Completion requirements
Getting Ready for Learning
Do some pre-reflection:
- Select an example (either from your practice or another educator's) of a strong rubric. What makes it a strong rubric?
For now, just mull this question, journal about it, or discuss with a colleague.
Purpose of Rubrics
Rubrics are multidimensional sets of scoring guidelines that can be used to provide consistency in evaluating student work. They spell out scoring criteria so that multiple teachers, using the same rubric for a student's essay, for example, would arrive at the same score or grade.
Rubrics are used from the initiation to the completion of a student project. They provide a measurement system for specific tasks and are tailored to each project, so as the projects become more complex, so do the rubrics.
Rubrics are great for students: they let students know what is expected of them, and demystify grades by clearly stating, in age-appropriate vocabulary, the expectations for a project. They also help students see that learning is about gaining specific skills (both in academic subjects and in problem-solving and life skills), and they give students the opportunity to do self-assessment to reflect on the learning process.
Rubrics also help teachers authentically monitor a student's learning process and develop and revise a lesson plan. They provide a way for a student and a teacher to measure the quality of a body of work. When a student's assessment of his or her work and a teacher's assessment don't agree, they can schedule a conference to let the student explain his or her understanding of the content and justify the method of presentation (Source: Edutopia, "How Do Rubrics Help?")
Going Deeper into Well-Designed Rubrics
As we've discussed, rubrics are powerful evaluative and developmental tools. A well-designed rubric can help educators ensure scoring is fair and reliable. It can also be a tool to use in collaboration with learners to help support their development. There are generally two ways to approach rubric design, either as a multi-point rubric or as a one-point rubric. A multi-point rubric designs the rubric around the description of "meeting the standard" -- i.e., it describes what success looks like. Then it extrapolates from that description to describe different levels of performance (e.g., "does not meet" or "partially meets" or "exceeds"). The one-point rubric also starts with the description of success, but instead of describing other levels it leaves space in the rubric for notes by the teacher, student, or peer-reviewer to write the ways in which the work under review does not meet, or meets, or exceeds the description of success.