Process Over Product II

One of my favorite early-year activities is to create rubrics with my students. While there are plenty of pre-published rubrics available, I find that they are primarily written for teachers and not students. For example, here is the Pennsylvania Writing Assessment - well meaning, but not particularly well written.

When students are involved in the creation of a rubric, I find that they are better able to understand and apply it. It is a process that is certainly worthy of the time investment needed to complete it.

This past week, both classes created a rubric for answering questions, such as the type typically found at the end of a textbook chapter. First, they wrote answers (anonymously) to two sample questions. Next, I selected five responses for each question and displayed them on-screen to the class. We thoroughly critiqued them and created a list of qualities we look for in an answer - this list was able to be collapsed into three general categories. Then, referring back to the examples, we created a four-point range of criteria from Great to Poor to complete the rubric. I typed and printed it and distributed them to the class (two copies per student - one for the language arts binder and one for the social studies binder).

Now the rubrics are ready for self-evaluation as well as for teacher evaluation. I am happy with the product, but I see the real value coming from the fact that the students created them from the ground up. They will have a sharper sense of what to look for in their writing and better understand what I am grading them on. Had I simply handed them a rubric, their investment level would be much lower.

It is a great process, and can be adapted to create rubrics for any task.