Grading and Assessment

Ms. G was very helpful in explaining to us how she assesses student work. On the first day we went in for observations, she showed us her one of her grading rubrics and talked with us about each of the criteria that she wrote. The project was a wire self-portrait in which the students formed wire over a photograph of themselves-- they had to recreate their photograph using contour lines. The rubric that she showed us not only included a grading section for the teacher to fill out, but it also gave the students the opportunity to fill in their own scores. In addition to this, they also had to answer a couple of reflection questions asking what the most challenging part of the assignment was, how they overcame their challenges, and what they thought was most successful about their piece. I thought this was a great way to assess the students' personal feelings about the project. Giving them the chance to score themselves also helps them to reflect on what they did well and what they needed to improve on. Ms. G let us fill out several of her rubrics throughout our observation times, which was great practice in giving the students useful feedback. We graded the lesson that we taught entirely by ourselves, and she also showed us how her school goes about entering grades in the computer, which will probably be different at every school, but is still useful to learn.