I’m a big believer in rubrics. Both of the “Say the Black, Do the Red” variety, and in the classroom. What’s a rubric, you ask? Sit back as I explain how you can overcome your hesitation and finally build up the courage to cross the Rubric…con.

That seemed like it was building up to be an awesome pun, didn’t it? Sorry about that.

Okay, basically, a rubric is a terrific time-saver for teachers and a way for students to know your expectations very clearly before they begin an assignment. Rubrics are great for essay portions of tests, evaluating projects, rating students’ behavior or class participation – pretty much anything you can evaluate, you can evaluate via a rubric.

Rubrics4Teachers.com has tons of examples; I usually make my own, so that they’re tailored to the assignment. Decide how many aspects of an assignment you want to evaluate, come up with a “4-3-2-1” description in each category, and then give the rubric to the kids before they start the assignment, so that they know what they should be doing to complete it. Then, you just need to circle the box in each category that best fits the student’s performance.

Here are some sample rubrics you’re welcome to use and/or modify – click on the link to view them in PDF form.

Saints Essay Question: Choose four saints whose lives we have discussed in class and explain how they practiced the corporal and/or spiritual works of mercy.

Sacraments Essay Question: Choose four of the seven Sacraments. For each Sacrament, explain how it was instituted by Jesus, how it serves to provide us with grace, and how a person should prepare to receive the Sacrament.

Scripture Class – General Essay: Choose at least three Biblical figures whose lives we have discussed in class, and explain what people can learn from their example. You may include details about how each person either chose to do God’s will or disobeyed God, and what resulted from those decisions.

Hope these help! And hang in there – Christmas is right around the corner!

(AAAA! CHRISTMAS IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER!!!! AAAAA!!!!! MUST START BAKING!)

Catechist Chat will be an ongoing series of posts for teachers in religious education programs. It is based on my personal experience and not on any statistical evidence of the effectiveness of my advice. Suscribe to my feed to follow along, and Caveat lector, which is Latin for “your mileage may vary.” 

Click here to read other entries in the series, and be sure to follow Catechist Chat on Facebook! You can also sign up for my email list, and I’ll send you resources, including non-PDF versions of the activities I post (which means you can edit them in Microsoft Word to customize them for your own students).

Well, I’ve been feeling a bit discouraged, because after various interruptions and special programs, I think I’ve had seven class sessions with my students for a Scripture course that’s supposed to be 14 weeks long. So it’s been a frenetic pace all the way through and I haven’t done as thorough a job as I would have liked to, but – it is what it is. Tonight was our last class, since the next two weeks will be replaced by Mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and then our closing Advent Program. I needed to give them a “final exam” of sorts and I knew they weren’t ready. Enter…BINGO.

Love me some review-game bingo. It’s not the most thrilling activity in the world, but it’s better than a review sheet and more interactive. Best of all, it requires minimal effort, because you have the kids make their own cards.

Here’s a blank review sheet Bingo card. The way it works is – pick 8-10 terms for each column of the Bingo chart. You can put these on a separate review sheet (and use the Bingo as a complement) or stick the list right below the card itself, as I did in this Scripture class review Bingo. (WARNING: Looking at this example will show you what a shoddy job I did of covering the Old Testament. I mean, not a prophet to be found on the list. I did the best I could).

Anyway – then you tell the kids to pick words from each column and write them wherever they’d like on the corresponding column of the Bingo card. You’re Catholic, right? I don’t need to explain how Bingo works. I usually read aloud the “answers,” Jeopardy-style, to see if they can guess what I’m talking about, and then I go over it once more with them. You can even just make up a list on the spot and write it on the board – as long as you have at least five terms for each column (four for the “I” column, technically), they can make up a card. Much, much easier than trying to generate your own set up randomly-sorted bingo cards.

Speaking of Bingo, Loyola Press has a nice printable set of Advent Bingo cards, complete with leader’s guide.

Hope your class is making the transition to Advent nicely. (Code for: not totally losing it as Christmas break approaches).

Catechist Chat will be an ongoing series of posts for teachers in religious education programs. It is based on my personal experience and not on any statistical evidence of the effectiveness of my advice. Suscribe to my feed to follow along, and Caveat lector, which is Latin for “your mileage may vary.” 

Click here to read other entries in the series, and be sure to follow Catechist Chat on Facebook! You can also sign up for my email list, and I’ll send you resources, including non-PDF versions of the activities I post (which means you can edit them in Microsoft Word to customize them for your own students).

Now, this probably won’t apply to you. You’re so organized, and you’ve stuck perfectly to the lesson plans you made at the beginning of the year. Plus, your students never missed a class, and everything’s run like, well, clockwork. Yesss!

But JUST in case you feel like you’re a little behind and you’re running out of time to cover everything you need to…I feel your pain.

A confession: I’m behind. Actually, if you’ve ever met me (or had the misfortune to be my student), this is not news. I always seem to end up a few classes behind where I need to be. This year, we’ve also had a few interruptions that we don’t usually have – a class canceled because of a historic football game (which I actually was okay with), a few “family nights” where we all came together, and then I missed a class because I didn’t have a babysitter. That’s just the way it goes, but still – I’m a little behind.

So, with two classes left (our final class in December will be an Advent ceremony), I have three choices:

Spend the next class speeding through everything else in the Bible, and then give the kids the Mother Of All Tests at the last class, or

Go into Emergency Mode and ask myself: what do they ABSOLUTELY NEED to know from my class and try to cover it in the next two weeks, or

Continue with the original plan so that they’ll at least have learned SOME of this stuff fairly well, even if they didn’t learn as much as I’d liked.

For me, I’m probably going to go with choice 3, although choice 2 might actually be the better option. I just feel like, with a semester to teach Scripture, trying to stop right after Exodus and then have a class that’s “Okay, then stuff happened, and then Jesus came. Ten things to know about Jesus” will leave them with the impression that the rest of the Old Testament isn’t all that important. Plus, I think most of the kids (and most adults) are more unfamiliar with the Hebrew scriptures than with the New Testament. So I’m going to try to cover through the Royal Kingdom and give them a fifteen-minute “everything else up until Jesus’ time.” That’s just me.

But when it’s time for us to assess the kids, the most important thing is to be honest with ourselves about what they should know after X number of weeks with us. The Test, if you’re winding up with a big test, is not a chance to ask about every minor detail of the past nine class sessions because they SHOULD know this stuff. Maybe you mentioned in passing back in September that the Flood prefigures the sacrament of Baptism; that doesn’t mean they remember it. The saying is, “If they didn’t learn it, I didn’t teach it.” Now, that’s a great way to stress yourself out if your students don’t do well on their quizzes, isn’t it?

It’s not that you should give your eleventh graders a 10-question matching quiz that ends with “Jesus Loves You, Now Draw a Rainbow.” Making the class into pablum means it’s not worth their time to come each week, and they get a real sense of accomplishment out of having learned more about their faith. And, of course, our ultimate goal is to draw them into a deeper relationship with Christ, so we want to make sure we are reaching their minds as well as their hearts.

I just mean – don’t decide at the last minute that Now is the time to show them all the stuff they should have learned if they’d been LISTENING, and it’s not YOUR fault if they don’t know it. Sit down and take some time to honestly assess the content of your class sessions before you come up with an assessment. Don’t just photocopy the last two section reviews from the textbook and tell yourself, “well, we read it in class, so they should be able to answer these.” If you know there’s something you haven’t gone over with them, don’t expect them to be know it anyway. Assess them based on what they should reasonably be expected to know.

COMING SOON: More specific thoughts/suggestions on types of assessment. So, lay it on me in the comment box. Am I the only one in this boat – the boat of “WHAT? Only two classes left?”

UPDATE: Jennifer Fitz of Riparians at the Gate has crafted a most excellent response to this post. So good, so detailed that I can’t just excerpt it. A snippet, though – one that made me feel better about being so behind…

The second reason go-slow works, is that as I teach I’m naturally making lots of connections. Dorian, I’m going to bet your bible study class is doing the same thing. It’s impossible to teach a chapter in the bible without naturally referring to ten other scripture passages, three doctrines, a sacrament or four, and maybe a few good pious customs and a personal story about the love of God thrown in for good measure. The reason class goes slowly is because you are covering more than what is one the page. So you aren’t actually teaching less than planned. Just different than planned.

See, look! I’m behind because I’m so good at what I do! Read the whole thing.

Catechist Chat will be an ongoing series of posts for teachers in religious education programs. It is based on my personal experience and not on any statistical evidence of the effectiveness of my advice. Suscribe to my feed to follow along, and Caveat lector, which is Latin for “your mileage may vary.” 

Click here to read other entries in the series, and be sure to follow Catechist Chat on Facebook! You can also sign up for my email list, and I’ll send you resources, including non-PDF versions of the activities I post (which means you can edit them in Microsoft Word to customize them for your own students).