Handouts are available below

Big Idea

How do you assess work habits? It sounds like a simple thing to do – we think we know good work habits when we see it – but what does it look like? Today, I’m sharing some things my colleagues have shared on how I can improve assessing work habits. Long story short, I can use work habit rubrics, provide different ways for students to demonstrate work habits, and conference with individual students to better understand what success looks like for them.

Strategies in Assessing Work Habits

Number 1: Use a rubric to assess work habits. Below is one from a high school in BC. The rubric shows that work habits include attendance and punctuality, preparedness, responsibility, and initiative and it goes further to explain what good, satisfactory, and needs improvement would look like for each category. I would be responsible for letting my students know about this rubric at the beginning of term so they know what I’m looking for. One colleague suggested I develop a work habits rubric with my classes instead of using one that is already pre-made. This would do double duty: let students know what is being assessed in work habits while also giving students voice as to what should be assessed.

Number 2: Give a greater diversity of practices students can do to demonstrate work habits. For example, an English teacher at my school has students come in during flex time to get help with and work on essay drafts. This colleague counts this as work habits because it demonstrates ownership of work and an interest to put in the work to improve. This could translate into my science class with regards to the engineering and design projects I give students. For example, right now, some of my students are working on a bath bombs project – where they’re tinkering with the formulations to achieve a specific result. In the same way as my colleague who teaches English, I could open up my room during flex time to allow students to work on or get help with their bath bomb formulations too before the project is due. This is not something that I would traditionally be able to measure if I were just checking for completion of assignments.

Number 3: Conference with students to reevaluate what success looks like to each student. A colleague who works in the special ed program mentioned that, for some kids, getting to school is a huge win. Perhaps, that can be recognized in their work habit. Thus, in my mind, I’m seeing that work habits are flexible – they can be evaluated against a rubric, but also adapted for individual cases. But, this would need me to know the student, what they’re struggling with, and what they’re doing to overcome it.

Thanks for reading, and we’ll talk science again soon.

Resources

Handout(s): Work Habits Rubric – Burnaby North Secondary

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