Lab Assessment

Being a future Ag. Educator, I will often be in the shop, performing labs that most other teachers do not get the opportunity to work with. I will have the opportunity to perform hands-on work with my students and teach them life-long skills! However, the struggle comes whenever it is time to assess and give the students a grade on what they have learned.

I plan on using a "concept map" to determine what my students know, what they want to know, and what they have learned at the end of my lesson. Also, a web-style concept map is a good way to compare two things that are similar; using a map helps students remember how the concepts are alike, and also different. A Vee map is a new concept that I have never used; this type of map would come in handy whenever students need to create a powerpoint or a conclusion to a project and need an easy to follow format. Vee maps are easy to comprehend and all of the important information is displayed to the reader. Here is an example of a Vee map the different ways that it can be utilized:

There are two general types of rubrics that include generic and task specific. Being a teacher that involves being in the shop and working on larger projects, I would most likely be creating a lot of "task specific" grading rubrics. Under those two categories, there are analytic and holistic. A holistic rubric is a rubric that has students focus on specific steps of a process and is usually a "yes" or "no" answer. While an analytic rubric mainly focuses on what the outcome is.

The four main steps to creating a rubric are:
1. List the criteria
2. Decide the point value for each step
3. Design format of rubric
4. Create a matrix that includes the behavior and point value.

After reading these articles, it is clear to me that I will be generally designing "task specific" grading rubrics with a sub category under "analytic". I believe that it would be in the students best interest for me to create an analytic rubric because the students have the opportunity to get partial credit, unlike a rubric that is a "yes" or "no".

Thanks,
Mike