All About Rubrics (Page 2 of 5)

What are the features of a rubric?

• Rubrics should identify learning criteria. Usually, effective rubrics feature 3 - 7 criteria. Rubrics that list many learning criteria are hard to manage; and those that list too few often don't provide enough information about what the students' should be learning or attending to.
  

  
  

• Rubrics should identify descriptions for levels of excellent, satisfactory, and problematic work at each learning criterion.

  
  

• Numbers rather than terms like "excellent" or "poor" quality usually denote the levels of quality. Creating informative labels can be elusive for teachers, and unclear labels can be misleading to students. Using numbers clearly indicates that students should avoid doing things that warrant low numbers, and should exhibit or produce the things described under the high numbers.

  
  

• Effective rubrics usually feature four separate levels of quality. Having four levels provides more information for students and provides greater distinctions than three columns. Students using three-column rubrics tend to score themselves (or other students) in the middle category.

  
  

• Rubrics describe the concrete problems and trouble spots that students will encounter in the lesson and/or in their learning. Uninformative rubrics tend to either describe mistakes students don't recognize, or they describe the levels of quality vaguely so students aren't clear about what the description means. For instance, quality statements described as "boring" or "poorly organized" are subjective and don't inform students about what exactly the problems or weakness may be in the work. A more informative description for "boring" work on an essay for instance might be, "Lacks sentence variety, overuse of passive voice, weak verb usage."

  
  

• Effective rubrics often identify thinking skills as one (or more) of the learning criteria. Thinking critically deepens students understanding of the lesson or subject. Identifying thinking (e.g. looking for reasons, generating options, seeking alternative perspectives, along with dozens or other types of good thinking) signals students to the kinds of thinking that they need to do to achieve a deeper understanding of the lesson or topic at hand.

Next: Who are rubrics for?