In the ninth grade, my two humanities teachers introduced our class to rubrics. I might have understood a little bit at the time, but not fully. It wasn't until I was using rubrics to grade in my open classroom almost ten years later that I understood rubrics. And even then, it was still another couple years before I felt comfortable writing my own. By the time I left teaching to have my first child, I wrote my own rubrics for everything. In fact, I would have preferred to simply send home a rubric each quarter than a numerical score.
What is a rubric?
A rubric is an assessment tool. In actuality, it is a chart with standards typically down the first column and scores across the top row. The individual boxes contain text that describes student work.
Why use rubrics?
I love rubrics for a few reasons.
How to create a rubric:
First, you must decided what skills or knowledge you are assessing. As you choose, remember to ask yourself, how will I know the student has meet this standard? You'll need to have documented evidence.
EX. I can't choose appreciation of the writing process. How will I see that the students appreciate it? But I can assess use of the writing process to improve writing.
Next, I start by writing a description of what meets the standard. Ask yourself, what exactly do I want my students to know or be able to do?
EX. Student uses revision to improve writing as seen through additions, removals, substitutions, and / or reorganizing text.
From there, describe what is above and beyond (4), what is almost there (2), and what needs lots of work (1). Depending on your content, using Bloom's taxonomy may be helpful at this stage.
EX.
4 - Student revision greatly improves writing (i.e. idea development, clarity, organization, etc). Student uses additions, removals, substitutions, and reorganizing text effectively to create meaningful changes. Student may experiment with various techniques on the same passage to choose the best outcome.
3 - Student uses revision to improve writing (i.e. idea development, clarity, organization, etc). as seen through additions, removals, substitutions, and / or reorganizing text.
2 - Student uses at least one revision technique (additions, removals, substitutions, and / or reorganizing text). Some improvement to writing (i.e. idea development, clarity, organization, etc) results, but mostly revision outcomes match original draft. Student may only use one technique, but use it frequently and effectively.
1 - Student does not use revision techniques (additions, removals, substitutions, and / or reorganizing text) to create meaningful change. Only surfaces changes evident.
Could I even be more specific? Yes, I could say how many times I want to see each technique used. Or, I could say how many places must be improved to achieve each score. I have left this undefined to give me some room to work. Sometimes a student will do amazing work, but if a rubric is too strict, there is no room for it to score high. Even with the wiggle room, my objective is achieved. Students know I want to see meaningful change, not just editing or change for change's sake. And students know the four techniques I am looking for on their drafts. Students also have an idea of what their revision should improve. When I grade, these statements will help me focus. And when I plan, I know what material I needs instruction and practice time.
I also include zero (or N/A) on my rubrics. I use zero for when no evidence of a skill is present. There is a difference between a student who tried, but really didn't get it, and one who completely skipped over part of an assignment. I started to include zero mostly because of grading policies, so see more about this below.
EX
0 - No evidence of revision. Most changes from draft are editing (i.e. spelling, grammar, formatting, etc). Student may not have turned any work except a final draft.
Translating a rubric score into a traditional score:
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| A humorous rubric. |
What is a rubric?
A rubric is an assessment tool. In actuality, it is a chart with standards typically down the first column and scores across the top row. The individual boxes contain text that describes student work.
Why use rubrics?
I love rubrics for a few reasons.
- Fairness. A well written rubric leaves little room for you to accidentally be swayed by your personal knowledge about a student as your grade. It also covers you from students accusing you of such behavior.
- Easy to use. Once you are used to them, it is easy to circle the descriptors that match the work and then calculate the score.
- Focus correction areas, Rubrics help teachers focus on specific skills while grading. It can be overwhelming to grade a project since there are so many factors at play. A rubric forces focus on just the areas listed on the rubric. For me, this is a huge time saver when grading.
- Transparency. You can give students a rubric right on the day the work is assigned leaving no guesses about how they will be graded.
- Great planning tool. Writing the rubric as I create the assignment forces me to make sure I keep up my end. Rubrics help me keep the end result in mind as I plan how to use our class time.
- Self Assessment. Rubrics provide great opportunity for students to assess themselves. This could occur at the end of a project when students score themselves. Yet, even more potent, students can assess their progress frequently along the way to the final assessment.
How to create a rubric:
First, you must decided what skills or knowledge you are assessing. As you choose, remember to ask yourself, how will I know the student has meet this standard? You'll need to have documented evidence.
EX. I can't choose appreciation of the writing process. How will I see that the students appreciate it? But I can assess use of the writing process to improve writing.
Next, I start by writing a description of what meets the standard. Ask yourself, what exactly do I want my students to know or be able to do?
EX. Student uses revision to improve writing as seen through additions, removals, substitutions, and / or reorganizing text.
From there, describe what is above and beyond (4), what is almost there (2), and what needs lots of work (1). Depending on your content, using Bloom's taxonomy may be helpful at this stage.
EX.
4 - Student revision greatly improves writing (i.e. idea development, clarity, organization, etc). Student uses additions, removals, substitutions, and reorganizing text effectively to create meaningful changes. Student may experiment with various techniques on the same passage to choose the best outcome.
3 - Student uses revision to improve writing (i.e. idea development, clarity, organization, etc). as seen through additions, removals, substitutions, and / or reorganizing text.
2 - Student uses at least one revision technique (additions, removals, substitutions, and / or reorganizing text). Some improvement to writing (i.e. idea development, clarity, organization, etc) results, but mostly revision outcomes match original draft. Student may only use one technique, but use it frequently and effectively.
1 - Student does not use revision techniques (additions, removals, substitutions, and / or reorganizing text) to create meaningful change. Only surfaces changes evident.
Could I even be more specific? Yes, I could say how many times I want to see each technique used. Or, I could say how many places must be improved to achieve each score. I have left this undefined to give me some room to work. Sometimes a student will do amazing work, but if a rubric is too strict, there is no room for it to score high. Even with the wiggle room, my objective is achieved. Students know I want to see meaningful change, not just editing or change for change's sake. And students know the four techniques I am looking for on their drafts. Students also have an idea of what their revision should improve. When I grade, these statements will help me focus. And when I plan, I know what material I needs instruction and practice time.
I also include zero (or N/A) on my rubrics. I use zero for when no evidence of a skill is present. There is a difference between a student who tried, but really didn't get it, and one who completely skipped over part of an assignment. I started to include zero mostly because of grading policies, so see more about this below.
EX
0 - No evidence of revision. Most changes from draft are editing (i.e. spelling, grammar, formatting, etc). Student may not have turned any work except a final draft.
Translating a rubric score into a traditional score:
Students and parents are not usually satisfied with a 1-4 score. They want to know if the work earned an A or a C. Rubric scores do not translate easily into traditional letter grades.
The first approach a lot of students and parents take is to look at the rubric like a spelling test. They say, for example, "Well, there are four standards and you can get four points on each, which equally 16." Sounds good, until you divide out what meeting the standard gets for a score. 12/16=75%. Depending on where you teach, that could be a solid C or it could be a D. And, of course, that makes no sense. A student who has done exactly what you asked should not earn a D, and most would also agree not a C (though some folks do hold on to the notion that C is average). So, just a traditional average doesn't work.
You might think, well 4=A, 3=B, 2=C, and 1=D. It looks pretty good -- but a student has to have a perfect 4 to get an A. I rarely got perfect assignments, even from my most excellent students.
My first step to the solution was to give partial credit. Often, a piece of work fits descriptors from different boxes. So, I highlighted what matched and averaged it. So a student might get a 2.5 or a 3.3 on a standard. The highlighting on the rubric would show the student exactly why to provide specific feedback and transparency. Using my example above, maybe a student's overall essay had meaningful change, but that student really showed evidence of hard work on the introduction. That student ripped it apart and rewrote it many times using all the techniques, and the end result was tremendous change. I would give that student a 3.5 for that standard.
I never limited myself to just 1, 2, 3, and 4 for a final score. I averaged the scores of the individual standards.
EX
Prewriting and drafting - 3
Revision - 3.5
Idea development - 3
Citations - 4
Average - 3.4
But now how do you decide what score goes with these averages? What traditional score corresponds to a 3.4 rubric average?
A fellow teacher in my department had a math major friend help her create a conversion chart. In the end, it turns out it was easy to remember. Multiply by ten (or move the decimal point one place to the right) and add 60. 3.4=94. Most places that is a low A. And since this student exceeded the standard in a few places, that seems right to me.
Now, where I ran into problems was the low scores. Students realized that if they just turned in something, anything, they would score all ones. 1 x 10 + 60 = 70. Where I was teaching, a 70 was the lowest passing grade. A full 70 points higher than if they did nothing. Well, let me tell you, a 70 versus a zero averaged into the grade book makes a huge difference. Does a student who just turned in a crumpled, half finished draft deserve a 70?
I wasn't okay with this. Here some students were doing the work and struggling to receive a passing score and others made it into a mockery. So, I added the zero. Now when averaged, you could score below a one and thus fail. However, I made sure that my zero descriptors were for students who deserved them. This box was for students who did not do the assignment correctly at all, such as being completely off topic or showing no evidence of the skills being scored.
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