How to write a simplified rubric for students to use for peer evaluation:
Questions on your rubric might be easy for you to understand, but you don't want to use the same jargon for students' peer evaluation sheets.
Turn your criteria into a series of yes/no questions.
Make it easy on yourself to tally later-make everything easily add up to 100%. (e.g. 4 items - 25 points each; 5 items = 20 points each.
Don't let students have the options of giving 18 out of 20 points. This will just mean more tallying for you later.
Remember: You have the final grading power.
Speaking Course Project: 1 Minute Speech
Students receive or choose a topic and have to speak continuously on that topic for 1 minute.
How to choose a topic:
- Topics include subjects that you address in class, a chapter or section of the text book that is interesting but you cannot fit into the curriculum, a subject that develops through class discussions or current events from the news.
Other Students:
These are easier to manage than longer presentations since they are short, and no matter how many students are in your class, the others won’t have to wait too long for their turn. You might try some methods for keeping the other students interested while the presenters are speaking.
- Turn it into a listening activity.
- Have students write something down they found interesting about the topics that others discussed.
- Give students simplified copies of your rubric and have them do peer-evaluations.
Some options to consider are:
- taking notes- you could collect them or grade as homework
- deciding whether students can use notes during their speech-it might affect their ability to speak fluently and indepently, but it could enhance the performance of newer students.
- grading their performance- You should consider pausing and stalling techniques. Discourse markers (um, uh) should not be considered a stalling technique if used correctly.
- grading their content- Depending on your curriculum, you want to decide if the students need to be graded more on accuracy and fluency or on content or an equal measure of both.