Personalized Learning in 13 Blogs-Step3-Habits of Scholarship Rubric

Step 3: Day 1 Ownership and Student Buy-in to Habits of Scholarship On the first day of school, we brought all the 3rd graders together to create the rubric for the Habits of Scholarship (behavior traits). We modeled determining what each level of “listening and following directions” would look like. We discussed, debated, and settled on language everyone could understand. We went through the process again for “self-control” together, but getting more feedback from the students. Then we divided the students into groups and assigned the remaining habits of scholarship to individual groups. They were tasked with writing the rubric levels for their assigned trait. Even though they had seen these traits for three years, there was still some confusion on what some of them meant. When they finished, we shared each groups’ ideas for their traits. Together we did some revising and came to agreement. Because the students had participated in the process, they felt a sense of ownership and they understood the rubric better. Now, we were getting somewhere.