Elem Staff: Mr. McChristian, Fifth Grade

Mrs. Bahm watches her and Mr. Mac's students as they evaluate three different brands of potato chips while using a rubric that the students made together.

Student Constructed Rubrics

Boy! I hope my writing assignments taste this good.

by Genie Bahm and Thomas McChristian

You might be thinking to yourself, "How does eating potato chips help students learn about how their writing assignments will be graded?" In this recent culinary activity, students from Mrs. Bahm's and Mr. Mac's classes worked in small groups to devise a rubric, which Webster's dictionary defines as " any established rule or guide," to determine which chip should be purchased at the grocery store with mom and dad for the next picnic, perhaps.
Each group of students had to peacefully decide on four criteria -- "rules or standards by which something or someone can be judged or measured." Taste was a criterion that all groups used.

Finally, the long awaited moment in which Eric, Emma, and Noah rate their potato chips for taste.

Some other criteria used by students were crunchiness, freshness, smell/aroma, texture/feel, greasiness, saltiness, size, and color.
Then the big moment finally arrived. With Mrs. Bahm and Mr. Mac reigning in the students' enthusiasm, the students received permission to begin assessing each chip based solely on each criteria. Students had to reach a consensus within their group for each score for each chip for each criterion. Some interesting debates and problem solving discussions ensued; a multitude of strategies were employed from persuasive conversations, to voting, to rock, paper, scissors in determining a chip's score.

The students rated each potato chip based on student selected criteria.

Students discussed the advantages and disadvantages in using rubrics as a writing metric: Students understand how they will be evaluated on a given writing assignment, but rubrics are subject to individual tastes and preferences because an individual person is applying the criteria of a rubric. So far students have been introduced to three out of the six traits and the rubrics used to assess students' understanding and performance for a given writing assignment: Word Choice, Voice, and Organization.