How to assess the "Communities: Lifelong Learning" standard?

I love the Communities: Lifelong Learning standard, but how to assess it has always been tricky for me.

I (and many others, like Laura Sexton most recently) have blogged about "choice homework". In my classes, I call it "Tarea Semanal" it has gone through many variations, particularly in how I grade it and what percentage of my students' overall grade it counts for. First semester of this year I will be teaching Cultura y Civilización (Spanish 4/5/+) and Spanish 3, and both of those classes will do Tarea Semanal.

For my Cultura y Civilización class, I am thinking about using a Standards Based Grading approach. In my district, we have true Standard Based Grading in grades K-8. The report cards show each standard and they get a 1-4 for each. There are about 20+ standards on the report card. At the high school, students still get the traditional number grades, but we might be moving towards a more Standards Based System. So, (I think) I am going to use these percentages in my grade book this year:

• 50% Communication (broken down into the three modes of communication)
• 30% Cultures/Comparisons/Connections
• 10% Communities
• 10% Work Habits (not a WL standard, but this is where students will be assessed with school wide rubrics on a variety of things, including: collaboration, time on task, creativity, etc.)

I know that this is not a true standard based grading approach, because if it were, there wouldn't be one grade, but rather several (possibly 11 for the standards and sub-standards)... but this is the best I can do under the system that I am working. There is so much overlap with these standards, but having these categories will make me focus on making sure that I am assessing all of them.

So, anyways, how to does Tarea Semanal fit into all of this? Tarea Semanal will be the way that I am assessing the Communities: Lifelong Learning standard and I have come up with this rubric (click here to see it) to help me assess my students. The rubric (like all rubrics!) will help in several ways: explain my expectations to my students so they can meet "exemplary" in this standard, give them more targeted feedback, and help me to give them a fair grade.

Do you use Standards Based Grading? How do you assess the Communities: Lifelong Standard?