RUBRICS

      If we think in assessment in education, the first thing that comes to our minds are exams. Mathematics exams, History exams, Science exams, etc. And this is because Spanish education is based on them. But is it the best way to evaluate?

      Taking into account what Pere Marquès says, the traditional exams are leading us to school failure. A lot of students feel frustration when they are not able to learn by heart everything, and they leave school in early years. The rest, I mean, the more privilege students, memorize interminable units or books, "paste" this "knowledge" in exams and then, they forget everything without learning.

      Therefore, as future teachers, the use of an alternative way in assessment is required to combat the high percentage of school failure. And rubrics, which allow us to evaluate "authentic tasks", and not only memoristic skills, are the solution.

      First of all, rubrics allow students to know about what is expected of them. The criteria are clearly identified and communicated prior to completion of the task, thus, both teacher and students better understand the good or bad performance on a task. Secondly, rubrics give teachers the opportunity to be more objective and less biased in their students' evaluation. And not only that, they allow teachers to provide more detailed feedback to students. 

      

       Consequently, why won't we use as future teachers rubrics in our classes?

      

      In the following lines my group thinks, reconsiders and tries to add improvements to the analytic evaluation rubric we have used to evaluate class presentations in New Technologies subject. And, in particular, we revise the last two points of the assessment table: Oral language: Fluency and Delivery. The original rubric is shown below.

        We completely agree with our first criterion: Oral Language: Fluency. Firstly, because it includes very clear descriptors. And secondly, because they also include, not only oral speech hesitation, but also pronunciation and intonation (two really important features of English language). 

      However, we agree up to a point with the second one: Delivery. As far as we concerned, we would change the descriptor part referring to a “relax attitude”. One can have done a very good work and can be very prepared, although he/she can be a little bit nervous. Or what is more, one can be nervous but does not show it. Nervousness is something very subjective for us. Consequently, instead of that one, we would add a descriptor about the fitness between oral discourse and corporal movements and gestures.

      

      In addition, we consider that labels are appropriate (5,4,2,1) and that both criterion (our two ones) have also the same weight, the same point values.

      In the following table the yellow highlighted words are the two criterions we have to think about, the red highlighted words are the aspects we would avoid, and the blue highlighted words are the features we would add.

PERSONAL LEARNING JOURNAL: 29th September-2nd October 2014

      Last but not least, in our four week of class before starting the intership, we have been talking about tools related with transcriptions, mind maps and story websites and about white boards.

      Two groups of class (my group and another group) have found sources on the internet to create captions and what is more, we have done a presentation of it. Tools, such as Dotsub, Vimeo, Overstream, Captiontube, Subtitle Horse and Subtitle Workshop, have been included in our presentation.

      And the other group, who have to do the same investigation and analisys, has also included Amara, Youtube and DivXland Media Subtitle.

      This types of tools, as I have said in the previous entry, allow children and teachers to learn, listen, get to know with spoken and written English and work in a coperative way.

  In addition, we have worked with mind maps websites such as Mindmup, Lucidchart or Simplesurface. Each group has analysed two of them (saying how it works, how easy it is to use, its main advantages and its main disadvantages) and we have created a wiki in common in what we have shared this knowledge and analsys. This is the resulting wiki:

      Mindmaps allow us not only to organize our learning, but also a to organize the knowledge we want to teach. According to many authors such as Coyle, Hood and Marsh (2010) it is recommendable for teachers to make mind maps of their subjects or proyects.
   
      Not only that, we have learnt how we can use Storyjumper and therefore, how we can create our own stories individually or in groups. Creating stories is a way of increasing pupils imagination and wrintting in  English with a communicative purpouse, so this tool is really useful in schools. This is an example of the beggining of a story created by me..

      Moreover, we cannot forget that in a high quality activity and class, it is equally important both the activities and resources we use and also the assesment we carry out. So bear in mind evaluation needs to be consider. And this is what we have also seen this week.

      Finally, we have seen how a white board works. Nowadays the use of white boards in schools, is a reality, so learn how we can use this tool will be very useful not only in our intership, but also as teachers. The following video can be helpful.

REFERENCES
- Coyle, D., Hood, P., Marsh, D. (2010). CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.