Futuring

Fox and School Train
How would I "grade" or assess these two assignments? This question consists of two parts:

1. What rubric I would use to grade the two works, and
2. What grade I would give each of them

I will refrain from answering one in hopes that my answer to two will implicitly reveal the rubric I use to grade them.

• School Train

School Train is a very fascinating take on metaphor. The students compare the school to a train. I think that the use of video media helped these fourth graders communicate their ideas. They made some good and interesting connections:

• test-pull hard
• conductor-principal
• sit a lot
• it takes a loooong, looooong time

Some of these would never be uttered by children in oral/written projects. Also, these connections appear to be highly reflective and do show an understanding of the concept. Obviously their use of video to show the school and the class was good. I think they could have connected what was going on in real time classes with the train more, i.e., more photos of the students in classes. Further, I think that, with the class working together as they did, they could have made more connections to solidify the metaphor and illustrate that they knew what they were talking about. I say this because my first impression was, "Do they know what metaphor is?" The other question is "What did each student put in? Was it equal? Or was it highly differentiated?"

The verdict: I would grade the class favorably. It's not an A, but also not a C. I give them a B.

• Hannah-Fox Becomes A Better Person

I think that Hannah's traditional story was well done. I loved the use of visual and auditory media in her story. In a culture where stories are oral, the use of video was especially powerful. The story just wouldn't be the same if Hannah had written it down. Further, this story has a little more "meat" in it than the School-Train did. She uses the cultural characteristics poster at the beginning and closes it with one of those morals at the end. I don't know if the song was exactly appropriate to the occasion but it sounded nice. Plus, songs go well with stories. (I'm sure the teacher and song writers knew what they were doing.)The background images were outstanding and really brought the story to life. She looked a little uncomfortable up front and probably could have tweaked that a little bit. However, her movements and sound effects were fantastic. Also, I think given a language/culture class, she could have used some more words in Tlingit (she only introduced herself). It would have been nice to hear at least fox/duck/turtle/dove/bug in Tlingit, too.

The verdict: For good substance, backgrounds, moral, character development, etc. I give Hannah an A-.