment, and clearly defined levels of expectations (rigor) leading toward full application and transformation of content.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The challenge has been in articulating those increasing levels of rigor to eliminate subjectivity when assessing. In most cases, turning to Blooms Taxonomy helps to define these expectations more clearly for both the teacher and the student.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">As teachers found a need for a more specific breakdown of criteria, rubrics continued to evolve to accommodate. Below are two examples of rubrics that help articulate more specific categories of criteria. This one is from a web-design project in a Horticulture class where students had to design interactive web-sights that taught 3rd grade students about some of the curriculum they had been studying. The other is from a World Language project on Caesar.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Horticulture Project Rubric

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">World Language Caesar Project Rubric

=<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Educational Origami Rubric Templates 5 = <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">These rubric templates are free under Creative Commons license. You may alter and use these in your classroom.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">__**Remembering**__ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Bookmarking Rubric

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">__**Understanding**__Blogging Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Advanced Search Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2 Threaded Discussion Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Search Rubric

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">__**Applying**__ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Wiki Editing Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Collaboration Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Skype Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">SMARTBoard Use Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">SMARTBoard Taxonomy - Students <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Collaborative Editing Using Online Word Processor Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Question Rubric

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">__**Analyzing**__ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Data Analysis Rubric

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">__**Evaluating**__ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Blogging Commenting Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Question Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Validating Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2 Threaded Discussion Rubric

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">__**Creating**__ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Publishing - Podcasting Rubric <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Digital Publishing Rubric

=<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Online Rubric Generators = =<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Other Rubric Resources** =
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">RubiStar
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Teach-nology
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">[]
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Rubrics based on Blooms Digital Taxonomy
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Rubrics 4 Teachers
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Kathy Schrock's Guide to Assessment
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif;">[]

=<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">References =

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">1. Petram, K. (2011). Bloom’s Taxonomy: Levels of Understanding. //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times; font-size: 16px;">PSIAASI //. Retrieved February 9, 2012, from http://www.psia-nw.org/ <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">2. Schultz, L (2005). Bloom's Taxonomy. Retrieved February 9, 2012, from http://www.odu.edu <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">3. Clark, D (2009). Big Dog and Little Dog's Performance Juxtaposition. Retrieved February 9, 2012, from http:www.nwlink.com/~donclark/ <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 90%;"> 4. Halter, Andrew. "Rubrics." //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Thedigitalshift //. Andrew Halter. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. <http://thedigitalshift.wikispaces.com/Rubrics>. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 90%;"> 5. Churches, Andrew. "Rubrics for Bloom's Digital Taxonomy." //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Educational Origami //. Andrew Churches. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Rubrics+-+Bloom%27s+Digital+Taxonomy>.