So after my accident with the rental car, I woke up the next morning with a concussion that stranded me in NY for an extra week and a half. I couldn't sit up or read- it was maybe the most boring week of my life. I did get the job though! So I will not be unemployed, YAY!
I feel like I've been in a coma all summer. It started with my concussion and after that, I just haven't been able to think school or math at all. The last three years have been so intense and not knowing if I'd have a new job or not made staying motivated really hard. I've been so isolated though that I NEED to get out there and keep working on professional development. I especially MUST learn geogebra. I'm going to follow Bowman in Arabia's tutorial on geogebra because I think it's a really cool program, I've just been too busy slash scared to learn it.
My new boss gave me my first homework assignment. She asked me to create a rubric spanning all the content students should cover in my classes. She thinks it would be a nice, tangible way for students to keep track of their learning throughout the course of the year. Students would all start in the lowest categories and then move up through to the higher categories as they advance. Here's the start on my Algebra 1 rubric. I think it's a pretty neat idea. This is the only school related thing I've worked on ALL summer. You'd think I'd be relaxed but I think not working has been even more stressful than working... maybe that's why I became a teacher- there's always something to do :).
Algebra 1 Semester 1 Rubric
The formatting got a little messed up. I don't know how useful having this will be, but it's a nice project to keep me busy. I've organized it carefully. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
I'd be curious if this helps motivate students - I've never seen anything quite like it in terms of scale (a rubric for an entire year long course). I'm guessing you use standards-based grades? I love the title of your blog as a Hitchiker's fan by the way.
ReplyDeleteI've never seen anything like it either. It's my new principal's idea but all she gave me to work with was that she wanted all her teachers to have rubrics describing the topics students would be learning this year. The rest is my take on her assignment. I haven't used standard based grading before mostly because Oregon standards were such a mess and have been changing every year. Maybe now they're on common core it would be easier to try, but I am liking the idea of a rubric like this one. Students can see their learning. It's a really visual way for students to track their progress and also for students to develop their own organizational framework to place new knowledge into. I think students need to see where they're headed, how far they've come and they need to see how it's all linked together. We'll see how it works out.
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