Module 3 Assignment For PME 827 By: Neil Westcott

This paper will focus on a Summative Assessment used for a Grade 5 unit of inquiry.
The rubric used is designed to assess students understanding of the importance of
water, its uses and implications for conservation. The performance assessment chosen
was designed for 11 and 12 year olds enrolled in an English-medium international
school in Cambodia. Students at the school come from over thirty different countries.
However, the overwhelming majority of the student population is Cambodian, with
Koreans making up the largest minority. The following is the assignment given to the
Grade 5 students:

Research and create an advertising campaign - pamphlet, poster, and could include a
persuasive video convincing people to a) raise money, or b) take action of their own to
help to conserve water or address a current issue related to water pollution. You can
include graphs (http://piktochart.com) related to water usage.

Students were then placed in collaborative learning groups and given an extended
period of time in order to complete the performance assessment. Students were given
the assessment rubric to refer to and were encouraged to use it as a tool for peer and
self-assessment. After completion of the assignment, students were assessed by the
teacher using the same rubric.

Rubrics are used to evaluate student performance, particularly on significant

performance tests, through the use of evaluative criteria, quality definitions and a
scoring strategy. (Popham, 1997) These refer to what is being judged, the relative
quality of it, and whether each will be scored individually or together as a whole. While
the teachers could have used any number of assessment strategies to assess learning,
use of a rubric style of assessment indicates a need for these elements to be present in
the assessment. This paper will focus on The Classroom Assessment Standards for
PreK-12 Teachers to discuss the presence or absence of these elements in the rubric,
particularly those that involve Standard U1 Analysis of Student Performance and
Standard U4 Grades and Summary Comments.

Standard U1: Analysis of Student Performance

There are several aspects of the assessment rubric that are noteworthy in how they
relate to Standard U1. Standard U1 refers to the importance of careful scoring of a task
that contributes to final grades. In the case of this assessment, students are provided
with criteria related to their understanding of the importance of, and the limited nature
of, water. The rubric uses student understanding of water use, availability, purification as
well as how to conserve water as evaluative criteria. These are all relevant and to the
students overall understanding of the topic as stated in the rubric: Water is essential to
life and is a limited resource for many.
Module 3 Assignment For PME 827 By: Neil Westcott

Another of the guidelines from Standard U1 indicates that the assessment should inform
students about the criteria used to judge them on their performance. From looking at the
rubric itself, students can use it as a guideline to follow what they need to be able to do
in order to be successful in this assessment. Different aspects of a successful
performance will involve explanation of concepts related to the importance of water,
communication skills, including a presentation aspect, time and self-management skills
and an action component.

If anything, the rubric offers too much in the way of skills and knowledge for
assessment. What is the purpose of this assessment? It looks like a catch all that will
help write report card comments and fill out marks for English, the unit of inquiry, as well
as social and study skills for this unit. Assessing understanding of the topic should be
the primary goal of this assessment. Perhaps the presentation component could be
assessed using a self-assessment and/or a peer assessment, which would leave
students to focus more directly on their researching, understanding and explaining
information about the scarcity and importance of water instead.

In fact, the skills of presenting, writing and reading have nothing to do with how each
student understands how precious a resource water is. In this case, presenting is a
means for students to show their understanding of what they have learned throughout
this unit. Action is also a different component of the program and might take place
during the unit itself or at some time in the future, so including it in the assessment is
not appropriate. Using rhetorical devices, facts, statistics, or technical vocabulary has
everything to do with communication skills and not a lot to do with action. It might impact
the effectiveness of action but there is no indication on the rubric about what that impact
might be or about how effective the action was.

Also, there are many evaluative criteria mentioned in the rubric that have no quality
definitions indicated. For example, presenting, writing and reading skills are used as
criteria, yet only presenting is assessed, according to the use and combination of
writing, infographics and technical language. Since reading and writing are skills that
are referred to using the exact same wording in all three columns of the rubric, it is not
being measured and so should not appear as an evaluative criteria. One problem with
including it is that it serves to make the overall rubric less readable. This makes it more
difficult to understand, especially for those students who struggle linguistically. Since the
overwhelming majority of the students who will be assessed using this rubric are
individuals whose first language is not English, the difficult language contained in it
makes the rubric less accessible.

Another aspect of this assessment rubric which needs improvement is the apparent lack
of involvement of students in its creation. Considering the linguistic background of the
students, an important aspect of its creation is to ensure that it will be accessible to all
students who will use it to assess their learning. Involving students directly in the
creation of the rubric is one way to make sure that all the language contained in the
Module 3 Assignment For PME 827 By: Neil Westcott

rubric is accessible to them. Students are more likely to be actively engaged in their
own learning if they are able to understand the expectations related to what they are
being asked to do. Conversely, not understanding the expectations contained in the
rubric could lead students to disengage themselves from the assessment process.

Standard U4 Grades and Summary Comments

The second Classroom Assessment Standard that this paper will focus on involves
Standard U4, which addresses grades and summary comments. There are several
aspects in the Classroom Assessment Standards guidelines which are pertinent to the
discussion around how the assessment applies to the standards.

The rubric provides for the teacher to communicate detailed information with respect to
the grading criteria. It is specifically related to the students understanding of how water
is distributed, how we use it and what responsibility we have with respect to the
conservation of water. It also includes reading, writing and speaking skills,
understanding of ideas, as well as social and self-management skills. While the rubric
does not mention the consequences of not meeting the criteria in the rubric, the culture
of the school dictates that summative assessments must reflect the students
understanding of each unit of study and that understanding, or lack thereof, will be
reflected in their semester reports which include a section for each unit of study.
Because the rubric is designed with so many different aspects to it, students will receive
significant information about their achievement in several different aspects of their
learning during the unit.

As mentioned previously, different sections contained in the rubric separate different

skills and knowledge that are meant to be developed and used during the summative
assessment. This effectively separates items where achievement is measurable from
items that are more difficult or impossible to measure. One problem with the rubric is
that measuring social skills is extremely difficult. Differences in demonstrated learning
behaviours should be measured by incremental descriptors that indicate differences,
such as never, sometimes, usually, and always. (Tierney & Simon, 2004) In this case,
the rubric is not clear or detailed enough about what constitutes a successful
performance with respect to social skills. Deciding in a fair way how to make decisions
would seem like the optimal method to decide on a course of action as a group, but that
achieves only a Developing score on the rubric. The only difference between that and
Meeting the social skills success criteria are that and sharing the load equally. This
wording is too vague to communicate much detailed information about student
achievement in this assessment.
Module 3 Assignment For PME 827 By: Neil Westcott

Another aspect I wonder about is what the group work roles specified in the rubric
actually entail. They should be mentioned in the rubric in some way in order to provide
students with detailed information about how to achieve performance success in this
area. Perhaps monitoring how a group uses social skills to advance their own learning
is something that should be tracked and reflected on using specific peer and self-
assessments as indicated in Standard U2 Effective Feedback, rather than in a single
summative assessment. A student struggling to apply social skills would benefit from
specific success criteria being stipulated in the rubric.

While the guidelines for the two standards that have been discussed are the most
applicable to a discussion of this particular rubric, other standards contained in The
Classroom Assessment Standards for PreK-12 Teachers are definitely applicable as
well. Standard Q1, which relates to cultural and linguistic diversity, is one that may have
considerable impact, based upon the needs of the students for whom the rubric was
written. Also, Standard F4 Student Engagement in Assessment might provide some
direction for improvement. As stated in the section on Grades and Summary Comments,
some of the material might be better broken up into smaller self and peer assessments
because the rubric is quite demanding. This might have more to do with expediency or
the schools reporting policy than by educational design. However, when using rubrics
for significant performance assessments, students must know the most important
aspects of learning to be measured and the specific qualities that will be looked for in
the products that they are asked to produce.

References

Andrade, Heidi Goodrich, Teaching with Rubrics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
College Teaching, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Winter, 2005), pp. 27-30.

Klinger, D. A., McDivitt, P. J., Howard, B. B., Munoz, M. A., Rogers, W.T., & Wylie, E. C.
(2015). The Classroom Assessment Standards for PreK-12 Teachers. Joint Committee
on Standards for Educational Evaluation

Popham, W. James. Whats Wrong - and Whats Right - With Rubrics. Educational
Leadership. Oct97, Vol. 55 Issue 2, p72. 4p. 2

Tierney, Robin and Simon, Marielle. (2004). What's still wrong with rubrics: Focusing on
the consistency of performance criteria across scale levels. Practical Assessment,
Research & Evaluation, 9(2), 1-10.