Tuesday Teacher Tips

A good rubric will go a long way in helping you establish your baseline data and track your students' progress towards your student growth goal. While nearly all of us have extensive experience using writing rubrics, creating a rubric for a math, reading, history or science skill might seem a little more intimidating.

The best thing to do is to take a deep breath, and apply those skills you already have mastered when it comes to rubric writing. If you still find yourself worried about what it looks like, there are plenty of examples online that will help.

Keep your rubric hunt simple. Do a basic search on a search engine like Google or BIng for the enduring skill you've picked and the word rubric. For example, a search for Rubric and Retell yielded 161,000 results. Don't be afraid to preview images associated with the search, and for sure click through to the second, third or even fourth page of results to see what's available. Be sure to use the word and in your search, and you might want to use quotes around specific phrases.

If you're stuck, ask me (or your school librarian) for help thinking of search terms.

For reading, you might want to check out the reading rubrics from Collection of Evidence out of Washington by clicking [here]. The rubric was last updated in 2011, but is divided into informational and literary texts and may give you an idea of language you can use as you write your own. check out some more great resources below!

Now that students are beginning to use Office 365/OneDrive more to email their teachers and to share documents, it's a good time to add a professional looking image of yourself to your profile.

Because the global address list is accessible to all students and staff, it is not uncommon for students and teachers to send an email/document to the wrong person. This is especially true if you have a common name. Help others out by including a picture of yourself on your profile, and that picture will be visible when students and teachers are searching and will help them confirm they are communicating with the right person.

If you want, you might also have your students put an image on their profile; however, it is important to share with students that if they are under the age of 13, they shouldn't be sharing photos of themselves. Instead, it would be more appropriate to create an avatar on a site like Build Your Wild Self. This could be a fun animal/habitat activity as well.

Check out the videos below for a tutorial on how you and your students can add images to your profile.

If you are on the mailing list and would like to have your name removed, please just email me to let me know!

Email: heidi.neltner@fortthomas.kyschools.us
Website: http://learninprogress.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @heidinelt