Rubrics

What is a Rubric?

Heidi Goodrich, a rubrics expert, defines a rubric as "a scoring tool that lists the criteria for a piece of work or 'what counts.'" So a rubric for a multimedia project will list the things the student must have included to receive a certain score or rating. Rubrics help the student figure out how their project will be evaluated. Goodrich quotes a student who said he didn't much care for rubrics because "if you get something wrong, your teacher can prove you knew what you were supposed to do."

Generally rubrics specify the level of performance expected for several levels of quality. These levels of quality may be written as different ratings (e.g., Excellent, Good, Needs Improvement) or as numerical scores (e.g., 4, 3, 2, 1) which are then added up to form a total score which then is associated with a grade (e.g., A, B, C, etc).

Many rubrics also specify the level of assistance (e.g., Independently, With Minimal Adult Help; With Extensive Adult Help) for each quality rating.

Rubrics can help students and teachers define "quality". Rubrics can also help students judge and revise their own work before handing in their assignments.

You will find a free tool and ideas for rubrics at Rubistar. You will find rubrics for reading, math, science, etc. Some are interactive! I know that you will love this free resource!!!

Writing Update

A summary of notes from the ELA meeting:


Teachers must continue to teach writing standards at all grade levels, not those that are tested (5^th and 8^th)).  Multiple choice items are tied to the extended response rubric.  Teaching formulaic writing negatively affects Extended Response scores and provides limited compositional experience, which negatively affects multiple choice scores.

So what do you do? Here are some ideas/links I hope will help you!

*Teach writing through reading-examine sentence structure, explore

  author’s craft, paraphrase text

*Encourage authentic writing (some links disabled) 

*Base minilessons on student writing

*Have students do plenty of responding to texts

*Voice is a statewide weakness, so encourage sentence complexity  

*Show students how multiple choice items relate to the 4 domains

  on South Carolina's extended response rubric

*Do a Read Aloud daily, pull passages from the text and have students determine the author based on sentence type, word choice, etc.

*Students need to work on writing conclusions 

*Sentence combining is still difficult for students

*Students are using inappropriate transitions-need to use logical transitions

Other links:

Composite Writing Matrix

Grammar Punk

Guide to Grammar