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# Lesson 6: “Building a Text” in Scribo

### Overview

Many teachers think Scribo is a great tool for helping students learn how to write using a scaffolded approach. This works really well for certain kinds of writings where the structure is clear, such as with an Introduction, Body and Conclusion of an expository writing or Beginning, Middle and End for narrative texts. Learn how you can use Scribo to help students "build" a text type.

Scribo has been designed to assist whatever approach you use to teach writing. We think that one useful “best practice” approach, especially when teaching a new text type or refining techniques, is to use a series of Scribo activities to help students incrementally “build” a text.

The beauty of this approach is that it works well for beginning as well as advanced writers and across text types and subject areas. So whether you are assisting Year 5 students with how to craft a narrative or helping senior students write an analytical or interpretive essay, you can try this.

**Background:** Sometimes teachers want to work formatively with students, providing feedback during the writing process, as opposed to looking at a writing task as a summative assessment of students’ capabilities. Both approaches are great. This lesson focuses on the formative approach where you decide how you want to break a task down into sections and target specific skill-building for each. The following is essentially a scaffolded writing activity guided by a teacher’s expertise and Scribo’s analytics and work samples. We will assume a “beginning, middle and end” approach that you can apply to the specific text type or genre you’re helping students learn.

### Beginning Well

You might be helping students engage the audience in a persuasive text, start a narrative *in medias res* or set a position for a historical interpretation. Regardless, you have ideas about what makes a good opening.

### **Add a New Activity – Phase 1**

1. From the main Scribo screen, click Add New Activity from the left menu.
2. Knowing that you will be building a text over a series of activities, you can name the activity with its topic/text type and something like “intro” or “opening.” As examples: “Best Day Narrative1” or “ Best Day Narrative-Beginning;” “Persuasive1” or “Persuasive-Intro”; “WWI-Causes1” or “WWI-Causes-Intro”, etc.
3. Complete the Activity Setup screen as you would normally, including topic words, word counts, etc.
4. As for the stimulus, this is a good place to scaffold out the instructions to students with as much detail as you would like. You decide if explicit instructions or more general inspiration would be most useful.

Here is an animation showing this:

![](https://770445871-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2Fscribo%2F-LzoYAwPZDlYnSENjw5K%2F-LzoYVvsQ3HHEofXmS_N%2F0.gif?generation=1580355949133879\&alt=media)

Here’s a [link to the animation](http://recordit.co/eQgnQaDyGB).

Note – If the Rubric selection option doesn’t appear, you don’t have any rubrics loaded (see the next section to learn how!).

### Uploading a Rubric

The best rubric is the exact rubric *you want to use*.

### **How to Upload a Rubric**

1. Find or create a rubric in either a table or spreadsheet. Notice that two heading rows are needed. One for descriptor and one for value.
2. Copy the rubric by dragging across / highlighting each section, then select copy from the menu, mouse or keyboard commands.
3. Navigate to the Rubric screen: Scribo main, Rubrics (left menu), then look for the down arrow in the green “Add Rubric” button. Click this arrow.
4. A Pop-up window will appear. Simply “Paste” the copied rubric and watch it magically appear in the pop-up window.
5. Name the Rubric.
6. Notice the important message that opens. This is letting you know that you should make sure your criteria either align with pre-selected criteria or you should choose your own. This “mapping” is very helpful because it groups similar criteria together so that, for instance, if three people use slightly different headings for paragraphs (e.g., “paragraph,” “paragraphing,” “paragraphs”) instead of three separate categories for the same thing, you only have one. This is very useful when tracking growth across the criteria.
7. Finally, add values so that Scribo can automatically generate a score from your feedback based on your rubric.

Here’s an animation that shows this full process.

![](https://770445871-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2Fscribo%2F-LzoYAwPZDlYnSENjw5K%2F-LzoYVvtHjzF14lbxSE6%2F1.gif?generation=1580355949230890\&alt=media)

Play the [animation as a video](http://recordit.co/yvegIzL9c6)

### Sharing a Rubric across your community

By importing your rubric as above, you can now use it with your students. A little thing that makes rubrics even more powerful are when they are shared. Of course, this means people are saving time, which is great, but by sharing rubrics, you and your colleagues are working more systemically. Thus the criteria you set can be used across year levels, stages or subject areas. By doing this, students are encouraged to work to consistent standards that are supported across the school, not just one teacher.

### **How to Share a Rubric**

1. From the main Rubric screen, you may likely see only the new rubric you’ve just uploaded. Notice there are no rubrics in the Community tab.
2. If you try to share your rubric, you get a message asking you to add a year and subject.
3. After doing this, you can now share the rubric. It is immediately available to any teachers in your community.

![](https://770445871-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2Fscribo%2F-LzoYAwPZDlYnSENjw5K%2F-LzoYVvuE0Rb1HhQGqwN%2F2.gif?generation=1580355949107553\&alt=media)

Play the brief [animation as a video](http://recordit.co/bXOWLQIUL2).

### Getting the Most from Using Rubrics

### **Student Self-evaluation**

As the work of John Hattie highlights, [student self-evaluation](https://visible-learning.org/glossary/#1_Student_Self-Reported_Grades) has a high correlation with their achievement. Perhaps this is because when students know their strengths and limits, they are ready for the next step. They are also building a foundation of knowledge, skills and understandings rather than just “doing activities” or “turning things in.”

Thus, you are encouraged to use a simple tick box in the Activity Setup screen that then triggers students to reflect on their writing using the rubric you choose.

![](https://770445871-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2Fscribo%2F-LzoYAwPZDlYnSENjw5K%2F-LzoYVvvBIThL0jAgOUg%2F3.gif?generation=1580355949085865\&alt=media)

### **Input as you Give Feedback**

When you have students self-evaluate using the rubric, you get to see how they scored themselves.

Click on a student’s name to see their work in the Feedback screen.

You will be greeted by yellow bands on the levels students have scored themselves.

When you agree with the student’s self-evaluation, you will see a smiley face.

![](https://770445871-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2Fscribo%2F-LzoYAwPZDlYnSENjw5K%2F-LzoYVvwLwQTbOymtfMA%2F4.gif?generation=1580355949106198\&alt=media)

See the [animation as a video](http://recordit.co/5Dr4DQ9qou).

We hope you enjoy using rubrics in Scribo!