hello and welcome to this new exciting edition of assessment in this video we'll be talking about rating scales rating scale is a written list of performance criteria that permits you the teacher more than two choices so good Fair poor or excellent it gives a it gives the teacher the ability to judge student performance of each Criterion and start to look at quality when we were looking at checklists so compare this to checklists checklist is about did you do it or not do it rating scales are our first introduction into looking at student quality of work so there are many different types of rating scales they can be numeric they can be graphic as well they can kind of take on both numeric and graphic you can see this one here they're typically if they're numeric they're typically on a likert scale so a one to five or in many cases people get rid of the neutral and it's one to four so in this case never sometimes often always here you can also look at unsatisfactory below average average above and outstanding so we're getting clear distinctions of quality right in each one sometimes it's about frequency this is how often we're doing something and this is more about the quality of work uh in in which the child is doing something we can extend these numbers to do something with smiley faces and you see these a lot or even hand signals you see these a lot at the elementary and early childhood level when when students are still working on the words so how do we use rating scales well they're everywhere uh report cards are rating scales ABC um even uh you could think of uh GPA as kind of a rating scale uh for screening measures when we're looking at um uh we suspect a child has a cognitive disability in a particular area or a learning disability in a particular area so we would give them a full screening measure we'd use rating scales there intervention development so um measuring the effectiveness of the intervention we can look at rating scales we can use radio scales for Progress monitoring or even self monitoring here's an example I've seen these charts in many many Elementary classrooms the Marzano kid-friendly rating scales here it's a four point I don't get it I need help I get some of it I might need a little help I get it and I can do it by myself where I've got it and I can teach it to a friend this is a really nice formative assessment rating scale that you can do as kind of a student self-check at any point do it during your instruction we also find a lot of rating scales in psychological or educationally relevant evaluations for example lots of behavior measures mood disorders ADHD and autism as well here's some more examples this is a vocabulary knowledge rating scale again this is kind of a likert scale but for young children right for young children you have the visual aid and you also have a number there right so I really like these I think you should have these in every classroom students are used to them by now they can get used to them in the schools so typically teachers at grade levels or even across grade levels typically design these and stay close to just one idea some people do like the red light green light type of idea as well and that would also be considered a rating scale here's another rating scale this is for vocabulary terms once again so you could put the vocab terms and the students can self-assess here we have um it's it's kind of the beginning of a rubric right uh but you can start to see that we could we could one two three four five we could think of these as rating scale and this and the child could you could interview the child um or you as the teacher could use this as a rating scale and it's not a rubric because there's there's there's no description within this so although it's set up like a rubric and many of you out there might be thinking oh that's a rubric sure it's not a rubric because there's no description there's no way for the child especially a first grade child um to receive important feedback because they can't read these things over here right so this is just standards and then you as the teacher May set up an activity for the child to do and then use this rubric to assess the child's activities here's some advice um the next couple slides are going to focus on advice so um how do you how do you develop a rating scale right um well you begin with your goals right um they have to be Rewritten into simple declarative statements they can't measure more than one item so you it's it's like writing a good true false statement it has to be all true okay it has to be all true nothing with false here but but I think if you think about it as a simple declarative statement that that you you're only assessing one thing so it's really a lot about breaking down those standards once again you're going to develop between a three and seven phrase uh or picks expressing your idea and this is about a degree of agreement or frequency even as we saw earlier um so here's just a brief example I like learning about learning and you can strongly disagree or strongly agree neutral doesn't tell us much so a lot of people are now getting rid of the neutral category which I kind of like as well so uh last pieces of example some some really the biggest key with this and where I see the most uh problems when students my students like you are trying to write um good rating scales is you you typically write bad sentences so here's a bad sentence I understand my vocabulary words here's a good sentence I know my sight words right this is much more clear very declarative and is very specific as well I ask and answer questions two things just make it I ask questions I answer questions very simple I can't paraphrase and recall many events in a story this is negative I can retell a story I read really simple right and and and we can talk about these as being yes no right but I think when you talk about how well a child and asks questions how well do they know their sight words or how well can they retell a story I think that's when we're going to use rating scales right here we go um bad responses or choices uh very easily somewhat easily somewhat difficult and difficult um how about I just yes sometimes or no right let's keep it really simple especially for young children right um heck even older children the simpler you keep it the easier it is for them to focus on the topics you want them to cover uh never occasionally sometimes often frequently these are pretty good but I think a little bit better is just using five fingers or the the red light yellow light green light let's keep it simple here with our response choices and I think um the other thing I want to say as we kind of look at the uh the last one here the other thing I want to say is like um as you're as you're being simple you're actually allowing the children to focus more on the complexity of the of the topic or concept or skill that you're trying to teach right the other piece is is if you use a simple rating scale and the students are are very much used to using that rating scale right the simple uh lack of complexity not only are they focusing on their tasks but then they're able to apply that into other situations right I think one of the powerful pieces of assessment and formative assessment tools like rating scales and even checklists but especially rating scales is that if you develop something in one classroom at second grade or at eighth grade or even at you know 10th grade that you could apply that rating scale to all of the other classes right and in this way again students are more focused on the learning and they're used to how you assess and how all the teachers assess which makes things consistent anyway um I hope this helps give you some pointers for how to write effective rating scale items and develop rating scales in in use as formative and also possibly summative assessment measures