Originally posted on CORElaborate here (re-posted here in its entirety with the author’s – me – permission).
CC – Wikimedia Commons
I don’t use rubrics very often and when it comes time to have students self-assess I prefer proficiency scales. When I last wrote about using CER, Claims – Evidence – Reasoning, for having students write experiment conclusions, I didn’t mention using a rubric to score their conclusions. A rubric for general CER’s didn’t make sense because students and I assessed their experimental conclusions based on each individual experiment. If the experiment was comparing the amount of time batteries are charged to the amount of time a flashlight stays lit, the CER will look different and be assessed differently than for an experiment looking at how different surfaces affect the sliding friction force of a wooden block.
But what if what we’re assessing is our students’ ability to write claims, provide evidence for the claims and then explain how their evidence supports the claims? This is what my 6th grade PLC is doing as part of collaboration TPEP work. The Humanities Teacher, the Math Teacher, and I, the Science Teacher, are all having our students write using CER!
When I met with my principal and he asked how we were going to compare how well our students are writing their CERs across our different content areas I shared a CER rubric I found somewhere a few years ago. I hate to admit it but I can’t remember where I found it! I just did a quick Google search for CER rubric and found a lot of samples, not the exact one I’m sharing here so if anyone knows where I got this from please leave me a comment so I can give them credit for using their rubric. This one seems perfect for 6th graders to use as they self-assess their CERs. We’ll see how well it works out once we start looking at student work! Here’s a link to the CER Rubric if you can’t see the embedded Google Doc below (remember to go to File, Make a Copy, to save a copy for yourself on your Google Drive).
Here’s a link to the CER document I use with students and here’s the one I use with sentence starters to help scaffold the writing.
