Assessment of Roman Life Rubric

I created a rubric for assessing a Roman Life presentation. Each group was given a different topic to study and then presented back to the class. Students were sat in their usual tables, alphabetically seated with some small adjustments due to SEN e.g. XX who needs to be on his own table near me.
Topics included food, buildings, medicine and clothes. The groups were given differing levels of information – one group is by chance quite able so they were given more information and of a more dense nature. Two other groups include ESL students so I gave these groups a variety of dense and less dense material and monitored which information the ESL students used. Students naturally organised themselves to work on their own particular part of the task so they were working alone but together a lot of the time. One ESL student is sat near a lower ability student in terms of language but not processing or thinking (reading age 9) and they supported each other, with XX helping XX with words (reversal!!) she needed whilst XX assessed how XX was progressing with his information.
We used the rubric on presentation – I chose a /5 scoring system for ease of use explaining that 5 was exceptional and 1 would be serious cause for concern. The different criterion were partly history based e.g. use of an original source, depth of knowledge, new knowledge but also language based e.g. use of keywords. I also let students come up with two of the criteria we would assess – sometimes there are issues specific to a group or class which would not apply to other classes and therefore this personalises the experience for all.
The rubric was easy to use – maybe too easy as it didn’t necessarily make the students think enough. I had to question them as to their choices but after making them aware of the need to justify themselves they improved. I also might include a levelling column next time but this exercise was less about AFL this time and more about presentation and language skills. I...