Assessing our collaborative project!

Hello fellow teachers,

In today's post, I will share with you one important thing that is needed for the collaborative project to be complete.
In my older posts, I was able to share with you some information about the importance of being able to make a fair analysis of the collaborative eProject you want to carry out in your class, as it will help you know if it's adequate for your specific group, as well as it can help you adapt or create your own collaborative eProject.

As we move on to other posts, we have learned that the first step to creating an eProject is developing the prototype for your project. Furthermore, not only did we turn our eProject into a collaborative one, but we also learned how meaningful it is to create a digital metaphor that will help you advertise it. All the more, we learned to use so many digital tools in the process!
Collaboration is a hot topic in every one of my posts, inasmuch as we decided to take a step forward and begin a thoroughly search for a project we could collaborate and cooperate with, as partners. All in all, I found a great partner and a remarkable collaborative project called 30 Goals Challenge, which inspired me to create an entry about the best way to get the partner you want to collaborate with interested and willing to cooperate with your project. In short, I created an elevator speech, which worked wonders!
Finally, in my last two posts, I was able to publish not one but two great super learning missions from my project, which I created out of two flat and boring activities from a textbook.
And now, dear teachers, we have come to an important step in our journey in which we will learn how to create a perfect rubric for the assessment of the final outcome of our projects!

Bellow, you will see a brief diagram --created using Canva -- explaining what are the things that should be included in our rubric.

Assessment Rubric by Re8eca M.

In addition, I considered important to show you the rubric I created in order to assess my collaborative eProject "Living and non-living things". The tool I recommend you to use -- as I used it myself and I find it very useful when creating your own rubric -- is the one called QuickRubric. The only drawback I found is the fact that this tool doesn't leave the option to embed your rubric to your post. However, you can always download it in a PDF and share it using some application such as Slide Share or Issuu -- the latter being the one I used to embed my rubric.

When creating our rubric, we have to bear in mind the age of our pupils and if the rubric is designed for the teacher, for the students or parents. My rubric is designed for the teacher and parents of the students, as my project is developed for first graders, which makes it difficult for them to understand even the easiest sentences in English.

Consequently, they will not be able to understand this rubric and for this reason, I believe it is important to create a rubric that children will be able to understand, using simple keywords and sentences that will repeat all over the rubric, and stickers instead of points. In the rubric for the students, I will assess the exact same aspects as in the previous one, with the only difference that it is going to be translated for the little ones. Another important thing to mention is that children will be read the rubric in the class by the teacher, and they will be able to ask for any of the words they do not understand. Before and after each challenge, the teacher will read the children the rubric and tell them how important it is to follow the instructions, to work in groups, to be careful with the writing and to be as creative as they can with the final outcome, which is the poster. And most importantly: to have loads of fun working together!

Following, you can take a look at the rubric I created and I shared with you, this time using Slide Share. 

Rubric for the little ones by re8ecaa

It is hard to put into words how much I learned while doing this post, as well as working on the other ones! I understood the importance of not only creating an awesome mission that will engage, motivate and inspire students, but also the importance of creating the perfect assessment rubric for it, as well. We have to understand that as teachers we need to know what are the most important features to be assessed and what do you want your students to know about the assessment! They also need to be aware of what the teacher wants from them in order to accomplish the mission and the different challenges. This is why using proper vocabulary for their age and a simple rubric that can be understood by them is very important! We have to make sure that children will be able to reflect upon their work and can assess themselves using the rubric given to them. This is how they won't be taken by surprise with a mark that they don't understand because they feel and think that they did a fabulous job. If they have the rubric, there is no question about their mark, as they could see the whole time what the teacher wanted from them and their final outcome.

To conclude, I want to thank all of you for visiting my blog and reading my posts. I hope you have learned a lot, and with the tips and examples I provided, I think you will be able to design your own assessment rubric for the collaborative project you are creating! 

I can't wait to read your comments and feedback!