A New Way to Write a Rubric

Rubrics are wonderful and relatively new to classroom practice. If you are not an educator, a rubric is like a performance evaluation you receive on the job.  It makes a somewhat abstract scoring principle more tangible.

Rubrics are not at all appropriate for every classroom assessment.  If you are looking to figure out if a child knows and understands his/her times tables or letter sounds, stick to checklists, observations and anecdotes.  However,  if you want to put a score a project-based learning activity or culmination of a unit of study that students have put their hearts into for weeks, a rubric is the way to go.

Because rubrics are time-consuming and subjective, involving the students in the process of creating one makes the process more meaningful, increasing the depths of understanding and expectations, allowing for better results.

Co-creating a rubric with students is by no means a new idea, but I just had an idea for adding a new twist to co-creating a rubric.  

When I co-wrote a rubric with a class,  I begin with the standard as the  "3- Meeting Expectations."   (The Common Core State Standards are the minimal student expectations adopted by the majority of the United States addressing literacy and math outcomes and serve as the base expectations.) Sometimes, it was necessary to make the language a little more kid-friendly or to provide more specifics for what the expectation looked like, but the standard remained the minimal student expectation, or the "3." Together as a class, we would then fill in the "4- Exceeding Expectations" and then digress to filling in the "2- Approaching Expectations" and the "1- Below Expectations."

Pictured is a starting point for a project-based, cross-curricular study using Sixth Grade ELA Standards addressing research and presentation.  (This rubric could easily be extended to include science or social studies content as a final project evaluation.)

Last night, it just occurred to me that I am on a mission to see to it all students achieve beyond expectations.

Filling in that 4 is too limiting to a classroom of eager young minds!

I'm not out as an educator to have kids inch above what the state expects.

I am out to enable kids to blow away the expectations.

A New Way to Write a Rubric -Encouraging Students to Achieve Beyond Expectations

So, if I were in the classroom, I would still begin an investigative unit or project based lesson with a co-created rubric. However, I would only co-create the "3" "2" and "1." I wouldn't touch that "4" column again.

The "4" would be blank and I would let students know they were allowed to fill in those boxes if the work exceeded the standard expectations.  It would be the Blast Off Boxes, the Blow-Me-Away Boxes, or maybe just the "Beyond Expectations" box.

Then, upon completion of the study, when students went to the self-assessment,  I would ask they circle the "3," "2" or "1"  by row.  

Or, hopefully, the "4-Exceeding Expectations" is circled instead, and the box is filled in by the individual or small group describing  how expectations were exceeded.

Since I am not in the classroom at the moment, I invite someone who is to give this "new way to write a rubric" a try and report back.  Did students blow away your expectations?  I hope so.