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ABOUT RUBRICS

What are rubrics?

Why EVERY teacher needs rubrics

Five good reasons to use rubrics

Types of rubrics

Rubrics and quality go hand in hand. Here's how. . .

Why quality matters

Rubrics and the Quality Process

What are rubrics?

Rubrics are both a tool and a method for communicating expectations. A rubric describes exactly what is expected in completing a task or producing a productthings such as, writing a letter, making a bed, programming a VCR, baking a cake, and so forth.

In school, rubrics are sometimes referred to as grading sheets, project guides, or cover pages. They tell students how they will be graded on an assignmentboth what items will be graded and what level of quality is required to earn a particular grade. And because they define all this up front, rubrics make a teacher's job of grading assignments much easier. Plus, they give students the guidance they need as they complete the assignment.

EVERY teacher needs rubrics. Here's why:

When you give an assignment, students are far more likely to meet your expectations IF YOU TELL THEM UP FRONT WHAT YOUR EXPECTATIONS ARE! It sounds simple enough, but many teachers miss this step, leaving students to guess at what they are supposed to produce, or what level of work will result in a particular grade. Rubrics are the tool to use to make clear what you expect from your students.

Five Good Reasons to Use Rubrics

1. Rubrics make grading more clear, consistent, and equitable.

Clarity comes from stating up front on the rubric what is to be evaluated. Consistency is gained by providing this information to all students via the rubric and then using that rubric to grade each student's work. Equity is gained when every student knows what is expected and is given the information they need to succeed. Success or failure then becomes less an arbitrary judgement by the teacher and more a responsible choice on the part of the student.

With a well-designed rubric in hand, students no longer wonder "Is this good enough?" They'll know the answer. Furthermore, once your students grow accustomed to using rubrics, they'll often know what grade they will be receiving on an assignment BEFORE THEY TURN IT IN!

2. Rubrics raise the quality of work students produce.

A good rubric gives students a clear picture of what the end result should look like and what range of quality is acceptable for a given task. Armed with these images, students are more eager and more able to produce a quality product.

3. Rubrics save teachers time.

Grading an assignment using a rubric is much less time-consuming since the rubric spells out very clearly what to look for and how to rate it. Plus, if your students have had the rubric in hand as they worked on the assignment, they will be turning in better quality and more easily gradable work.

4. Rubrics save classroom time.

Rubrics give students the information they need to start an assignment, information that you would otherwise have to convey verbally, thus freeing you to move on to other material.

5. Rubrics save students time.

When a teacher provides a rubric at the time an assignment is given, students immediately know what is expected of them. They spend more of their time and energy on the tasks at hand and less on trying to figure out what the teacher wants.

Types of rubrics

Although there are thousands of variations, rubrics can generally be sorted into one of two groups: holistic rubrics and list rubrics.

Types of holistic rubrics include

• Grid rubrics,
• Mixed-criteria rubrics, and
• Open-column rubrics.

Types of list rubrics include

• Checklists,
• Combination rubrics, and
• Total points rubrics.

About Holistic Rubrics

Holistic rubrics, so-named because they focus on the whole or the big picture, provide students with one scoretheir "whole" scorefor an assignment. They generally appear in a grid-like format.

Strengths

Holistic rubrics are most effectively used as end-of-the-year or end-of-a-unit measures to determine how well students learned the "whole".

Weaknesses

While holistic rubrics evaluate a student's overall performance, their design limits their ability to provide detailed feedback on a student's specific strengths and weaknesses

Types of holistic rubrics include

• Grid rubrics,
• Mixed-criteria rubrics, and
• Open-column rubrics.

About List Rubrics

List rubrics, as the name implies, are a detailed listing, often in outline form, of what is important or what should be included in completing a task, project, or performance.

Strengths

Since list rubrics are designed to clearly display expectations and procedures, they are generally more student-friendly than holistic rubrics. Because they can provide a wealth of feedback, they are excellent for communicating with students and their parents on a regular basis.

Weaknesses

Because list rubrics focus on the details, it's easy to forget or ignore the holistic accomplishments of students. As a result, students may fail to understand what they have accomplished, what progress they have made, or even how good their work is.

Types of list rubrics include

• Checklists,
• Combination rubrics, and
• Total points rubrics.

Rubrics and quality go hand in hand. Here's how:

Few people can produce quality right out of the gate. Most of us need to be given some guidelines—to hear examples, or to be shown models at varying levels of quality in order to compare one to another, or to practice the task a few times and get feedback—in order to develop a sense of what constitutes "quality". So when you assign students a particular task, you are far more likely to get quality work from them by providing these things.

A rubric is the perfect tool for communicating this kind of information. A rubric provides two key pieces of information to the student:

• "What is quality?" Or rather, in student terms, "On what will I be graded?" The rubric lists the specific attributes that the work must have in order to receive a particular grade.
• "How do I produce quality?" By detailing the steps that students are expected to follow, the rubric acts as a guide to producing a quality end-product.

If you want your students producing higher quality work, rubrics are one of the best tools to get them there.

Why quality matters

Students don't always understand the importance of quality, and often try to get by with an attitude of "it's good enough." But when you hold your students accountable and demand quality of them, you gradually increase their understanding of, appreciation for, and ability to regularly produce quality. And students who have learned the value of doing quality work gain many long-lasting benefits:

• Greater self-confidence. Learning to produce quality work is the best, most lasting route to enhancing a child's self-confidence and self-esteem.
• A higher level of overall competence and a lengthy list of personal accomplishments.
• Greater persistence in working through frustrating situations. When students know that feeling of triumphing over a task, they are more willing to sweat through the trouble spots.
• A mature response to constructive criticism. Students learn why outside criticism is important and how to use it to their advantage.
• Greater motivation. Students who know what it feels like to regularly succeed crave that feeling and work harder to achieve it.
• The ability and the ambition to reach their full potential.

Rubrics and the Quality Process

Rubrics are the perfect tool for teaching the Quality Process—draft-analyze-revise. With a rubric in hand that spells out what is expected, students are able to produce a much higher quality first draft. Then, the rubric becomes THE tool against which the draft is evaluated by either the student (doing a self-analysis), a peer, or the teacher. The feedback provided on the rubric then drives the student's revision of the product, until it meets a higher level of quality.

After using rubrics for a time, your students will have developed some invaluable habits.

• Students will be able to define quality and describe a quality result
• Students will enjoy producing a quality product
• Students will possess the skills necessary to produce quality

Ultimately, your students will have developed an innate sense of what is quality, and with that sense, comes an internal drive toward producing quality in everything they do. Having that skill will put them ahead of the pack, increasing both opportunity and success. That extra advantage will follow them throughout school and on into adulthood where they will benefit both on the job and in their personal lives.