Grading Labs
Ok, so I'm grading the first chemistry lab analyses.
I took a really long time trying to write both a rubric for scoring and an answer prompt skeleton.
I wrote out what I would expect if a student was going to give me an "advanced" analysis - and chunked the organization and specificity into question prompts. (As a happy aside, one student far surpassed what I wrote in terms of evidence of extended thinking about the subject. Student win!)
I gave that as a worksheet, which I then directed the students to writing an essay from there.
First impressions are that I need to address the concept of using paragraphs - most students did not. Easy fix. But then the question is WHY they didn't in the first place. They have to in their English classes!
Second impressions are WTF? When I didn't give students any guidelines, just said "write an analysis," it made it super easy to determine whether a student got the lab concept or not. Regardless of their writing skill, or language barrier most of the time. Now, I think I taught the vocabulary REALLY WELL, and a student knows where to use them, but yet I'm not entirely sure from the rest of the organization of the essay or lack of observation evidence that they really UNDERSTAND that the lab demonstrated evidence of a chemical change. I don't yet know how to fix that. Although evidence of teaching vocabulary really well is win.
Third, and this is probably a symptom of the general inability I have to discern between real understanding and attempts at bullshitting their way through the assignment. I have one particular student who must have used a thesaurus every fifth word, and as a result I have NO IDEA what she is trying to say most of the time. Example sentence: "Many uncertain observations people don't realize can be very important and can open many new doors into a whole new belief." I am guessing she meant, "You have to watch carefully or you will miss an important observation that will show you the purpose has been accomplished." Also in that same analysis "A thermometer was used to consist of the temperature, which wasn't been able to move since we needed the prominent degree, so later to perceive the change in degrees." I'm guessing, "The thermometer measured the temperature, but we couldn't read it properly since we couldn't move it."
Fourth, I am glad that I am doing a first read-through and then I'm going to go over the details of grading after that. It makes it actually a shorter process, so that I can get through the reading without being bogged down by comments just yet. For this time, I'm going to print out the rubrics and staple them to (I also realize I should have given them rubrics first to let them evaluate themselves and also let them use them to choose how much effort they'd like to put into it. TEACHER FAIL!) with my comments, or underlining of the parts of the rubric that address their lab.
Over all, however, I think the labs are pretty good. Only three students did not pass my expectations, and I'm nearly done grading.
I took a really long time trying to write both a rubric for scoring and an answer prompt skeleton.
I wrote out what I would expect if a student was going to give me an "advanced" analysis - and chunked the organization and specificity into question prompts. (As a happy aside, one student far surpassed what I wrote in terms of evidence of extended thinking about the subject. Student win!)
I gave that as a worksheet, which I then directed the students to writing an essay from there.
First impressions are that I need to address the concept of using paragraphs - most students did not. Easy fix. But then the question is WHY they didn't in the first place. They have to in their English classes!
Second impressions are WTF? When I didn't give students any guidelines, just said "write an analysis," it made it super easy to determine whether a student got the lab concept or not. Regardless of their writing skill, or language barrier most of the time. Now, I think I taught the vocabulary REALLY WELL, and a student knows where to use them, but yet I'm not entirely sure from the rest of the organization of the essay or lack of observation evidence that they really UNDERSTAND that the lab demonstrated evidence of a chemical change. I don't yet know how to fix that. Although evidence of teaching vocabulary really well is win.
Third, and this is probably a symptom of the general inability I have to discern between real understanding and attempts at bullshitting their way through the assignment. I have one particular student who must have used a thesaurus every fifth word, and as a result I have NO IDEA what she is trying to say most of the time. Example sentence: "Many uncertain observations people don't realize can be very important and can open many new doors into a whole new belief." I am guessing she meant, "You have to watch carefully or you will miss an important observation that will show you the purpose has been accomplished." Also in that same analysis "A thermometer was used to consist of the temperature, which wasn't been able to move since we needed the prominent degree, so later to perceive the change in degrees." I'm guessing, "The thermometer measured the temperature, but we couldn't read it properly since we couldn't move it."
Fourth, I am glad that I am doing a first read-through and then I'm going to go over the details of grading after that. It makes it actually a shorter process, so that I can get through the reading without being bogged down by comments just yet. For this time, I'm going to print out the rubrics and staple them to (I also realize I should have given them rubrics first to let them evaluate themselves and also let them use them to choose how much effort they'd like to put into it. TEACHER FAIL!) with my comments, or underlining of the parts of the rubric that address their lab.
Over all, however, I think the labs are pretty good. Only three students did not pass my expectations, and I'm nearly done grading.