Benchmarks: Phase 2

Trying to hone my benchmarks down to something comprehensive that I can use for assessment, here's what I've come up with so far for 5th grade. It would mean changing my thinking from how students do each week to how they do over a 5 month period, and it's certainly more rigid and less applicable to students' creativity, innovation, and effort. It seems to reduce their work to a set of skills--an idea at which I bristle--but it could still be useful, and it's what my administration is asking for.

The 2nd half of the document includes all of the criteria/understandings that go into each column, which would vary by grade, though most of the column headings could be the same for 3-5 and for k-2. 

The other big question is whether it's doable to assess 750 kids for 14 different elements that have so many sub-elements...

How do you assess students? Do you have a set of benchmarks you use?

Standards and Benchmarks

School culture is all about benchmarks and assessment these days, and I'm working on honing my own informal standards and benchmarks (which are really just skills and concepts) for technology use in k-5. (I like the updated NETS07 and profiles, and made my own to complement rather than replace those.)

(The assessment piece is simply that I watch students and talk to them and look at their work with an eye towards these standards, but I have to admit that I can only guess at which of my ~700 students understand the concept of a network or remember, weeks after the lesson, how to create a folder. More on assessment to come.)

They've developed somewhat organically, and will certainly evolve further.
Maybe as a result of your comments!