Rubrics

I love rubrics! I think they take the guess work out of grading and make it easy to see if work is on grade level or not. The most important thing about rubrics, is to use them correctly. :) In our school, we (teachers and the reading coach) create them together for our assignments. I used to create them for the teachers. But, this creates two problems. The first one is teachers didn't value the importance of the rubric and/or understand the need for them. The second problem is that many times they didn't understand each of the criteria or the "what counts" in the assignment. Unfortunately, what was to be graded was not stressed ahead of time. The next mistake I have found is that teachers typically use rubrics strictly as a grading tool. This is a good practice, but to get the most bang for your buck, you should introduce them to your students before allowing them to work on the assignment. Walk your students through the rubric and then have them goal set. Ask your students what kind of grade would they like to receive and have them mark off each quadrant of your rubric so they are clear as to what it takes to earn that grade. Then, let them start working on the assignment. Once the time frame of the assignment is reached, let students check their own work using the rubric and then have them peer assess each other. After, allow students to improve their work before turning it in. Rubrics are meant to be used as a formative assessment and not just as a grading tool. Only after students have been given the opportunity to correct anything they missed, should you use the same rubric to assign the students a grade. And finally, I always ask teachers to attach the rubric next to the student's work on your bulletin boards. This shows your students that their grades are not subjective. It also allows students to hold themselves accountable. And because we have grown to value rubrics, we started using them during common planning to review our interactive journals each quarter. Here is one we've used.