Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Off and running with student created rubrics

Semester 2 is now underway and I am excited to see what new challenges and successes this semester brings my way. I have a grade 9 applied Learning Classroom and a grade 12 university course this semester. With the grade 12 class I have decided that blogging is the way to go to deepen the conversations about world issues; while also providing a safe way for my shy students to process and express their thoughts. I have almost everyone logged in to the blog site and already the students are embracing this venue for great conversation about the issue or topic presented to them. I have posted a picture for the students to comment on as a warm up to the rich student-led discussions that I will look for as the semester progresses. I have to say that I am impressed by the quality of the writing and the personal reflection that I am getting from the students and it is only day 1! Before I get side tracked with praise for the students, I must also tell you that I tried having the students create (with guidance) the rubric for this blogging communication assignment. I was very nervous to turn over that kind of control to the students, but now that we have been through the process, I'm a big believer in it. The students were amazing at coming up with rubric quantifiers that matched the curriculum expectations presented to them. They had wonderful discussions about blogging and what should be expected. The students even came up with a great solution to the one issue that I was having with the blogging....we all can't post new topic threads every day when there are 30 in the class. Together the students devised a plan where each person was in charge of starting a new topic only once per month. They also wanted the freedom to start a new topic thread if something exciting was going on in the world that, just had to be mentioned. After the rubric creation process was done, I felt the energy in the room spike. I can only hope that they were as excited about our new class blog as I am.