Citizenship – 6-8

Citizenship is respectfully and positively impacting others and being actively involved in addressing community, national and/or global issues.

	Novice	Basic	Proficient	Advanced
Impact on others	Seeks answers to provided questions on study of differing perspectives, bias and responds with an understanding of diversity and beliefs of others compared to self.	Searches for answers to questions about own and other perspectives comparing personal observation to research about a variety of worldviews in order to take a variety of perspectives into account before taking action to address a civic need.	Pursues a deeper understanding about own and other perspectives, customs and bias through research using credible primary and secondary resources to make connections between individual, community, and environmental challenges in order to address issues and make improvements.	Promotes engagement with others in deepening cross-cultural understanding including cultural history, customs and bias through research and discourse to acknowledge multiple perspectives and collectively determine best path to improvements.
Actively involved in addressing community, national and/or global issues	Contributes to a group in solving problems or making improvements within the school and community.	Determines ways to take action to address issues and make improvements in the local and/or global community.	Takes action to address a community need or problem accounting for different opinions; makes connections with an organization or agency beyond school; and contributes to a solution.	Initiates action to lead an effort to address a community need or problem taking into consideration cultural diversity, ethical implications and resource availability.

Collaboration – 6-8

Collaboration is working interdependently, learning from and contributing to the learning of others for a shared purpose in a wide range of environments.

	Novice	Basic	Proficient	Advanced
Working interdependently	Identifies different roles within the team, tasks that need to be completed and norms for collaboration in order to reach team goals.	Fulfills the duties and responsibilities of a single role within a team structure adhering to agreed-upon norms and works with others to determine roles and responsibilities for team members.	Describes the duties of different team roles needed to complete the task and fulfills various roles and responsibilities in order to complete a task including contributing new ideas, solutions or alternatives to the team.	Explains the duties of any team role, performs various roles in groups, and provides leadership through addressing challenges, resolving conflicts, using individual strengths of others and encouraging team members with specific feedback about progress and effort.
Learning and contributing to learning	Reviews work in response to feedback from teacher and/or peers, shares learning during group discovery time, and provides feedback to others based on the team’s goal.	Revises work in response to feedback, peer interaction, and self-assessment to meet or exceed the criteria for success, expands on the learning and resources gathered by other group members, and provides specific feedback to others based on success criteria.	Engages team to act upon advancing the knowledge base of all group members, uses self-reflection and feedback to ask clarifying questions to guide revisions or make improvements to the product to meet or exceed criteria for success.	Proactively solicits feedback on individual and teamwork, engages experts and investigates in partnership with others to construct knowledge, acts upon feedback to improve individual and teamwork, and provides constructive feedback in a manner that is appropriate to the audience and topic.
Purpose	Sets learning goals as a team that pertain to the task, makes individual contributions to each phase of the development process, and reflects on quality of final group product.	Determines group and individual goals related to the task, builds shared knowledge, creates a product, and reflects on learning.	Explains rationale behind team and individual goals while balancing individual task completion, builds shared understanding, and meets team goals in agreed timeframe in order to create a product and show evidence of self-reflection on individual and group learning.	Evaluates team and individual goals, considers what is necessary in building shared understanding, prioritizing tasks, monitoring own and group’s progress and adjusts scope and timeframe as needed to be able to submit a quality product with clear evidence of learning.

Communication – 6-8

Communication is interacting with others to convey meaning and gain understanding for multiple purposes, settings and audiences including the digital environment.

	Novice	Basic	Proficient	Advanced
Interacting with others	Chooses an appropriate level of formality for a familiar context, purpose and/or audience and follows structured norms for responding.	Uses an appropriate level of formality for different contexts, purposes and audiences and utilizes active listening and response strategies.	Employs an appropriate level of formality for different settings, contexts, purposes and audiences, employs a variety of effective strategies in interacting with others and follows norms for dialogue, discussions and decision-making.	Develops message for different contexts, purposes and audiences in diverse settings by utilizing effective vocal techniques and nonverbal communication, empathetic listening and response strategies and follows protocols in dialogue, discussions and decision-making.
Conveying meaning and gaining understanding	Contributes ideas and asks questions to check personal understanding, provides evidence for ideas and integrates visuals to communicate thinking and add interest.	Shares ideas, builds upon others’ thinking, asks questions to clarify ideas of others and provides supporting evidence with citations and visuals into presentation of ideas.	Exchanges ideas and asks questions to deepen understanding, presents own ideas and credits others’ thinking, cites credible supporting evidence, interprets words and images and integrates visuals to strengthen claims and add interest.	Synthesizes ideas and evidence, asks questions to probe and qualify thinking, clarifies perspectives, cites credible sources and utilizes visual elements to strengthen the exchange of ideas and deepen understanding.
Digital environment	Uses provided digital tools independently, works with multimedia and shows an understanding of the expectations for sharing sources and safe behavior when communicating online.	Applies digital tools, works with multimedia and works in online environments to convey ideas, collaborate with others, credit sources used and follow expectations for safe and acceptable behavior when communicating online.	Selects digital tool and creates multimedia to effectively collaborate, compose, illustrate, convey ideas and conduct research while demonstrating safe, legal and ethical behavior including compliance with copyright law and district policies in online environments.	Chooses digital tools and creates multimedia that best fit the purpose and audience to enhance message, clarify meaning, collaborate with others and build shared understanding while demonstrating safe, legal and ethical behavior including compliance with copyright law and district policies in online environments.

Creativity 6-8

Creativity is generating ideas and approaches to design innovations, construct solutions, build understanding, and express perspectives.

	Novice	Basic	Proficient	Advanced
Generating ideas	Makes list of own ideas based on personal experiences and discussion with others for an open-ended task.	Generates own options demonstrating symbolic thinking, considering personal experience, looking at models, and conducting initial research.	Builds upon self-generated options by developing a deeper understanding of content, and considering different purposes such as to invent, to entertain, to solve problems or to communicate something new.	Represents a variety of important ideas referencing a wide variety of sources, evaluates whether ideas are plausible, can be combined to enhance originality, to challenge existing boundaries, and to consider in detail how well ideas solve problems, communicate or entertain.
Approaches	Creates own outline of steps which plays with different ideas to lead to a product for a personally identified audience and a given purpose.	Designs a process for making a product, which outlines steps, names a target audience, and states a clear purpose.	Forms process for turning imaginative ideas into a reality pursuing specific audience and purpose, creating iterations of the product.	Shapes original ideas moving imaginatively from ideas to reality around a clear purpose into a coordinated plan to produce draft versions or trial runs that receive feedback and allow for revision prior to construction of final product.
Innovations, solutions, understandings, perspectives	Makes a product, process, resolution or concept that is interesting, new or helpful.	Crafts a product, process, resolution or concept that is interesting, new, or helpful, that may break from convention and still serves its intended purpose.	Creates a product, process, resolution, or concept that shares something that uses ingenuity, imagination, or visually engaging.	Shares viewpoint through product showing new ways of thinking, revealing hidden patterns, making connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and/or generating resolutions that engage the target audience.

Critical Thinking – 6-8

Critical thinking is generating questions, evaluating information and arguments, making connections, identifying patterns, reasoning, constructing knowledge and applying it to solve problems in the real world. 

	Novice	Basic	Proficient	Advanced
Generating questions	Develops a set of questions to be used to conduct an inquiry into a problem, investigation, or challenge.	Formulates specific and relevant questions to clarify and guide an inquiry into a problem, investigation, or challenge.	Determines a set of questions after building background knowledge to reveal important aspects for an inquiry into a problem, investigation, or challenge.	Refines an initial set of questions based on research to determine the essential question that will guide an inquiry into a problem, investigation, or challenge.
Evaluating information and arguments	Gathers information from a variety of sources decides whether information is trustworthy, relevant and useful.	Evaluates information and arguments from different types of sources to determine if evidence is useful, from a credible source, and arguments are well supported.	Establishes appropriate criteria to evaluate information and arguments, considers different perspectives, decides whether information is trustworthy, relevant and useful, and identifies strengths and weaknesses of different arguments.	Interprets and evaluates the sources of evidence, the accuracy and relevance of information, the strengths of arguments, interprets significance, and clarifies meaning taking into account the complexity of the challenge, issue, or problem.
Making connections and identifying patterns	Determines general categories to organize information and identifies patterns, relationships, similarities, and/or differences.	Categorizes information in a problem, investigation, or challenge to organize evidence for comparison, classification, and identifying patterns.	Reorganizes information to work through different ways to view evidence in a problem, investigation, or challenge to convey different perspectives and solutions.	Prioritizes evidence, ideas, questions, and issues and recognizes or creates patterns and relationships across disciplines to define a problem, investigation, or challenge.
Reasoning and constructing knowledge	Interprets gathered ideas, data, information and evidence to build knowledge.	Draws conclusions from gathered ideas, data, information and evidence to build knowledge.	Revises existing and creates new knowledge based on an evaluation of arguments, data, information, and evidence.	Deepens knowledge, drawing logical conclusions through research, examination of multiple perspectives and disciplines, and evaluation of arguments, data, information, and evidence.
Problem solving and applying it in the real world	Proposes possible solutions to an authentic problem and compares the effectiveness of different solutions to a problem.	Identifies an authentic problem, proposes approaches or solutions, explains potential impact, and takes action.	Investigates an authentic problem, proposes approaches or solutions based on research, explains potential impact, takes action, and evaluates effectiveness.	Conducts research into an authentic problem, analyzes multiple approaches or solutions, articulates the advantages of different options, and evaluates the effectiveness of determined action.

Growth Mindset – 6-8

Growth Mindset is working through challenges showing tenacity, perseverance, resilience, self-regulation and self-advocacy.

	Novice	Basic	Proficient	Advanced
Tenacity, perseverance, and resilience	Identifies a strategy or activity from a list to help face a challenge in learning something new and is able to look at a situation differently.	Attempts different strategies when facing a challenge in learning, maintains composure when frustrated, and continues with a focused effort to try other options when facing setbacks.	Takes on challenging tasks selecting strategies that have been most effective in the past or investigating new strategies, which involve deliberate practice.	Approaches challenging tasks by experimenting with strategies including taking risks, using skilled peers and expert feedback; drawing on learning from other disciplines, and external resources to deepen learning.
Self-Regulation	Identifies the task goal, plans actions steps, sustains attention to steps and reflects on progress.	Outlines a plan to reach a goal, tracks progress, maintains attention and effort to reach goal, and uses feedback and self-reflection to improve learning.	Sets a short-term goal, creates and carries out a plan with clearly defined action steps, monitors progress toward achieving goal, and adjusts plan as needed and seeks feedback and self-reflection to improve learning.	Determines learning goal, designs concrete plan based on review of evidence including review of past performance, self-reflection, and consultation; implements plan and evaluates success.
Self-Advocacy	Uses self-assessment to meet learning needs by removing distractions, strengthening study skills, accessing provided resources, and requesting support as needed.	Applies learning from self-assessment to be more proactive including seeking extra learning sessions, continuously asking clarifying questions and identifying needed resources.	Describes how individual strengths, challenges, preparation and actions connect to outcomes, identifies learning target, a problem-solving process and the resources that could be accessed to improve circumstances.	Employs strategies that a ssess what is needed, takes inventory of accessible resources, determines desired outcomes, plans steps to take, gathers information, makes connections, and acts on advice or information gathered to make improvements or solve problems.

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