Designing writing rubrics is a different task from making
rubrics for writing, just as designing clothes or automobiles
is different from making them.
If you are teaching writing, designing rubrics for multiple
uses and multiple users will greatly reduce your workload.
Moreover, well-designed rubrics makes learning to write easier for
students.
If you never heard of rubrics before today, perhaps you should
skim the page in which I define
rubric before you go on. The first time I heard the word rubric
used in an education context, I had no idea what the speaker was
talking about. (Bewilderment is a common classroom condition.)
Designing rubrics for multiple uses
When I talk about designing writing rubrics for multiple uses,
I'm not talking just about using the same ones year after year,
although that is is something smart teachers do to maximize return
on their energy investments.
What I really mean is designing rubrics that can each function
as:
-
Course/unit outline
-
Students' study guide
-
Writers' checklist for preparing assignments
-
Framework for individual instruction
-
Teacher's grading guide
-
Student progress report
With careful planning, you can make one writing rubric fill all
those roles.
1. Course/unit outline
If you are teaching beginning writers, it is best to teach just
one writing genre. If you limit your teaching in that way, you can
use a single writing rubric for all writing assignments for an
entire yearlong course.
The rubric should indicate in broad outline the:
-
Topics that you will teach students,
-
Relative importance of those topics,
-
Order in which you will teach them.
My rubrics contain sections for:
-
Content development
-
Writing mechanics
-
Usage and style
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Within sections, I also list items from the most important to the
least important in terms of producing a successful essay. So, for
example, having a thesis statement is the top item in my content
area, and having a conclusion is the bottom one.
2. Students' study guide
Whatever is at the top of your rubric should be the topic that's
most important for students to master in order to accomplish your
goals for the course. Whatever that topic is should be the topic
you tackle the first week of class.
3. Writers' checklist
An attempt at designing rubrics that list everything writers must
do is doomed to failure. What your rubric must do is alert writers
to the elements they must include in their writing.
If your rubric is worded carefully, students
can turn items into yes/no questions without having to have
a separate checklist.
4. Allow for individual instruction
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The writing process for a particular writing genre can be
taught to groups of students. Teaching writing elements such as
grammar and punctuation to groups is less successful: there is
too much diversity of background knowledge and too wide a range
of habitual errors.
I recommend designing rubrics that allow you to restrict your
focus to a student's most serious problem areas by "writing
in" topics for an individual student's rubrics. I recommend
the list have no more than five items.
If you are a Writing Points subscriber, you can access
on the password-protected resources page error tracking forms
that allow students to gather the data for individualized help.
If you aren't a subscriber, you can become
one.
The problem areas need not be errors. If you have students with
good grammar and punctuation skills, you can have them work on
some aspects of usage or style that are beyond the abilities of
the majority of the class.
5. Teacher's grading guide
An assessment rubric for multiple use situations should indicate
the proportion of points allocated to a rubric section.
Using percentages allows you to be consistent in your grading formula
regardless of how many points an assignment carries.
The percentages I use (70% for content, 30% for everything else)
mimics the amount of time I spend teaching those topics.
6. Student progress report
If you have a single rubric that you use as a grading guide for
all assignments in a course, it is easy for anyone looking at the
series of rubrics to see how a student is progressing.
If you have a different rubric for each assignment, you have
to create another vehicle to use as a progress report.
As you are designing
writing rubrics, use as few sections as possible to minimize problems
when you come to make the actual forms.
