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I would like to move all of my units into the same unit planning template, read more of my HF club texts, and finish building a poetry unit that is complete but flexible.

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I want to read more 6th grade texts to be more informed for book clubs and mentor texts.

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KIS All Staff Session + Secondary Session

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Morphology Scope & Sequence by Frequency

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Morphology Scope & Sequence by Frequency

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The Writing Revolution - Empower teachers to help students

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By training educators in The Hochman Method©, The Writing Revolution (TWR) aims to help all students become proficient writers, readers, and critical thinkers.

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What do you want to accomplish with your curriculum by June? 

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What do you want to accomplish with your curriculum by June? 

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Add a post with your name and next steps below!

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Authors Jeff Anderson, Travis Leech, and Melinda Clark lead a vibrant approach to grammar instruction in Patterns of Power, Grades 6-8: Inviting Adolescent Writers into the Conventions of Language. Here, young, emergent writers are invited to notice the conventions of the English language and build off them in this inquiry-based approach to instructional grammar. The book comes with standards-aligned lessons that can be incorporated in just 10 minutes a day. Patterns of Power's responsive, invitational approach puts students in an involved role and has them explore and discuss the purpose and meaning of what they read. Students study short, authentic texts and are asked to share their findings out loud, engaging in rich conversations to make meaning. Inside you'll find:

Ready-to-use lesson plan sets that include excerpts from authentic and diverse mentor texts curated for grades 6-8

Real-life classroom examples, tips, and Power Notes gleaned from the authors' experiences that can be applied to any level of writer

Resources, including a Patterns of Power Planning Guide and musical soundtracks, to use in classroom instruction or as handouts for student literacy notebooks

Patterns of Power, Grades 6-8 provides a simple classroom routine that is structured in length and approach, but provides teachers flexibility in choosing the texts, allowing for numerous, diverse voices in the classroom. The practice helps students build cognitive recognition and provides a formative assessment for teachers on student progress. With these short lessons, students will gain confidence and move beyond limitation to produce effortless writing in your class and beyond. The Patterns of Power series also includes Patterns of Power, Grades 1-5: Inviting Young Writers into the Conventions of Language; Patterns of Power en Español, Grades 1-5: Inviting Bilingual Writers into the Conventions of Spanish; Patterns of Power, Grades 9-12: Teaching Grammar Through Reading and Writing; and Patterns of Wonder, Grades PreK-1: Inviting Emergent Writers to Play with the Conventions of Language.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Wired to Be Inspired
Part 1: Getting Started with the Patterns of Power Process
1. Into Planning: What Do You Need to Do Before Teaching the Invitations?

2. Into the Classroom: How Do You Teach Conventions with the Invitation Process?

3. Into Application: How Do You Nudge Writers to Apply Conventions?
Part 2: Into the Lessons with the Patterns of Power Process
4. How Do Writers and Readers Use SENTENCES?

5. Why Do Writers and Readers Need COMPOUND

6. How Do Writers and Readers Use COMPLEX SENTENCES?

7. How Do Writers and Readers Use PHRASES and CLAUSES?

8. What Does the MOOD of a VERB Do for Writers and Readers?

9. How Do Writers and Readers Use VERBALS?

10. What Does PUNCTUATION Do for Writers and Readers?

11. What Do PRONOUNS Do for Writers and Readers?

12. How Do Writers and Readers Continue Using CAPITALIZATION?

13. What Other Amazing Things Can Writers and Readers Do?

Conclusion: Connection over Correction

Appendix A: The Patterns of Power, Grades 6-8 Soundtrack

Appendix B: Patterns of Power Instruction in Remote Learning Environments

Professional Bibliography

Young Adult Literature Bibliography

Index

Biography

For over thirty years, Jeff Anderson has inspired writers and teachers of grades K-8 with the power and joy of the writing and grammar. He has written eight books for Stenhouse Publishers. He also writes middle-grade novels.

Travis Leech, coauthor of Patterns of Power: Inviting Adolescent Writers into the Conventions of Language, is currently a middle school instructional coach in Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, TX. He has thirteen years of experience in education, including teaching middle school English Language Arts and as a gifted and talented specialist. He has presented about engaging literacy practices and technology integration at the district, regional, and state levels.

Melinda Clark, coauthor of Patterns of Power: Inviting Adolescent Writers into the Conventions of Language, is currently the Academic Program Coordinator at John Jay High School in San Antonio, Texas. She has 31 years experience in education, including teaching middle school and high school English Language Arts, instructional coaching, independent consulting, and presenting at the district, regional, and state levels.

"For years, students have been handed sets of "I said so" rules as the standard means of learning language conventions. Patterns of Power moves beyond prescriptive rules to offer a series of steps that, instead, help students to recognize and internalize language conventions in a way that makes them better readers, writers, listeners, and speakers. Notice the patterns in sentences. Compare them with others. Try them yourself. Apply them. Edit them. I love how this book teaches students to really think about language."

- Kelly Gallagher

"Patterns of Power will free you from the tyranny of old school grammar instruction and show you a process to guide adolescents toward joyful exploration and experimentation of crafting, creating, and conveying meaning. Whether you're a grammar "phobe" or an expert sentence diagrammer, you will love this book."

- Cris Tovani

"In a Patterns of Power classroom, the conventions of language become possibilities. Here, rules are replaced by invitations as our "wired to be inspired" middle school learners engage in honest inquiry, asking themselves and each other What can this convention do for me as a writer?"

- Lisa Thibodeaux, Director of Secondary Curriculum, TX

"Jeff Anderson is going to make me return to teaching middle school English Language Arts. This is the kind of book that would have made me feel like I could provide concrete, meaningful writing instruction to my students. I am grateful, however, that as an administrator I have the power to put this tool in the hands of all my teachers and allow the work of these authors to reach thousands of students."

- Chad Everett, Middle School Principal

"Patterns of Power, 6-8 is a must-have for every teacher who longs to get their adolescents hooked on grammar. It gives middle grade teachers a simple, student-centered process that showcases what grammatical patterns do for readers and writers and how they lead to stellar writing."

- Jodi Ramos, Middle School Teacher, Department Chair, and New York Times education contributor

"Jeff Anderson, Travis Leech, and Melinda Clark have crafted a gift for middle school literacy teachers and their students. Patterns of Power, 6-8 provides abundant lesson ideas for engaging student readers and writers in ways that improve comprehension, communication and self-expression, as well as a deeper look at why this approach works. Through students' observations of authentic texts and focused exploration of writers' craft and language use, you can increase their reading and writing confidence and skill. Clear, empowering, and effective!"

- Donalyn Miller, Texas educator and author

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Patterns of Power, Grades 6-8: Inviting Adolescent Writers into the Conventions of Language

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Authors Jeff Anderson, Travis Leech, and Melinda Clark lead a vibrant approach to grammar instruction in Patterns of Power, Grades 6-8: Inviting Adolescent Writers into the Conventions of Language. Here, young, emergent writers are invited to notice the conventions of the English language and build off them in this inquiry-based approach to instructional grammar.

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Email: jenny@erinkentconsulting.com

Twitter: @profesorajennyk

Linked In: Jenny Killion

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Join the community for access to tons of amazing resources!

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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EKC provides literacy consultants, consulting services, and literacy professional learning for schools.

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Shifting the Balance for G3-5 (but really applies 3-8)

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Shifting the Balance for G3-5 (but really applies 3-8)

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Shifting the Balance, Grades 3-5: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom

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In this much anticipated follow-up to their groundbreaking book, Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom, authors Jan Burkins and Kari Yates, together with co-author Katie Cunningham, extend the conversation in Shifting the Balance, Grades 3-5: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom. This new text is built in mind specifically for grades 3-5 teachers around best practices for the intermediate classroom.

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TC Advancing Literacy Curricular Resources

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TC Advancing Literacy Curricular Resources

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reading comprehension; literacy; language comprehension; multi-tiered systems of support; mtss; reading rope; learning differences; text demands; text structure; vocabulary; syntax; reading instruction; teaching reading; designing reading instruction; planning reading instruction; structured literacy; science of reading;

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Winner of a silver medal from the Nautilus Book Awards in the category of Social Sciences and Education

"Is it possible to create a more inclusive and fairer education system? The Knowledge Gap shows the way." Daisy Christodoulou, tes.

"The Knowledge Gap is not just a scholarly work. It pulsates with vivid detail as it winds its way through the strange terrain of the Educational Upside Down. Anyone who seeks to understand the quixotic state of educational ideas in American schools and beyond should place it on the top of their summer reading list." Greg Ashman, Quillette

"The best book I have seen on improving elementary schools." Jay Mathews, Washington Post

"The Knowledge Gap makes a persuasive case for attending to the importance of rich content and high-quality curricula in elementary classrooms." Carnegie Corporation of New York

"This book serves as a reminder of our own potential knowledge gap and provides an opportunity for educators to be wiser consumers of information with the ability to 'distinguish between approaches that are likely to produce the outcomes we want and those that will only lead to a heartbreaking waste of precious time.'" Sheryl Ferlito, Perspectives on Language and Literacy

"Wexler ... has made a first-rate case for content. ... If you are among the uninitiated on the value of content knowledge for kids, buy a copy. If you're already among the true believers, buy two copies and put them in the hands of persuadable educators." Robert Pondiscio, Education Next

"In this compelling work, journalist Wexler pinpoints the underlying issues that plague the American public education system, provides context to recent educational reforms, and offers possible solutions." Library Journal (starred review)

"A compelling critique of American elementary schools" that "highlights pervasive problems." Kirkus Reviews

"Illuminating and thought-provoking." Publishers Weekly

THE KNOWLEDGE GAP focuses on a long-overlooked issue lying at the heart of what is known as the achievement gap: the failure of most elementary schools, and especially those serving low-income children, to systematically build knowledge of the world.

Every school day, elementary teachers spend hours drilling students on comprehension skills and strategies like "finding the main idea" or "making inferences," in an effort to boost their reading ability-and their scores on standardized reading tests. Subjects like history, science, and art have virtually disappeared from the curriculum in many schools.

In fact, these schools are doing the exact opposite of what can actually turn students into good readers. Comprehension strategies can be useful-when delivered in limited doses and connected to specific content. But cognitive science has shown that the primary factor in whether you're able to understand what you read is whether you possess relevant background knowledge and vocabulary.

The prevailing narrow, skills-focused approach to literacy instruction can hold any child back, but its effects fall hardest on those at the bottom of the socioeconomic spectrum. Children from more educated families often absorb knowledge about the world at home. But those from less educated families have to rely on schools for the kind of knowledge that will equip them to do well on tests-not to mention in high school, college, and life. Every year they spend in school without getting that knowledge puts them farther behind their more affluent peers. By the time they get to middle or high school, it's often too late for them to catch up.

Through the stories of educators, students, and parents, The Knowledge Gap examines what elementary literacy instruction currently looks like, how it evolved to this point - and how it can be changed so that all students receive a meaningful, rigorous education.

Excerpts from the book have appeared in The Atlantic, Chalkbeat, MindShift, American Educator, and the blog of the Albert Shanker Institute.

Read or listen to interviews with Natalie and presentations about The Knowledge Gap:

TV:

Morning Joe, MSNBC

After Words With Natalie Wexler, C-SPAN

Good Morning Washington, WJLA

VIDEO:

Why Prior Knowledge Wins the Game (two-minute video from Edutopia)

Western NY Science of Reading Conference, November 2022

Iniciativa Educacao, Lisbon (in English)

Why Teaching Social Studies Is Teaching Reading, The OC for Social Studies Conference

RADIO:
Total Information AM South Dakota Public Broadcasting
The Pulse (WHYY/NPR) (episode on comprehension)

On Point (WBUR/NPR)

Leonard Lopate at Large, WBAI

All of It, WNYC

The Record, KUOW

St. Louis in Tune, KWRH

Nightside with Dan Rea, WBZ

PODCASTS:

Through the Educational Looking Glass with Don Sturm and Courtney Eddleson

Lars og pal with Lars Sandaker

Education Uncharted with Amanda Bratten (Propello)

Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast with Amy Nielson

TeachThought Podcast panel discussion with Emily Hanford and others

The Literacy View with Faith Borkowsky, Judy Boksner, and Mary McCool Berry

Building Knowledge with Kristen Rodriguez

Mr. Nico Summer Schoolin' with Nico Eaglin

Melissa and Lori Love Literacy (with Judith Hochman)

On the Scene with SST 13 with Mary Williams

The Inquiring Mind with Stanley Goldberg

After the Bell with Cassie Tabrizi
Talking to Teens
Alabama Literacy Network's Podcast with Shelley Vail-Smith

The Charles Love Show (second hour)

Catalysts for Change with Jill Shah

Rethinking Intervention with Emily Freitag

Tests and the Rest with Mike Bergin and Amy Seeley

Filling the Pail with Greg Ashman

Rethinking Intervention with Emily Freitag and Christina Gonzales

PodcastED with Doug Tuthill
EDVIEW 360 Podcast, Voyager Sopris: Righting the Wrongs of the Elementary Education System EWA Radio: Can Schools Close "The Knowledge Gap"?Just a Few Questions with Marc Sims
Education is Power with Chris Stewart (Facebook Live)

Melissa and Lori Love Literacy (second appearance)
More Teacher Talk: Transforming Teaching and Learning for Disadvantaged Pupils Full Prefrontal: A Podcast About Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function Ed's Not Dead: A podcast covering today's hottest education issues Off the Assembly Line: A Podcast with Rebecca Reed ExtraOrdinary Districts: Ordinary school districts that get extraordinary results Vrain Waves: Teaching Conversations with Minds Shaping Education Science of Reading: The Podcast The Learning Curve with Bob Bowdon and Cara Candel The Report Card with Nat Malkus Education Research Reading Room with Ollie Lovell Principal Center Radio with Justin Baeder Melissa and Lori Love Literacy

PRINT INTERVIEWS AND ARTICLES:
EdSource/KQED, This Literacy Expert Reveals the Key Problem Undermining American Education, April 25, 2024 Edutopia, "Why Our Youngest Readers Need 'Knowledge,' Not 'Skills,' July 28, 2022 Edutopia, "Is It Time to Drop 'Finding the Main Idea' and Teach Reading in a New Way?, July 28, 2020 American Educator, "Building Knowledge: What an Elementary Curriculum Should Do", Summer 2020 EdNC, "Reading instruction needs to improve. Who will lead the charge, and how?", February 17, 2020 Perspectives on Language and Literacy, "The Importance of Knowledge" (International Dyslexia Association), Fall 2019 MindShift (KQED) ,"Why Deeply Diving Into Content Could Be the Key to Reading Comprehension," October 22, 2019 Chalkbeat, "Want better readers? Spend less time teaching kids to find the main idea, 'Knowledge Gap' author Natalie Wexler argues", September 16, 2019 District Administration, "Closing the knowledge gap: Why schools are failing to teach fundamental reading and comprehension skills-and how to change it", October 2019
Click HERE to order The Knowledge Gap through the publisher's website or HERE to order from Amazon. Listen to an excerpt from the audio version, read by the author, below. To order the audio book, click HERE.

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Winner of a silver medal from the Nautilus Book Awards in the category of Social Sciences and Education "Is it possible to create a more inclusive and fairer education system? The Knowledge Gap shows the way." Daisy Christodoulou, tes. "The Knowledge Gap is not just a scholarly work.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Overview of Disciplinary Literacy Slides

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Overview of Disciplinary Literacy Slides

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AISVienna MS Curriculum Leaders - March 2024

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Reading within the Disciplines One Pagers

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I really liked the small group planning idea. It's easier for big classes, small rooms, and conferring with more students on a weekly basis. My goal is to make a predicted conferences document for one of my upcoming units - maybe argumentative writing unit. I'd love to get a second set of eyes on the planned document and topics. I'll also take any recommendations anyone has. :)

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What ideas have you found interesting?

Aligning of UOS 6 - 8

Settling on UOS for 8th grade

Demo labs were very helpful and talking to Jenny afterwards and receiving suggestions was very valuable.

Time with my colleagues very valuable

Reminders of best practice

Permission to change what was done and try new things

What next – set goals

For me, just learning the new-to-me 8th grade UOS is my goal for this year.  Trusting the UOS process and progressions to guide me and then making adjustments for next year.

How – what do you need to help you achieve your goals?

I would love more planning time with Marissa and Sam

More books for my library, so just-right books are at the students’ fingertips.

Patience while I learn the curriculum, the school, and the students.

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I really liked the small group planning idea. It's easier for big classes, small rooms, and conferring with more students on a weekly basis.  My goal is to make a predicted conferences document for one of my upcoming units - maybe argumentative writing unit. I'd love to get a second set of eyes on the planned document and topics. I'll also take any recommendations anyone has. :)

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What?
I find the dynamic between fidelity and responsiveness in the TCRWP program interesting. I love the training and professional development teaching the Units of Study with fidelity can offer, but I also feel ready to embrace the spirit of creativity and invention the approach explicitly encourages. I feel like I understand the broad principles and structures of the workshop well enough to experiment effectively.

What Next?
Incorporating grammar and vocabulary instruction more effectively into my practice. Working with our recently aligned unit overviews to continue developing the complexity.

How?
- Routines that can effectively reinforce grammatical concepts and vocabulary.
- Time to map out and document the newly revising units of study. I understand the importance of being able to document and share the scope and sequence of the curriculum, so having the time to sit with colleagues to justify and document any revisions would be super helpful.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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AISVienna MS Debrief Session - September 2023 (2)

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AISVienna MS Debrief Session - September 2023 (1)

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"Hyper rubrics" AKA Learning Progressions

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"Hyper rubrics" AKA Learning Progressions

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Sponsored by Listenwise and ISTE

I've always believed in the power of a good, clear rubric for helping students understand how their work will be assessed. As an English teacher, I can't even imagine assigning a writing task without a rubric. But all rubrics are not the same: Some can be convoluted messes that overwhelm students, while others can be far too vague to really be helpful. Ideally, all teachers would use the most effective rubrics all the time, but we're not quite there yet.

On this site, we've explored lots of rubric tweaks and iterations that make them more effective, and this post will add more to that work: A different way of developing and using a rubric that changes it from a tool for evaluation to a tool for marking progress and pushing students to keep moving forward.

Two English language arts teachers- Tyler Rablin and Jeff Frieden -developed this idea (first Tyler, then Jeff) and are calling it a HyperRubric. On the podcast we talked about how this style of rubric came to be and how it works. The full transcript is available above. What follows here is a summary of our conversation.

Part 1: Hitting Walls with the Traditional Rubric

This story starts with Tyler Rablin, a high school English teacher from Sunnyside, Washington. After working for several years with the traditional four-column rubric, Rablin found himself wanting more. "I know rubrics are important, I know there's value in them, but I'm not seeing them really impact my students in a way that I would like to see."

He identified two main issues with the traditional rubric:

1. Finality
The four-column rubrics Rablin was using did nothing more than describe student skill levels, and they did so in a way that discouraged future growth. "The earlier levels were often stigmatizing," Rablin says. "It was, These are all the things I can't do. I'm weak at this. The later levels were the better ones: Good is here and bad is here. When I was giving students that feedback they were not getting the message of, You're at the beginning stage in this learning process. They were getting the message of, You're not doing well at this. When you hand that to a student, it just, it crushes them, and there goes motivation almost right away."

2. Clarity
"The language was basically like, I kind of get it, I sort of get it, I mostly get it," Rablin says. "And for the student, what does that mean? Where do I go next?" For a student who doesn't really understand the concept, "they don't have a way into that learning. They don't really know where to start."

He started to envision a different kind of rubric, one that would actually help students make progress. It would spell out what they could already do in concrete terms, then show them the skills they needed to develop to move forward.

Part 2: Imagining a More Progressive Rubric

Rablin began experimenting with a new approach: replacing the static descriptors in his rubrics with language that was progressive. He referred to this style of rubric as a Learning Progression.

The image below shows the difference. To keep things simple, this example just focuses on a single row in a rubric containing criteria for using commas with coordinating conjunctions.

In the top rubric-done in a traditional style-the criteria vaguely labels the student's skills in terms of how many mistakes they make. It doesn't give them any information about what skills to develop and how to get better.

In the bottom rubric-done as a Learning Progression-the criteria is couched in terms of concrete things a student can learn to do, things that will help them improve.

Click image for larger view.

In this example, and in many of Rablin's other rubrics, those concrete demonstrations start at the lower levels of Bloom's, where students are simply defining and identifying, and move up to higher-level tasks where they apply, evaluate, and create with the target skill.

Part 3: Making the Rubric "Come Alive"

If the rubric is digital, teachers can also add an additional layer that hyperlinks the skills in the rubric to resources that teach the skill, thus enabling students to start making progress right away.

With the addition of these hyperlinks, the rubric now becomes a HyperRubric.

See the difference in the examples below, which assess students' skills in analyzing character development in a text. The top rubric is traditional, with vague descriptors of the skill at different levels. The bottom version, a HyperRubric, not only offers more concrete sub-skills students can work to develop, but also contains links to videos, articles, and models that teach the student how to apply those sub-skills.

Click image for larger view.

Part 4: Putting the Rubric to Work in a Real Classroom

Now that we're clear on what a HyperRubric is, it's probably obvious how much more useful it could be than a traditional rubric. Still, if we're only using it at the end of a learning cycle, as a tool to evaluate work that is already done, its value will still be limited.

Ideally, a HyperRubric will be used within a cycle of feedback, reflection, and iteration, where students can use it to actively work on their skill development.

One example of this is how Jeff Frieden uses it.

Frieden, a high school ELA teacher in southern California (and the person who brought us the ongoing conversations strategy in 2018), first heard Tyler Rablin talk about his new approach to rubrics on an episode of the Teachers on Fire podcast. As he listened, he realized that this different kind of rubric would be perfect for the shift he'd been trying to make with his writing instruction, a shift that moved assessment from the end of a writing piece to the middle.

"For 13 years, I had been assessing the final product," Frieden explains. "I had a (traditional) rubric and it tended to come at the end. So it was really just an impact on the grade. And full confession, I was using it to justify the scores I was putting on the papers. The hope was that it would transfer to their next piece of writing. But that's not really what happened. Maybe occasionally it would for a few students, but for the most part it was just me sort of covering myself just to make sure that everybody could understand why points were missing from the document."

Recently he shifted his approach, giving students a prompt for a writing task, having them do a first draft quickly, then planning his teaching around the areas of need he identified in the first drafts.

The new process, when face-to-face instruction was still the norm, looked something like this:

1. Students write first draft, then teacher assesses drafts to reveal trends in writing for whole-class feedback/instruction.

2. Students write second draft after receiving targeted mini-lessons in small groups through station rotation.

3. Students write third draft, followed by quality check through station rotations.

4. Submission and evaluation.

Pre-pandemic, this system worked well, but once students and teachers moved into remote teaching, station rotation became much harder to do. Frieden knew he'd need a vehicle that would enable students to self-assess, along with resources that could help them teach themselves the skills they'd need to progress.

In the midst of this, Frieden saw Rablin's rubric and knew he'd found the answer. Now his writing cycle follows a similar pattern to the one he was already working on, with the HyperRubric now taking the place of the targeted mini-lessons:

1. Students Write First Draft

Based on a prompt, students write a relatively quick first draft with very little instructional support from the teacher. From there, Frieden reviews the drafts for trends.

2. Teacher Builds HyperRubric

Frieden now builds a HyperRubric based on the trends he saw in the first draft, areas for growth that are common to many students. "At the maximum I would do three of these," he says. "If I really want this learning to stick, if I really want them to see it's valuable, then I will reduce it to the really high leverage items."

Within each cell of the HyperRubric, he links to mini-lessons that will help students reach that specific level.

3. Students Self-Assess and Write Second Draft

From there, students self-assess their work using the HyperRubric, clicking on links to the mini-lessons, and revising. "Right as they're learning the lesson," Frieden says, "it's impacting their draft as soon as they get it."

Here's an example of a HyperRubric for persuasive writing, where the focus is on organization. The student has identified their current level, has completed the mini-lesson on transitions at the next level, and has written a reflection about this process:

For an editable template that matches the style of this HyperRubric (on a different topic), click here.

Once the second draft is written, Frieden's students write another reflection on the changes made to their draft:

From there the cycle can continue with more self-assessment, reflection, and revision until the piece is ready to be submitted.

Other Questions About HyperRubrics
We're looking at examples of single skills on a rubric, but teachers are expected to teach many different standards. How does that work?
At Rablin's school, where they operate on the trimester system, he has recently begun focusing on about eight progressions per trimester, eight skill areas that he targets through various assignments over the course of the term.

"It was kind of a shift for me," he says, "because at first, that didn't sound like a lot. I'm used to if it's just I can analyze theme in a text, that feels like one thing that we're learning. But when I broaden it out and thought about it in terms of learning progressions, I had to recognize that every single thing I was doing, students were learning five separate skills. Does that mean this is all we're learning? Absolutely not, but in terms of the progressions I'm being really intentional with, I had to learn to limit it to a lot more than I was used to."

Frieden limits his use of the HyperRubric to certain types of assignments. "If you're a teacher listening to this and you're thinking, oh, that sounds like I have to set up an entire trimester geared towards that and I'm not ready for that. I'm actually using the HyperRubric as one point in a particular type of assignment."
What about grades? If these are meant to be progressive, how and when do you actually assign students a grade?
Rablin bases a lot of his grades on conferences with students. "Our conversations are centered around these learning progressions. There is an average of scores that results in their final grade. But I'm not averaging those scores over time. It's not necessarily that I'm counting your earliest attempts and your latest attempts (equally). We had eight skills; overall, what was your final performance or what was your most consistent performance with those eight skills? Your most consistent or more recent scores are what are going to determine your final grade for the course."

When he calculates grades with HyperRubrics, Frieden gives the most weight to student reflection. "The standard is the focus, and it's trying to move them along on this progression. But I'm very, very much going to be asking students when it comes to their letter grade, can you articulate to me how this learning that you had in the middle of this assignment impacted the second draft? And then that's where I'm going to focus all of our energy and importance and I guess the worth of the grade."

To learn more about how Rablin and Frieden use HyperRubrics, you can find them on Twitter at @Mr_Rablin and @SurthrivEDU.

Come back for more.
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Introducing the HyperRubric: A Tool that Takes Learning to the Next Level

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Unlike the traditional rubric, which serves mainly to evaluate, the HyperRubric pushes students to keep moving forward.

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Terminology - An Oldie, but a Goodie by Jennifer Gonzalez

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Terminology - An Oldie, but a Goodie by Jennifer Gonzalez

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Whether you're new to rubrics, or you just don't know their formal names, it may be time for a primer on rubric terminology.
So let's talk about rubrics for a few minutes. What we're going to do here is describe two frequently used kinds of rubrics, holistic and analytic, plus a less common one called the single-point rubric (my favorite, for the record). For each one, we'll look at an example and explore its pros and cons.

Off we go!

A holistic rubric is the most general kind. It lists three to five levels of performance, along with a broad description of the characteristics that define each level. The levels can be labeled with numbers (such as 1 through 4), letters (such as A through F) or words (such as Beginning through Exemplary). What each level is called isn't what makes the rubric holistic - it's the way the characteristics are all lumped together.

Suppose you're an unusually demanding person. You want your loved ones to know what you expect if they should ever make you breakfast in bed. So you give them this holistic rubric:

When your breakfast is done, you simply gather your loved ones and say, "I'm sorry my darlings, but that breakfast was just a 2. Try harder next time."

The main advantage of a holistic rubric is that it's easy on the teacher - in the short run, anyway. Creating a holistic rubric takes less time than the others, and grading with one is faster, too. You just look over an assignment and give one holistic score to the whole thing.

The main disadvantage of a holistic rubric is that it doesn't provide targeted feedback to students, which means they're unlikely to learn much from the assignment. Although many holistic rubrics list specific characteristics for each level, the teacher gives only one score, without breaking it down into separate qualities. This often leads the student to approach the teacher and ask, "Why did you give me a 2?" If the teacher is the explaining kind, he will spend a few minutes breaking down the score. If not, he'll say something like, "Read the rubric." Then the student has to guess which factors had the biggest influence on her score. For a student who really tries hard, it can be heartbreaking to have no idea what she's doing wrong.

Holistic rubrics are most useful in cases when there's no time (or need, though that's hard to imagine) for specific feedback. You see them in standardized testing - the essay portion of the SAT is scored with a 0-6 holistic rubric. When hundreds of thousands of essays have to be graded quickly, and by total strangers who have no time to provide feedback, a holistic rubric comes in handy.

An analytic rubric breaks down the characteristics of an assignment into parts, allowing the scorer to itemize and define exactly what aspects are strong, and which ones need improvement.

So for the breakfast in bed example, an analytic rubric would look like this:

In this case, you'd give your loved ones a separate score for each category. They might get a 3 on Presentation, but a 2 on Food and just a 1 on Comfort. To make feedback even more targeted, you could also highlight specific phrases in the rubric, like, "the recipient is crowded during the meal" to indicate exactly what went wrong.

This is where we see the main advantage of the analytic rubric: It gives students a clearer picture of why they got the score they got. It is also good for the teacher, because it gives her the ability to justify a score on paper, without having to explain everything in a later conversation.

Analytic rubrics have two significant disadvantages, however: (1) Creating them takes a lot of time. Writing up descriptors of satisfactory work - completing the "3" column in this rubric, for example - is enough of a challenge on its own. But to have to define all the ways the work could go wrong, and all the ways it could exceed expectations, is a big, big task. And once all that work is done, (2) students won't necessarily read the whole thing. Facing a 36-cell table crammed with 8-point font is enough to send most students straight into a nap. And that means they won't clearly understand what's expected of them.

Still, analytic rubrics are useful when you want to cover all your bases, and you're willing to put in the time to really get clear on exactly what every level of performance looks like.

A single-point rubric is a lot like an analytic rubric, because it breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria. What makes it different is that it only describes the criteria for proficiency; it does not attempt to list all the ways a student could fall short, nor does it specify how a student could exceed expectations.

A single-point rubric for breakfast in bed would look like this:

Notice that the language in the "Criteria" column is exactly the same as the "3" column in the analytic rubric. When your loved ones receive this rubric, it will include your written comments on one or both sides of each category, telling them exactly how they fell short ("runny eggs," for example) and how they excelled ("vase of flowers"). Just like with the analytic rubric, if a target was simply met, you can just highlight the appropriate phrase in the center column.

If you've never used a single-point rubric, it's worth a try. In 2010, Jarene Fluckiger studied a collection of teacher action research studies on the use of single-point rubrics. She found that student achievement increased with the use of these rubrics, especially when students helped create them and used them to self-assess their work.

The single-point rubric has several advantages: (1) It contains far less language than the analytic rubric, which means students are more likely to read it and it will take less time to create, while still providing rich detail about what's expected. (2) Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended. When using full analytic rubrics, I often find that students do things that are not described on the rubric, but still depart from expectations. Because I can't find the right language to highlight, I find myself hand-writing justifications for a score in whatever space I can find. This is frustrating, time-consuming and messy. With a single-point rubric, there's no attempt to predict all the ways a student might go wrong. Similarly, the undefined "Advanced" column places no limits on how students might stretch themselves. "If the highest level is already prescribed then creativity may be limited to that pre-determined level," says Fluckiger. "Students may surprise us if we leave quality open-ended."

The main disadvantage of single-point rubrics is that using them requires more writing on the teacher's part. If a student has fallen short in many areas, completing that left-hand column will take more time than simply highlighting a pre-written analytic rubric.

Need Ready-Made Rubrics?

My Rubric Pack gives you four different designs in Microsoft Word and Google Docs formats. It also comes with video tutorials to show you how to customize them for any need, plus a Teacher's Manual to help you understand the pros and cons of each style. Check it out here:

Sources:

Fluckiger, J. (2010). Single point rubric: A tool for responsible student self-assessment. Teacher Education Faculty Publications. Paper 5. Retrieved April 25, 2014 from http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/tedfacpub/5.

Mertler, C. A. (2001). Designing scoring rubrics for your classroom. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(25). Retrieved April 30, 2014 from http://PAREonline.net/getvn.asp?v=7&n=25.
Know Your Terms is my effort to build a user-friendly knowledge base of terms every educator should know. New items will be added on an ongoing basis. If you heard some term at a PD and didn't want to admit you didn't know what it meant, send it to me via the contact form and I'll research it for you.

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Whether you're new to rubrics, or you've used them for years without knowing their formal names, it may be time for a primer on rubric terminology.

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