Professional Development Day - Rubrics

Click on picture
to see slideshow

We spent election day 2011 developing rubrics for our 21st century learning expectations. We used the NCHSNEASC13 website rubric page to access the instructions and rubric template, then brainstormed to develop indicators for each expectation. This is slide show of our day's activity.


 
 

Leadership meeting

The NEAS&C Steering Committee met with the Standards Committee co-chairs to assign expectations to standards committees and determine which departments would pilot which expectations rubrics.

We also reviewed the agenda for the Nov. 8 Professional Development day, and articipants gave feedback on the NCHSNEASC13 website's new rubric page.

It was recommended that we remove the points, values and total columns and rows from the NCHS rubric template to minimize confusion.

NEAS&C activities for November 8th PD Day

The faculty sent in several more rubrics this week, so we reassessed our meeting needs and called a quick twenty minute after school meeting with steering committee and committee co-chairs on Monday, November 7th from 2:15-2:35. At the meeting we will review the following day's activities.

As PD leaders, Cathy and Chris offered to develop a Checklist for the PD day, which was quite helpful.

Steering Committee meeting canceled

A freak October snowstorm set us back some. Since two school days were canceled, our scheduled November 1st steering committee meeting was also canceled. Our original plan to review and filter NCHS rubrics with the steering committee was deferred to the PD Day on November 8th. Mike emailed the steering committee about the new plan.

Resources on creativity, critical thinking, and rubric design

A Tweep (Twitter speak for someone you know through Twitter, but have never met face to face: Twitter + peep = Tweep), a retired librarian now living in Florida, Jerry Blumengarten, just Tweeted a link to his Critical Thinking page. This prompted me to ask him about a creativity page, and resources for rubrics. They are all posted on our nchsneasc13 resources page. Twitter = the best PD resource on planet earth ;-)

Steering Committee co-chairs meeting with Principals

In fairness to the recorder, these notes were taken on an iPad during first and second lunch, while standing at the cafeteria ramp :-)

Big Question: How is steering committee going to spend Nov. 8? In Steering Committee, or with standards committees?

Who is writing the first draft of the rubrics?Standards committees?If standards, the steering committee should participate. If not, then steering committee should meet together.

We clearly need a rubric forcritical thinking. What indicators should be included? While observing an engineering class, Ari asked if we had an engineering rubric - one that included problem solving. The answer was yes. We should take a look at that.

We agreed to collect all the school rubrics via email. We will need both digital and hard copies (if only a hard copy exists, we will create a digital version). There was some discussion about this - whether to collect them all or just those perceived as relevant to expectations. We decided to collect them all, in case Steering Committee members saw correlation where folks who live with them every day did not.

We will align the rubrics with learning expectations, then assign each one to a department. The department will pilot using the rubric, and report back with recommendations for revision.

The Steering Committee will meet on November 1st, at which point we will sort through the collected rubrics and assign each one an expectation, and then which committee will work on which expectation.

One thing we should address on November 8th is language. Our rubrics should reflect a common language - one that students can understand. The committees will go through their assigned rubric packets and aggregate a list of commonly used terms (word cloud opportunity?). They will also determine which parts of the rubric will cross departments, and which department will pilot which expectation rubric.

When departments meet, at least one person in that meeting will have participated in the committee meeting responsible for that department's expectation allocation, and will be able to explain the rationale for the departments' assigned pilot. Then they will use the collected rubrics and NEAS&C examples to develop new ones.

We had a conversation about indicators and rubric adoption - one I was not able to transcribe - distracted and hungry? Suffice it to say that Mike spoke eloquently on the topic, and that when necessary, I am confident he will be able to reconstruct what he said beautifully :-)

After the pilot, we will look at rubric formats and scales, but we think we should live with them  for a bit before doing that.

Faculty meeting in the library

Faculty meeting in the library (NEAS&C business will not be deterred by space constraints!). After Mike provided a succinct review of the process that led us to craft the Core Beliefs, Values and Expectations, and a "screening" of the nchsneasc13 website, the faculty approved the document without discussion :-)

Shhhhh! Food in the Library!

Habla usted Espanol? 

Ouvrez vos yeux, Mme Swan!

Ms. Brown, Ms. Goldhawk, and Ms. Floryshack Windman