Assessment rubrics need to be made before instruction begins. The best ones are clear, easy for students to use drive instruction as part of a formative assessment.
What is a rubric? It is essentially a scoring guide that is a working document meant for both students and teachers.
Harry and Rosemary Wong state in their book, The First Days of School, that “A scoring guide defines achievement so students can work for accomplishment,” (p. 268).
A rubric can take away the option to fail.
Assessment rubrics come in many forms, but there are always three things in common:
- Criteria (what it is that will be scored)
- Point values (I keep mine to 4 or less)
- Performance expectations (a description of what must be shown to achieve each point value)
All students deserve to succeed. Rubrics allow your students to know exactly how to succeed in your classroom.
Rubrics assist students towards lesson mastery, and also are an integral part of classroom management.
When students understand expectations, they will work towards achieving those and be on task.
Common Core Writing Rubrics
The implementation of the Common Core State Standards definitely calls up the need for accurate scoring guides for students and teachers to follow. The new standards are deeper and more rigorous, which is a good thing.
However, they do leave many teachers and districts wondering:
- How to fit it all in?
- I don’t have time for intense grammar instruction!
- How can I continually work on developing these skills in every writing lesson?
- And we have to be sure they convey meaning?
It doesn’t have to be scary though. It simply is a matter of knowing exactly WHAT you are to be assessing and precisely HOW you will do it. Your students need to know too.
Poster Rubrics
This is one of the poster rubrics I have hanging in my classroom.
It is an anchor chart that the students use to check their illustrations they draw to support their writing.
It is written in “kid language” that we did together.
Rubrics can be written for anything. The number of performance expectations vary according to the lesson objectives.
I also developed a simple rubric for writing. I custom ordered a stamp that has just the essential writing skills young students need to develop, including the most basic mechanics of writing.
Instead of numbers, I used the marks we give on our report cards as the parents and students all are very aware of what they mean. You can view it at the bottom of the student’s page.
This not only makes writing a snap for me to evaluate and make solid instructional decisions with, but also for my students to know what their performance objectives are.
It is also important to let students know what each score “looks like.” This is called an anchor paper, as referenced above, and it is so important for your visual learners.
“A set of anchor papers with students’ names removed can be used to illustrate to both students and parents the different levels of the scoring rubric,” (Moskal, Barbara M. (2003).