Soooo... How Am I Supposed To Grade A Yearbook Class?

VENA GEASA Vena Geasa started out as an art teacher, then added yearbook so she could remain full time. For years, she’s used the Habits of Mind method to grade in her art classes, and this year, she is trying out an adapted version for her middle school yearbook class. The Habits of Mind, developed by Art Costa and Bena Kallick, are a set of 16 life skills used when learning and problem-solving. Rather than simply measure a skill, they can be used to evaluate a student’s approach to learning. “I’ve long used studio Habits of Mind to grade in the art room because it’s possible for a student who doesn’t have any natural ability at creating something that’s aesthetically pleasing to get an A, while a student who has a natural ability but never pushes themselves is really a C student because they’re not doing their personal best. And so the Habits of Mind helped me quantify for students what I was expecting of them.” DEVELOPING HER METHOD “When I first started teaching yearbook, I just used rubrics based on the spreads that I had inherited from another teacher. They were more task based, like did the student have a minimum of spelling errors or editing errors? Were all their photos facing the gutter?” She knows the value of having an accurate spread, but didn’t feel that the task-based rubrics captured everything that happened in her yearbook classroom. She tried a more holistic grading approach that takes into account work habits and meeting deadlines, but it was difficult for her students to quantify and understand where they stood. She had a light bulb moment at a yearbook workshop. While discussing Habits of Mind with another adviser, she wondered why she wasn’t using it in her yearbook classroom. “So I introduced my students to those 16 Habits of Mind. When we’re having class discussion, you might be a leader in the class discussion, but if it’s not on a piece of paper, test or quiz, how am I assessing that?” To get her yearbook students used to the idea, Geasa gave each of them a copy of the grid demonstrating the 16 Habits of Mind, then the class did a brain dump on the board. They discussed what they’ll be doing as a yearbook class. She then broke the class into groups which were assigned tasks like photo editing or writing copy. Each of those groups then identified the Habits of Mind they saw themselves using while completing the task. ELEANOR MURRAY FALLON MIDDLE SCHOOL DUBLIN, CALIFORNIA

VENA GEASA

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