RMC Health - Tools to Practice for School Health

Because this section builds upon, and assumes that you are already incorporating, the information presented in the product “Getting Started” level, we encourage you to check that section out as well by clicking here.

Tips

1. Products are the ways in which students' knowledge and skills are measured throughout a unit and at the end of a unit. In addition to developing quality product assessments, it is essential that students receive timely and meaningful feedback on their work. Ideally, students will also be able to self-assess their work.
2. Students perform best when they have a clear understanding of the learning targets set forth by their teachers. Rubrics are a common and effective method for assessing student work. Not only do educators rely on scoring rubrics to assess student performance, but students rely on these rubrics to better understand expectations and learning targets. According to Stiggins (2001), students are the most important assessment users, followed respectively by their families, teachers, and school district personnel. Among all students, low achieving students tend to show the most academic gains when provided with scoring rubrics as markers for expected performance (Fuchs, Fuchs, Karns, Hamlett, Katzaroff, & Dutka, 1997). The rubrics tend to “concretize” concepts and skills in a more accessible manner for lower achieving students. As a result of scoring rubrics, students are able to more readily utilize self-assessment strategies that have been found to have a positive impact on students’ commitment to learning, as well as on their achievement levels (Black & Wiliam, 1998).
3. Analytic rubrics are particularly helpful for students because these rubrics provide specific and observable attributes of the intended educational skills. To fairly assess student work, it is important that rubrics are provided to students in an easily readable manner, with clearly identifiable performance targets, and in a way that encourages self-evaluation (Goodrich, 1997).
4. In the differentiated classroom, teachers are clear about their expectations and provide students with specific feedback on their level of mastery of the concept or skill. Teachers also provide students the opportunity to refine their work to meet the standard. Developing effective rubrics requires that you and your students can clearly articulate the key health education standards and skills.

Strategy #1 Overview

Using Rubrics to Assess Student Work

Effectively using rubrics to assess and improve student performance involves many steps. These steps include:

1. Introduce your students to the scoring rubrics in advance of the assignment.
2. Review the prompt and your expectations with students. When possible, provide students access to exemplar products.
3. Allow students to use your scoring rubrics (or student versions) to assess and refine their products before you score them.
4. Use the rubric to guide your scoring and provide specific feedback to students.

Strategy #1 Examples

The Rocky Mountain Center has developed teacher and student versions of scoring rubrics that are aligned to the National Health Education Standards. These might be a good starting place when using rubrics for student product assignments.

The teacher versions include an analytic scoring rubric for each national health education standard except for self-management. The developers of the teacher rubrics determined that, in most cases, assessment of the self-management skill was best done with a performance checklist. Click here for examples of the teacher versions of the scoring rubrics.

The student versions of the health education scoring rubrics are also available for every National Health Education Standard except for self-management. These rubrics were developed to be parallel with the teacher rubrics and understandable to students at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. View the elementary, middle and high school versions of the scoring rubrics.

Strategy #2 Overview

RAFT Activities

The acronym, RAFT, stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic (Buehl, 1995, p. 87 & Tomlinson 2003, p. 133). This strategy calls for students to take on a particular role and produce a specific product for a specific audience. Students can self-select or the instructor can assign specific RAFTs for students. RAFTs can be differentiated based on student readiness, interest or learning profile (Tomlinson, 2003, p. 133).

According to Buehl (1995), “the RAFT strategy offers a number of advantages to the classroom teacher:

1. Students are forced to process information rather than merely write out answers to questions.
2. Students are given a clear structure for their writing. They know what point of view to assume and they are provided with an organizational scheme. Furthermore, the purpose of the writing is clearly outlined.
3. Students are more motivated to undertake the writing assignment because it attempts to involve them personally and allows for more creative responses to learning the material.
4. RAFT is a strategy adaptable to all content areas, including [health], science, social studies, and math” (p. 89).

For an example of a tobacco-specific RAFT assignment, click here .