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15 Helpful Scoring Rubric Examples for All Grades and Subjects

In the end, they actually make grading easier.

When it comes to student assessment and evaluation, there are a lot of methods to consider. In some cases, testing is the best way to assess a student’s knowledge, and the answers are either right or wrong. But often, assessing a student’s performance is much less clear-cut. In these situations, a scoring rubric is often the way to go, especially if you’re using standards-based grading . Here’s what you need to know about this useful tool, along with lots of rubric examples to get you started.

What is a scoring rubric?

In the United States, a rubric is a guide that lays out the performance expectations for an assignment. It helps students understand what’s required of them, and guides teachers through the evaluation process. (Note that in other countries, the term “rubric” may instead refer to the set of instructions at the beginning of an exam. To avoid confusion, some people use the term “scoring rubric” instead.)

A rubric generally has three parts:

• Performance criteria: These are the various aspects on which the assignment will be evaluated. They should align with the desired learning outcomes for the assignment.
• Rating scale: This could be a number system (often 1 to 4) or words like “exceeds expectations, meets expectations, below expectations,” etc.
• Indicators: These describe the qualities needed to earn a specific rating for each of the performance criteria. The level of detail may vary depending on the assignment and the purpose of the rubric itself.

Rubrics take more time to develop up front, but they help ensure more consistent assessment, especially when the skills being assessed are more subjective. A well-developed rubric can actually save teachers a lot of time when it comes to grading. What’s more, sharing your scoring rubric with students in advance often helps improve performance . This way, students have a clear picture of what’s expected of them and what they need to do to achieve a specific grade or performance rating.

Learn more about why and how to use a rubric here.

Types of Rubric

There are three basic rubric categories, each with its own purpose.

Holistic Rubric

Source: Cambrian College

This type of rubric combines all the scoring criteria in a single scale. They’re quick to create and use, but they have drawbacks. If a student’s work spans different levels, it can be difficult to decide which score to assign. They also make it harder to provide feedback on specific aspects.

Traditional letter grades are a type of holistic rubric. So are the popular “hamburger rubric” and “ cupcake rubric ” examples. Learn more about holistic rubrics here.

Analytic Rubric

Source: University of Nebraska

Analytic rubrics are much more complex and generally take a great deal more time up front to design. They include specific details of the expected learning outcomes, and descriptions of what criteria are required to meet various performance ratings in each. Each rating is assigned a point value, and the total number of points earned determines the overall grade for the assignment.

Though they’re more time-intensive to create, analytic rubrics actually save time while grading. Teachers can simply circle or highlight any relevant phrases in each rating, and add a comment or two if needed. They also help ensure consistency in grading, and make it much easier for students to understand what’s expected of them.

Learn more about analytic rubrics here.

Developmental Rubric

Source: Deb’s Data Digest

A developmental rubric is a type of analytic rubric, but it’s used to assess progress along the way rather than determining a final score on an assignment. The details in these rubrics help students understand their achievements, as well as highlight the specific skills they still need to improve.

Developmental rubrics are essentially a subset of analytic rubrics. They leave off the point values, though, and focus instead on giving feedback using the criteria and indicators of performance.

Learn how to use developmental rubrics here.

Ready to create your own rubrics? Find general tips on designing rubrics here. Then, check out these examples across all grades and subjects to inspire you.

Elementary School Rubric Examples

These elementary school rubric examples come from real teachers who use them with their students. Adapt them to fit your needs and grade level.

Reading Fluency Rubric

You can use this one as an analytic rubric by counting up points to earn a final score, or just to provide developmental feedback. There’s a second rubric page available specifically to assess prosody (reading with expression).

Learn more: Teacher Thrive

Reading Comprehension Rubric

The nice thing about this rubric is that you can use it at any grade level, for any text. If you like this style, you can get a reading fluency rubric here too.

Learn more: Pawprints Resource Center

Written Response Rubric

Rubrics aren’t just for huge projects. They can also help kids work on very specific skills, like this one for improving written responses on assessments.

Learn more: Dianna Radcliffe: Teaching Upper Elementary and More

Interactive Notebook Rubric

If you use interactive notebooks as a learning tool , this rubric can help kids stay on track and meet your expectations.

Learn more: Classroom Nook

Project Rubric

Use this simple rubric as it is, or tweak it to include more specific indicators for the project you have in mind.

Learn more: Tales of a Title One Teacher

Behavior Rubric

Developmental rubrics are perfect for assessing behavior and helping students identify opportunities for improvement. Send these home regularly to keep parents in the loop.

Learn more: Teachers.net Gazette

Middle School Rubric Examples

In middle school, use rubrics to offer detailed feedback on projects, presentations, and more. Be sure to share them with students in advance, and encourage them to use them as they work so they’ll know if they’re meeting expectations.

Argumentative Writing Rubric

Argumentative writing is a part of language arts, social studies, science, and more. That makes this rubric especially useful.

Learn more: Dr. Caitlyn Tucker

Role-Play Rubric

Role-plays can be really useful when teaching social and critical thinking skills, but it’s hard to assess them. Try a rubric like this one to evaluate and provide useful feedback.

Learn more: A Question of Influence

Art Project Rubric

Art is one of those subjects where grading can feel very subjective. Bring some objectivity to the process with a rubric like this.

Source: Art Ed Guru

Diorama Project Rubric

You can use diorama projects in almost any subject, and they’re a great chance to encourage creativity. Simplify the grading process and help kids know how to make their projects shine with this scoring rubric.

Learn more: Historyourstory.com

Oral Presentation Rubric

Rubrics are terrific for grading presentations, since you can include a variety of skills and other criteria. Consider letting students use a rubric like this to offer peer feedback too.

Learn more: Bright Hub Education

High School Rubric Examples

In high school, it’s important to include your grading rubrics when you give assignments like presentations, research projects, or essays. Kids who go on to college will definitely encounter rubrics, so helping them become familiar with them now will help in the future.

Presentation Rubric

Analyze a student’s presentation both for content and communication skills with a rubric like this one. If needed, create a separate one for content knowledge with even more criteria and indicators.

Learn more: Michael A. Pena Jr.

Debate Rubric

Debate is a valuable learning tool that encourages critical thinking and oral communication skills. This rubric can help you assess those skills objectively.

Learn more: Education World

Project-Based Learning Rubric

Implementing project-based learning can be time-intensive, but the payoffs are worth it. Try this rubric to make student expectations clear and end-of-project assessment easier.

Learn more: Free Technology for Teachers

100-Point Essay Rubric

Need an easy way to convert a scoring rubric to a letter grade? This example for essay writing earns students a final score out of 100 points.

Learn more: Learn for Your Life

Drama Performance Rubric

If you’re unsure how to grade a student’s participation and performance in drama class, consider this example. It offers lots of objective criteria and indicators to evaluate.

Learn more: Chase March

How do you use rubrics in your classroom? Come share your thoughts and exchange ideas in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, 25 of the best alternative assessment ideas ..

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Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Fall 2022)
• Workshop Registration

Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

	Above Average (4)	Sufficient (3)	Developing (2)	Needs improvement (1)
(Thesis supported by relevant information and ideas	The central purpose of the student work is clear and supporting ideas always are always well-focused. Details are relevant, enrich the work.	The central purpose of the student work is clear and ideas are almost always focused in a way that supports the thesis. Relevant details illustrate the author’s ideas.	The central purpose of the student work is identified. Ideas are mostly focused in a way that supports the thesis.	The purpose of the student work is not well-defined. A number of central ideas do not support the thesis. Thoughts appear disconnected.
(Sequencing of elements/ ideas)	Information and ideas are presented in a logical sequence which flows naturally and is engaging to the audience.	Information and ideas are presented in a logical sequence which is followed by the reader with little or no difficulty.	Information and ideas are presented in an order that the audience can mostly follow.	Information and ideas are poorly sequenced. The audience has difficulty following the thread of thought.
(Correctness of grammar and spelling)	Minimal to no distracting errors in grammar and spelling.	The readability of the work is only slightly interrupted by spelling and/or grammatical errors.	Grammatical and/or spelling errors distract from the work.	The readability of the work is seriously hampered by spelling and/or grammatical errors.

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper

The audience is able to easily identify the central message of the work and is engaged by the paper’s clear focus and relevant details. Information is presented logically and naturally. There are minimal to no distracting errors in grammar and spelling. : The audience is easily able to identify the focus of the student work which is supported by relevant ideas and supporting details. Information is presented in a logical manner that is easily followed. The readability of the work is only slightly interrupted by errors. : The audience can identify the central purpose of the student work without little difficulty and supporting ideas are present and clear. The information is presented in an orderly fashion that can be followed with little difficulty. Grammatical and spelling errors distract from the work. : The audience cannot clearly or easily identify the central ideas or purpose of the student work. Information is presented in a disorganized fashion causing the audience to have difficulty following the author’s ideas. The readability of the work is seriously hampered by errors.

Single-Point Rubric

Advanced (evidence of exceeding standards)	Criteria described a proficient level	Concerns (things that need work)
	Criteria #1: Description reflecting achievement of proficient level of performance
	Criteria #2: Description reflecting achievement of proficient level of performance
	Criteria #3: Description reflecting achievement of proficient level of performance
	Criteria #4: Description reflecting achievement of proficient level of performance
90-100 points	80-90 points	<80 points

More examples:

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

How to Use Rubrics

A rubric is a document that describes the criteria by which students’ assignments are graded. Rubrics can be helpful for:

• Making grading faster and more consistent (reducing potential bias). 
• Communicating your expectations for an assignment to students before they begin. 

Moreover, for assignments whose criteria are more subjective, the process of creating a rubric and articulating what it looks like to succeed at an assignment provides an opportunity to check for alignment with the intended learning outcomes and modify the assignment prompt, as needed.

Why rubrics?

Rubrics are best for assignments or projects that require evaluation on multiple dimensions. Creating a rubric makes the instructor’s standards explicit to both students and other teaching staff for the class, showing students how to meet expectations.

Additionally, the more comprehensive a rubric is, the more it allows for grading to be streamlined—students will get informative feedback about their performance from the rubric, even if they don’t have as many individualized comments. Grading can be more standardized and efficient across graders.

Finally, rubrics allow for reflection, as the instructor has to think about their standards and outcomes for the students. Using rubrics can help with self-directed learning in students as well, especially if rubrics are used to review students’ own work or their peers’, or if students are involved in creating the rubric.

How to design a rubric

1. consider the desired learning outcomes.

What learning outcomes is this assignment reinforcing and assessing? If the learning outcome seems “fuzzy,” iterate on the outcome by thinking about the expected student work product. This may help you more clearly articulate the learning outcome in a way that is measurable.  

2. Define criteria

What does a successful assignment submission look like? As described by Allen and Tanner (2006), it can help develop an initial list of categories that the student should demonstrate proficiency in by completing the assignment. These categories should correlate with the intended learning outcomes you identified in Step 1, although they may be more granular in some cases. For example, if the task assesses students’ ability to formulate an effective communication strategy, what components of their communication strategy will you be looking for? Talking with colleagues or looking at existing rubrics for similar tasks may give you ideas for categories to consider for evaluation.

If you have assigned this task to students before and have samples of student work, it can help create a qualitative observation guide. This is described in Linda Suskie’s book Assessing Student Learning , where she suggests thinking about what made you decide to give one assignment an A and another a C, as well as taking notes when grading assignments and looking for common patterns. The often repeated themes that you comment on may show what your goals and expectations for students are. An example of an observation guide used to take notes on predetermined areas of an assignment is shown here .

In summary, consider the following list of questions when defining criteria for a rubric (O’Reilly and Cyr, 2006):

• What do you want students to learn from the task?
• How will students demonstrate that they have learned?
• What knowledge, skills, and behaviors are required for the task?
• What steps are required for the task?
• What are the characteristics of the final product?

After developing an initial list of criteria, prioritize the most important skills you want to target and eliminate unessential criteria or combine similar skills into one group. Most rubrics have between 3 and 8 criteria. Rubrics that are too lengthy make it difficult to grade and challenging for students to understand the key skills they need to achieve for the given assignment. 

3. Create the rating scale

According to Suskie, you will want at least 3 performance levels: for adequate and inadequate performance, at the minimum, and an exemplary level to motivate students to strive for even better work. Rubrics often contain 5 levels, with an additional level between adequate and exemplary and a level between adequate and inadequate. Usually, no more than 5 levels are needed, as having too many rating levels can make it hard to consistently distinguish which rating to give an assignment (such as between a 6 or 7 out of 10). Suskie also suggests labeling each level with names to clarify which level represents the minimum acceptable performance. Labels will vary by assignment and subject, but some examples are: 

• Exceeds standard, meets standard, approaching standard, below standard
• Complete evidence, partial evidence, minimal evidence, no evidence

4. Fill in descriptors

Fill in descriptors for each criterion at each performance level. Expand on the list of criteria you developed in Step 2. Begin to write full descriptions, thinking about what an exemplary example would look like for students to strive towards. Avoid vague terms like “good” and make sure to use explicit, concrete terms to describe what would make a criterion good. For instance, a criterion called “organization and structure” would be more descriptive than “writing quality.” Describe measurable behavior and use parallel language for clarity; the wording for each criterion should be very similar, except for the degree to which standards are met. For example, in a sample rubric from Chapter 9 of Suskie’s book, the criterion of “persuasiveness” has the following descriptors:

• Well Done (5): Motivating questions and advance organizers convey the main idea. Information is accurate.
• Satisfactory (3-4): Includes persuasive information.
• Needs Improvement (1-2): Include persuasive information with few facts.
• Incomplete (0): Information is incomplete, out of date, or incorrect.

These sample descriptors generally have the same sentence structure that provides consistent language across performance levels and shows the degree to which each standard is met.

5. Test your rubric

Test your rubric using a range of student work to see if the rubric is realistic. You may also consider leaving room for aspects of the assignment, such as effort, originality, and creativity, to encourage students to go beyond the rubric. If there will be multiple instructors grading, it is important to calibrate the scoring by having all graders use the rubric to grade a selected set of student work and then discuss any differences in the scores. This process helps develop consistency in grading and making the grading more valid and reliable.

Types of Rubrics

If you would like to dive deeper into rubric terminology, this section is dedicated to discussing some of the different types of rubrics. However, regardless of the type of rubric you use, it’s still most important to focus first on your learning goals and think about how the rubric will help clarify students’ expectations and measure student progress towards those learning goals.

Depending on the nature of the assignment, rubrics can come in several varieties (Suskie, 2009):

Checklist Rubric

This is the simplest kind of rubric, which lists specific features or aspects of the assignment which may be present or absent. A checklist rubric does not involve the creation of a rating scale with descriptors. See example from 18.821 project-based math class .

Rating Scale Rubric

This is like a checklist rubric, but instead of merely noting the presence or absence of a feature or aspect of the assignment, the grader also rates quality (often on a graded or Likert-style scale). See example from 6.811 assistive technology class .

Descriptive Rubric

A descriptive rubric is like a rating scale, but including descriptions of what performing to a certain level on each scale looks like. Descriptive rubrics are particularly useful in communicating instructors’ expectations of performance to students and in creating consistency with multiple graders on an assignment. This kind of rubric is probably what most people think of when they imagine a rubric. See example from 15.279 communications class .

Holistic Scoring Guide

Unlike the first 3 types of rubrics, a holistic scoring guide describes performance at different levels (e.g., A-level performance, B-level performance) holistically without analyzing the assignment into several different scales. This kind of rubric is particularly useful when there are many assignments to grade and a moderate to a high degree of subjectivity in the assessment of quality. It can be difficult to have consistency across scores, and holistic scoring guides are most helpful when making decisions quickly rather than providing detailed feedback to students. See example from 11.229 advanced writing seminar .

The kind of rubric that is most appropriate will depend on the assignment in question.

Implementation tips

Rubrics are also available to use for Canvas assignments. See this resource from Boston College for more details and guides from Canvas Instructure.

Allen, D., & Tanner, K. (2006). Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 5 (3), 197-203. doi:10.1187/cbe.06-06-0168

Cherie Miot Abbanat. 11.229 Advanced Writing Seminar. Spring 2004. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

Haynes Miller, Nat Stapleton, Saul Glasman, and Susan Ruff. 18.821 Project Laboratory in Mathematics. Spring 2013. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

Lori Breslow, and Terence Heagney. 15.279 Management Communication for Undergraduates. Fall 2012. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

O’Reilly, L., & Cyr, T. (2006). Creating a Rubric: An Online Tutorial for Faculty. Retrieved from https://www.ucdenver.edu/faculty_staff/faculty/center-for-faculty-development/Documents/Tutorials/Rubrics/index.htm

Suskie, L. (2009). Using a scoring guide or rubric to plan and evaluate an assessment. In Assessing student learning: A common sense guide (2nd edition, pp. 137-154 ) . Jossey-Bass.

William Li, Grace Teo, and Robert Miller. 6.811 Principles and Practice of Assistive Technology. Fall 2014. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare, https://ocw.mit.edu . License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA .

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iRubric: MATH ASSIGNMENT RUBRIC

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Rubric Code: By Draft Public Rubric Subject:    Type:    Grade Levels: 6-8, 9-12

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Assessment Rubrics

A rubric is commonly defined as a tool that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listing criteria, and for each criteria, describing levels of quality (Andrade, 2000; Arter & Chappuis, 2007; Stiggins, 2001). Criteria are used in determining the level at which student work meets expectations. Markers of quality give students a clear idea about what must be done to demonstrate a certain level of mastery, understanding, or proficiency (i.e., "Exceeds Expectations" does xyz, "Meets Expectations" does only xy or yz, "Developing" does only x or y or z). Rubrics can be used for any assignment in a course, or for any way in which students are asked to demonstrate what they've learned. They can also be used to facilitate self and peer-reviews of student work.

Rubrics aren't just for summative evaluation. They can be used as a teaching tool as well. When used as part of a formative assessment, they can help students understand both the holistic nature and/or specific analytics of learning expected, the level of learning expected, and then make decisions about their current level of learning to inform revision and improvement (Reddy & Andrade, 2010). 

Why use rubrics?

Rubrics help instructors:

Provide students with feedback that is clear, directed and focused on ways to improve learning.

Demystify assignment expectations so students can focus on the work instead of guessing "what the instructor wants."

Reduce time spent on grading and develop consistency in how you evaluate student learning across students and throughout a class.

Rubrics help students:

Focus their efforts on completing assignments in line with clearly set expectations.

Self and Peer-reflect on their learning, making informed changes to achieve the desired learning level.

Developing a Rubric

During the process of developing a rubric, instructors might:

Select an assignment for your course - ideally one you identify as time intensive to grade, or students report as having unclear expectations.

Decide what you want students to demonstrate about their learning through that assignment. These are your criteria.

Identify the markers of quality on which you feel comfortable evaluating students’ level of learning - often along with a numerical scale (i.e., "Accomplished," "Emerging," "Beginning" for a developmental approach).

Give students the rubric ahead of time. Advise them to use it in guiding their completion of the assignment.

It can be overwhelming to create a rubric for every assignment in a class at once, so start by creating one rubric for one assignment. See how it goes and develop more from there! Also, do not reinvent the wheel. Rubric templates and examples exist all over the Internet, or consider asking colleagues if they have developed rubrics for similar assignments. 

Sample Rubrics

Examples of holistic and analytic rubrics : see Tables 2 & 3 in “Rubrics: Tools for Making Learning Goals and Evaluation Criteria Explicit for Both Teachers and Learners” (Allen & Tanner, 2006)

Examples across assessment types : see “Creating and Using Rubrics,” Carnegie Mellon Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and & Educational Innovation

“VALUE Rubrics” : see the Association of American Colleges and Universities set of free, downloadable rubrics, with foci including creative thinking, problem solving, and information literacy. 

Andrade, H. 2000. Using rubrics to promote thinking and learning. Educational Leadership 57, no. 5: 13–18. Arter, J., and J. Chappuis. 2007. Creating and recognizing quality rubrics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall. Stiggins, R.J. 2001. Student-involved classroom assessment. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Reddy, Y., & Andrade, H. (2010). A review of rubric use in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation In Higher Education, 35(4), 435-448.

Feedback and assessment for writing

Commenting strategies, choosing grading criteria, grading for small writing assignments, grading for large projects, encouraging students to do more than superficial revision, literature on assessing writing, assessing “writing-to-learn” assignments, using writing to assess understanding of mathematics, general resources and research (not specific to mathematics).

Most of this page focuses on “learning to write”; i.e., on assessing how well students communicate mathematics. Near the bottom of the page are sections on “writing to learn” and “writing to assess”: some writing assignments are designed primarily to help students to learn mathematics, while others are designed primarily to help teachers assess student understanding of mathematics. These call for different feedback and assessment strategies than “learning to write.”

As you give students feedback on their writing, you might consider commenting on mathematical correctness, clarity, flow and organization, and other general principles of communicating mathematics . A balance must be found among verbose commenting, a reasonable time investment, and what’s most helpful for students. Some suggestions:

• Consider your purpose for commenting and craft your comments to achieve that purpose.
• To gain a sense of the effect of comments on students, see the video “ Beyond the Red Ink: Teachers’ Comments through Students’ Eyes .” Although these students are first-year humanities students, experience suggests that upper-level mathematics students are not far different.
• Consider meeting with each student to provide feedback. Although scheduling meetings can be a hassle, feedback given in person is often more efficient and richer than feedback given in writing, and you’ll get to understand the students better as writers by hearing their responses to your comments.
• Point out what the student does well. Positive feedback is remarkably effective.
• Remind yourself to consider the text at all scales: it’s easy to overlook large issues when you’re focused on details.
• Consider how much the student can learn in the available time: there’s no need to list all types of problems in a paper. Decide what the student most needs to learn at this point and consider giving only those comments. [When planning an assignment, consider scheduling multiple revisions so large-scale issues may be addressed during the first revision and smaller-scale issues may be addressed during later revisions.]
• If you feel you must provide many comments, you can help students recognize the relative importance of the various comments by drawing attention to the most important ones in a summary note.
• Less important issues can be de-emphasized through the use of coded comments (see this example of comment codes from MIT’s communication-intensive mathematics subjects and  this example of comment codes from an engineering class at MIT ).
• Do not mark each instance of a recurring problem: instead tell the student how to identify the problem for him/herself.
• If you’re distracted by an error until you mark it, very briefly mark errors on a scratch paper or in a temporary document, providing only enough information for yourself. Then when you’ve finished reading, decide which comments to give the student.
• If the writing will not be revised, then limit yourself to general comments that apply to future writing.
• Suggest that the student keep an editing checklist of mistakes he or she often makes.
• The student is the author, so when you draw attention to a problem, avoid dictating a solution unless necessary.
• To avoid comments being taken personally, refer to the text, not to the student: “This paragraph could be more concise.” not “You don’t write concisely enough.” To write helpful comments, consider these dimensions of commenting .
• Reading papers is time consuming and occasionally frustrating. Take care to remain professional.

For further explanation of the above suggestions, see these two pages about Commenting.

In addition to or instead of giving individualized feedback, you may choose to give feedback to the class as a whole. Example: Guidance for revising an algorithm assignment .

Identifying and prioritizing grading criteria before grading is important to prevent unintentional, subconscious bias, even in graders who consider themselves objective, as found by this study of hiring decisions based on criteria prioritized before/after learning about an applicant: Uhlmann and Cohen, “ Constructed Criteria: Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination ,” Psychological Science, Vol 16, No 6, pp. 474-480, 2005.

Guidance for how to create a rubric is provided on the MAA Mathematical Communication page “ How can I objectively grade something as subjective as communication ?”

For a detailed explanation of this strategy, see this grading handbook , which includes sample lists of characteristics of good mathematical writing and sample rubrics, as well as guidance for grading drafts, etc.

One strategy is to assign two grades to each small writing assignment: one for mathematical content and one for quality of exposition. To speed up grading, you may want to assign an overall exposition grade rather than one for each problem on the assignment (if there are multiple). Make sure your students are aware that effective communication is being evaluated and will contribute to their grade. If possible, give them a rubric or a sample of what you are looking for.

Example: Janet Preston’s rubric for week-long projects like mathforum.org ‘s problems of the week .

Example: 18.310C rubric for grading heapsort algorithm

If you give students a rubric before the assignment is due, they are likely to write to the rubric. If you are new to teaching mathematical writing, consider not providing a rubric for the first writing assignment, so you have the opportunity to see how students write on their own. You may then design future rubrics to emphasize whichever writing characteristics you most want students to emphasize.

The grading of the final project should reflect all of its aspects: proposal, any intermediate drafts, peer-review, and final product. It may be helpful to the students to see the grading rubric you will use; many of them will not have written a long piece of mathematics before.

Here is an example of a rubric for grading a draft. Two grades are assigned: the grade that counts is based on effort/completeness, but students are also given a temporary “advisory grade” based on the rubric for the final paper. This strategy rewards effort while allowing room for improvement and giving information about how much improvement is needed.

For the final paper, you may want to grade the following:

• Correctness of mathematics
• Clarity of exposition
• Flow and organization of paper
• Other general principles of communicating math that you consider to be most important
• Extent to which feedback was incorporated. (Some students may be disinclined to incorporate feedback unless doing so is built into the grading.)

A sample rubric for the final paper is included with the rubric for the draft (above). A rubric can be designed not only as an assessment tool but also as a teaching tool, as explained and illustrated in this blog post . Another option is to use a more detailed grading grid ; however, writing mathematics well is complicated, and it may not be possible to create a precise grid that sufficiently captures the diversity of strengths and weaknesses of students’ writing.

Sometimes students revise only superficially when major revisions are needed. To help students understand the extent of revision needed, and to encourage them to make significant revisions when those are required, consider the following strategies:

• If major revision is needed, give only high-level comments. Giving detailed comments will cause students to focus on details and may cause them to lose sight of the big picture, thus preventing major revision.
• Explicitly tell students which sections of the paper ought to be “rewritten” rather than “revised” and what’s meant by those terms.
• Avoid scheduling revision at the end of the term when students are pressed for time.
• Meet with students individually to give them a chance to ask questions about feedback. The one-on-one attention also makes clear to students that you consider the quality of writing to be important.
• If you have a writing workshop in which you show students drafts of your own writing, choose drafts that exhibit major revision. By modeling major revisions yourself, you’ll help students to realize that they may also need to make major revisions.
• Have students assess the quality of their own writing and submit a revision plan.
• Require students to indicate which changes they made and explain why changes were not made.
• Include in the grade the extent to which instructor and peer comments were addressed.
• Patrick Bahls’ 2012 book Student Writing in the Quantitative Disciplines: A Guide for College Faculty contains a chapter on Assessing and Responding to Student Writing.
• Crannell, A., “Assessing Expository Mathematics: Grading Journals, Essays, and Other Vagaries,” Assessment Practices in Undergraduate Mathematics , MAA Notes #49 .
• Emenaker, C.E., “Assessing Modeling Projects in Calculus and Precalculus: Two Approaches,” Assessment Practices in Undergraduate Mathematics , MAA Notes #49 .
• Crannell, A., “How to grade 300 math essays and survive to tell the tale,” PRIMUS 4 (3), 1994.
• Houston, S.K., et al. , Developing Rating Scales for Undergraduate Mathematics Projects , University of Ulster, 1994.
• Dennis, K. “Assessing Written and Oral Communication of Senior Projects,”  Supporting Assessment in Undergraduate Mathematics , The Mathematical Association of America, 2006, pp. 177-181 . Contains rubrics for presenting and writing, with recommendations.

If the primary purpose of a writing assignment is to help students to better learn the mathematics, then providing feedback on the process is likely to be more important than grading writing quality.

• C. L. Patterson and P. V. Prasad, “ Beyond Grades: Feedback to Stimulate Rethinking and Intellectual Growth ” On Teaching and Learning Mathematics AMS Blogs, American Mathematical Society, August 6, 2018. Patterson and Prasad use feedback and revision instead of grades to increase student learning from writing assignments.
• Morgan, C., Writing Mathematically: The Discourse of Investigation , Falmer Press, 1998. From the Google Books review : “…[using] written language to serve as ‘evidence’ of their mathematical activity and achievement,… raises two important questions. Firstly, does this writing accurately present children’s mathematical activity and ability? Secondly, do math teachers have sufficient linguistic awareness to support their students in developing skills and knowledge necessary for writing effectively in their subject area?”
• See also the general resources for assessing understanding of mathematics, listed on the Assessment page.
• focusing your commenting energies
• using a grading sheet (including sample grading sheets)
• evaluating writing to learn assignments
• “ Beyond the Red Ink: Teachers’ Comments through Students’ Eyes ” Conversations with Bunker Hill Community College Students, Bedford/St. Martin’s
• John C. Bean’s Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom includes a clear and helpful chapter on Reading, Commenting On, and Grading Student Writing.
• Nancy Sommers’ Responding to Student Writing Bedford, St. Martins, 2013. ( publisher’s page )
• Bracey, E., “ The Will to Revise: Commenting, Revision, and Motivation in College Students “, Xchanges , Issue 9.1, 2013. Bracey’s research supports some prior results by indicating that the revisions of students who use a writing center focus on those aspects of writing that are emphasized most in their professor’s comments: e.g., if the professor comments only on grammatical issues, the students focus only on grammatical issues and resist writing center assistance on clarity, coherence, etc. This 2013 article begins with a helpful review of research on the factors that motivate student revision.
• Taylor, S. S., “ ‘I Really Don’t Know What He Meant By That’: How Well Do Engineering Students Understand Teachers’ Comments On Their Writing? ” Technical Communication Quarterly , Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 139-166, 2011. Teachers and engineering students from one institution were interviewed about the teachers’ comments on the students’ papers. Students recognized the focus of about three quarters of teachers’ comments but understood the reasons for only half of the comments. The results are broken down by type of comment and discipline of teacher. Recommendations are suggested, including that teachers provide more explicit explanations for comments. This 2011 article begins with a helpful review of research on response and on student reception of response.
• Summers, N., C. Rutz, and H. Tinberg. “ Re-Visions: Rethinking Nancy Sommers’s ‘Responding to Student Writing .’ 1982.” CCC Vol 58, No 2 (2006) pp. 246-266. This collection of three essays summarizes some past and current (as of 2006) research and thinking about responding to student writing. In the first essay, “Across the Drafts,” Nancy Sommers summerizes some of the findings from the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing, which followed the writing of and feedback received by 400 students over their four years at Harvard.
• Anson, Chris M. “Response Styles and Ways of Knowing.”  Writing and Response Theory,  Practice, and Research. Ed. Chris Anson. Urbana: National Council of Teachers,1989. 332-366.
•   Grading Writing: the Art and Science–and why computers can’t do it , by Doug Hesse.
• Uhlmann and Cohen, “ Constructed Criteria: Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination ,” Psychological Science, Vol 16, No 6, pp. 474-480, 2005.
• See also the resources on this site’s general page about assessment .

Please suggest key research to add to this list.

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Examples of Rubric Creation

Creating a rubric takes time and requires thought and experimentation. Here you can see the steps used to create two kinds of rubric: one for problems in a physics exam for a small, upper-division physics course, and another for an essay assignment in a large, lower-division sociology course.

Physics Problems

In STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), assignments tend to be analytical and problem-based. Holistic rubrics can be an efficient, consistent, and fair way to grade a problem set. An analytical rubric often gives a more clear picture of what a student should direct their future learning efforts on. Since holistic rubrics try to label overall understanding, they can lead to more regrade requests when compared to analytical rubric with more explicit criteria. When starting to grade a problem, it is important to think about the relevant conceptual ingredients in the solution. Then look at a sample of student work to get a feel for student mistakes. Decide what rubric you will use (e.g., holistic or analytic, and how many points). Apply the holistic rubric by marking comments and sorting the students’ assignments into stacks (e.g., five stacks if using a five-point scale). Finally, check the stacks for consistency and mark the scores. The following is a sample homework problem from a UC Berkeley Physics Department undergraduate course in mechanics.

Homework Problem

Learning objective.

Solve for position and speed along a projectile’s trajectory.

Desired Traits: Conceptual Elements Needed for the Solution

• Decompose motion into vertical and horizontal axes.
• Identify that the maximum height occurs when the vertical velocity is 0.
• Apply kinematics equation with g as the acceleration to solve for the time and height.
• Evaluate the numerical expression.

A note on analytic rubrics: If you decide you feel more comfortable grading with an analytic rubric, you can assign a point value to each concept. The drawback to this method is that it can sometimes unfairly penalize a student who has a good understanding of the problem but makes a lot of minor errors. Because the analytic method tends to have many more parts, the method can take quite a bit more time to apply. In the end, your analytic rubric should give results that agree with the common-sense assessment of how well the student understood the problem. This sense is well captured by the holistic method.

Holistic Rubric

A holistic rubric, closely based on a rubric by Bruce Birkett and Andrew Elby:

	The student clearly understands how to solve the problem. Minor mistakes and careless errors can appear insofar as they do not indicate a conceptual misunderstanding.
	The student understands the main concepts and problem-solving techniques, but has some minor yet non-trivial gaps in their reasoning.
	The student has partially understood the problem. The student is not completely lost, but requires tutoring in some of the basic concepts. The student may have started out correctly, but gone on a tangent or not finished the problem.
	The student has a poor understanding of the problem. The student may have gone in a not-entirely-wrong but unproductive direction, or attempted to solve the problem using pattern matching or by rote.
	The student did not understand the problem. They may have written some appropriate formulas or diagrams, but nothing further. Or they may have done something entirely wrong.
	The student wrote nothing or almost nothing.

[a] This policy especially makes sense on exam problems, for which students are under time pressure and are more likely to make harmless algebraic mistakes. It would also be reasonable to have stricter standards for homework problems.

Analytic Rubric

The following is an analytic rubric that takes the desired traits of the solution and assigns point values to each of the components. Note that the relative point values should reflect the importance in the overall problem. For example, the steps of the problem solving should be worth more than the final numerical value of the solution. This rubric also provides clarity for where students are lacking in their current understanding of the problem.

	Student decomposes the velocity (a vector quantity) into its vertical component
	Student realizes that the motion should be decomposed, but does not arrive at the correct expression for
	No attempt at decomposing the 2D motion into its vertical component.
	Student successfully translates the physical question (the highest point of the ball) to an equation that can be used to help solve the motion ( ).
	Student identifies the maximum height condition with minor mistakes.
	Incorrect or missing identification of maximum height condition.
	Applies the kinematic equations to yield a correct expression for the height in terms of the given variables. Solution uses the fact that the vertical motion has a constant downward acceleration due to gravity. The sequence of steps clearly demonstrates the thought process. Most likely, the solution includes solving for the time it takes to reach the top and then uses that time to see how far up the ball traveled.
	Mostly correct application with minor error (e.g. algebraic mistakes or incorporating extraneous equations).
	Equations include relevant parameters from the problem, but the student does not isolate relevant variables being solved for (such as time or distance).
	Some kinematics formulas are written down but they are not connected with the information in the problem.
	No attempt.
	Correct numerical answer with appropriate units.
	Mostly correct answer but with a few minor errors. Still physically sensible answer (e.g. units and numerical values are reasonable).
	No attempt or physically unreasonable answer (e.g. a negative maximum height or reporting the height in units of seconds).

Try to avoid penalizing multiple times for the same mistake by choosing your evaluation criteria to be related to distinct learning outcomes. In designing your rubric, you can decide how finely to evaluate each component. Having more possible point values on your rubric can give more detailed feedback on a student’s performance, though it typically takes more time for the grader to assess.

Of course, problems can, and often do, feature the use of multiple learning outcomes in tandem. When a mistake could be assigned to multiple criteria, it is advisable to check that the overall problem grade is reasonable with the student’s mastery of the problem. Not having to decide how particular mistakes should be deducted from the analytic rubric is one advantage of the holistic rubric. When designing problems, it can be very beneficial for students not to have problems with several subparts that rely on prior answers. These tend to disproportionately skew the grades of students who miss an ingredient early on. When possible, consider making independent problems for testing different learning outcomes.

Sociology Research Paper

An introductory-level, large-lecture course is a difficult setting for managing a student research assignment. With the assistance of an instructional support team that included a GSI teaching consultant and a UC Berkeley librarian [b] , sociology lecturer Mary Kelsey developed the following assignment:

This was a lengthy and complex assignment worth a substantial portion of the course grade. Since the class was very large, the instructor wanted to minimize the effort it would take her GSIs to grade the papers in a manner consistent with the assignment’s learning objectives. For these reasons Dr. Kelsey and the instructional team gave a lot of forethought to crafting a detailed grading rubric.

Desired Traits

• Use and interpretation of data
• Reflection on personal experiences
• Application of course readings and materials
• Organization, writing, and mechanics

For this assignment, the instructional team decided to grade each trait individually because there seemed to be too many independent variables to grade holistically. They could have used a five-point scale, a three-point scale, or a descriptive analytic scale. The choice depended on the complexity of the assignment and the kind of information they wanted to convey to students about their work.

Below are three of the analytic rubrics they considered for the Argument trait and a holistic rubric for all the traits together. Lastly you will find the entire analytic rubric, for all five desired traits, that was finally used for the assignment. Which would you choose, and why?

Five-Point Scale

5	Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity and is clearly stated and defensible.
4	Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity and is defensible, but it is not clearly stated.
3	Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity but is not defensible using the evidence available.
2	Argument is presented, but it does not pertain to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity.
1	Social factors and educational opportunity are discussed, but no argument is presented.

Three-Point Scale

	Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity and is clearly stated and defensible.
	Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity but may not be clear or sufficiently narrow in scope.
	Social factors and educational opportunity are discussed, but no argument is presented.

Simplified Three-Point Scale, numbers replaced with descriptive terms

Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity and is clearly stated and defensible

For some assignments, you may choose to use a holistic rubric, or one scale for the whole assignment. This type of rubric is particularly useful when the variables you want to assess just cannot be usefully separated. We chose not to use a holistic rubric for this assignment because we wanted to be able to grade each trait separately, but we’ve completed a holistic version here for comparative purposes.

	The paper is driven by a clearly stated, defensible argument about the relationship between social factors and educational opportunity. Sufficient data is used to defend the argument, and the data is accurately interpreted to identify each school’s position within a larger social structure. Personal educational experiences are examined thoughtfully and critically to identify significance of external social factors and support the main argument. Paper reflects solid understanding of the major themes of the course, using course readings to accurately define sociological concepts and to place the argument within a broader discussion of the relationship between social status and individual opportunity. Paper is clearly organized (with an introduction, transition sentences to connect major ideas, and conclusion) and has few or no grammar or spelling errors. Scholarly ideas are cited correctly using the ASA style guide.
	The paper is driven by a defensible argument about the relationship between social factors and public school quality, but it may not be stated as clearly and consistently throughout the essay as in an “A” paper. The argument is defended using sufficient data, reflection on personal experiences, and course readings, but the use of this evidence does not always demonstrate a clear understanding of how to locate the school or community within a larger class structure, how social factors influence personal experience, or the broader significance of course concepts. Essay is clearly organized, but might benefit from more careful attention to transitional sentences. Scholarly ideas are cited accurately, using the ASA style sheet, and the writing is polished, with few grammar or spelling errors.
	The paper contains an argument about the relationship between social factors and public school quality, but the argument may not be defensible using the evidence available. Data, course readings, and personal experiences are used to defend the argument, but in a perfunctory way, without demonstrating an understanding of how social factors are identified or how they shape personal experience. Scholarly ideas are cited accurately, using the ASA style sheet. Essay may have either significant organizational or proofreading errors, but not both.
	The paper does not have an argument, or is missing a major component of the evidence requested (data, course readings, or personal experiences). Alternatively, or in addition, the paper suffers from significant organizational and proofreading errors. Scholarly ideas are cited, but without following ASA guidelines.
	The paper does not provide an argument and contains only one component of the evidence requested, if any. The paper suffers from significant organizational and proofreading errors. If scholarly ideas are not cited, paper receives an automatic “F.”

Final Analytic Rubric

This is the rubric the instructor finally decided to use. It rates five major traits, each on a five-point scale. This allowed for fine but clear distinctions in evaluating the students’ final papers.

	Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity and is clearly stated and defensible.
	Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity and is defensible, but it is not clearly stated.
	Argument pertains to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity but is not defensible using the evidence available.
	Argument is presented, but it does not pertain to relationship between social factors and educational opportunity.
	Social factors and educational opportunity are discussed, but no argument is presented.
	The data is accurately interpreted to identify each school’s position within a larger social structure, and sufficient data is used to defend the main argument.
	The data is accurately interpreted to identify each school’s position within a larger social structure, and data is used to defend the main argument, but it might not be sufficient.
	Data is used to defend the main argument, but it is not accurately interpreted to identify each school’s position within a larger social structure, and it might not be sufficient.
	Data is used to defend the main argument, but it is insufficient, and no effort is made to identify the school’s position within a larger social structure.
	Data is provided, but it is not used to defend the main argument.
	Personal educational experiences are examined thoughtfully and critically to identify significance of external social factors and support the main argument.
	Personal educational experiences are examined thoughtfully and critically to identify significance of external social factors, but relation to the main argument may not be clear.
	Personal educational experiences are examined, but not in a way that reflects understanding of the external factors shaping individual opportunity. Relation to the main argument also may not be clear.
	Personal educational experiences are discussed, but not in a way that reflects understanding of the external factors shaping individual opportunity. No effort is made to relate experiences back to the main argument.
	Personal educational experiences are mentioned, but in a perfunctory way.
	Demonstrates solid understanding of the major themes of the course, using course readings to accurately define sociological concepts and to place the argument within a broader discussion of the relationship between social status and individual opportunity.
	Uses course readings to define sociological concepts and place the argument within a broader framework, but does not always demonstrate solid understanding of the major themes.
	Uses course readings to place the argument within a broader framework, but sociological concepts are poorly defined or not defined at all. The data is not all accurately interpreted to identify each school’s position within a larger social structure, and it might not be sufficient.
	Course readings are used, but paper does not place the argument within a broader framework or define sociological concepts.
	Course readings are only mentioned, with no clear understanding of the relationship between the paper and course themes.
	Clear organization and natural “flow” (with an introduction, transition sentences to connect major ideas, and conclusion) with few or no grammar or spelling errors. Scholarly ideas are cited correctly using the ASA style guide.
	Clear organization (introduction, transition sentences to connect major ideas, and conclusion), but writing might not always be fluid, and might contain some grammar or spelling errors. Scholarly ideas are cited correctly using the ASA style guide.
	Organization unclear or the paper is marred by significant grammar or spelling errors (but not both). Scholarly ideas are cited correctly using the ASA style guide.
	Organization unclear and the paper is marred by significant grammar and spelling errors. Scholarly ideas are cited correctly using the ASA style guide.
	Effort to cite is made, but the scholarly ideas are not cited correctly. (Automatic “F” if ideas are not cited at all.)

[b] These materials were developed during UC Berkeley’s 2005–2006 Mellon Library/Faculty Fellowship for Undergraduate Research program. Members of the instructional team who worked with Lecturer Kelsey in developing the grading rubric included Susan Haskell-Khan, a GSI Center teaching consultant and doctoral candidate in history, and Sarah McDaniel, a teaching librarian with the Doe/Moffitt Libraries.

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Math Rubric Makers

• Class Participation Rubric Generator - A great way to keep students on task! This can be used in a group setting or for individual assignments.
• General Rubric Generator - This tool allows you to make your own customized rubric. The application includes an extensive number of fields to enter.
• Homework Rubric Generator - Help your students understand your expectations for homework assignments with this rubric.
• Math Rubric Generator - This rubric is great for scoring just about any math assignment or project, even math homework.
• Presentation Rubric Generator - Decrease the pressure on your students by sharing this rubric of your expectations. This assessment tool will help your students focus on the content they are presenting.
• Project Rubric Generator - This generator can be used to help you assess student projects. Helpful for group work and/or individual class projects.
• Team Work Rubric Generator - This rubric can help you assess how students work cooperatively in a group setting.
• Timeline Rubric Generator - Assess just about any time period. This rubric will also help students identify all the parts of a properly constructed timeline.

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Lessons, Commentary, Coaching, and all things mathematics.

A rubric to assess the eight Common Core State Standards of Mathematical Practice

Update 8/2/21. After reviewing feedback from teachers who have implemented the rubric in its draft form, I feel confident in removing that modifier of “draft.” Consider the rubric below for the Standards of Mathematical Practice as Version 1.0.

The Common Core Standards of Mathematical Practice (MPs) have been available for a while now. They lay out eight habits that mathematicians embody. They’ve been instructive in what to teach and how to teach. They’ve also been helpful in providing a comprehensive vision of what math classrooms can be.

MP1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.	MP2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.	MP3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.	MP4. Model with mathematics.
MP5. Use appropriate tools strategically.	MP6. Attend to precision.	MP7. Look for and make use of structure.	MP8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

They’re also painfully challenging to interpret and assess. What does it mean for a student to “look for and make use of structure?” And how can we measure student achievement and growth in these areas?

To these questions, I offer a rubric. There’s a phrase I heard at a High Tech High PD once – “ possibly incorrect and definitely incomplete .” I would apply that sentiment to this rubric. I drew upon a few individuals and a few books and other resources to guide its creation. When I worked for New Tech Network I was part of a team that created rubrics with Stanford’s Center for Assessment and Learning for Equity (SCALE) which helped me craft rubrics for non-content outcomes (while also teaching me just how hard it is to create a rubric).

I find rubrics eminently helpful in understanding what students know and can do and where to go next. Rubrics are as much a scaffolding tool as they are an assessment tool.While I was unable to find a CCSS MP rubric, it’s possible that another, better one exists. If that’s the case feel free to use that one, this one, a combination, or whatever you like. Personally the act of creating a rubric and doing the work helps clarify and challenge my own thinking. At the bottom of this post, I’ve listed some of my other blog posts on assessment and rubrics.

A rubric that accurately and equitably assesses the eight standards of mathematical practice could be a boon for schools and teachers desiring to develop a system of student portfolios, as I often advocate. I would absolutely consider using this rubric throughout a school year for your portfolio problems.

I want to acknowledge that this rubric and assessment and teaching of the MPs is probably not top-of-mind for teachers. At the current writing, we’re figuring out how – if at all – we’ll be able to meet with students in person or virtually, whether it’s safe to teach in person during an unrestrained epidemic of COVID-19, while in the midst of a real reckoning with our systemic oppression of communities of color. Also, in education there’s a particular thorniness around assessment and race. Standardized tests are weaponized to prevent access to education and opportunity.

While this rubric is an attempt to move to a more equitable way of assessment, rubrics have also been tools of oppression, and it would be foolish to think that this particular rubric couldn’t be used in such a manner. This rubric is being dropped into an environment which did not ask for it.

Before we get to the rubric itself, I’d like to submit a few principles for rubric use:

Rubric Assessment Principle 1 : Approach any and all forms of assessment, particularly rubrics, with a great deal of humility. You, nor I, are the arbiter of student knowledge. My interpretation of student work can differ and be incorrect. Make sure you’re approaching student work with willingness to be convinced that your rubric score may not be the best rubric score.

Rubric Assessment Principle 2 : Be aware of your own biases and be aware that you have biases you don’t know you have. Dovetailing from the previous principle, it’s crucial to understand that you have biases. You have racial biases, behavioral biases, and biases around what you value in students and student work. It’s important to acknowledge these biases while also acknowledging you have biases that you are unaware of.

Rubric Assessment Principle 3 : Don’t try to assess every row on every problem . Large rubrics such as this one are not meant to be used wholesale. Also, most problems are ill suited to assess more than a handful of MPs effectively. Instead, take a couple of rows for a particular problem and assess those in laserlike fashion.

Rubric Assessment Principle 4 : Assessing is not the same as grading. This rubric is not necessarily meant to have score totals afixed to each column. It’s meant to be a diagnostic as well as a pathway of improvement. Grades can stunt both of those goals.

There are many more tips, tricks, strategies, do’s, don’ts and best practices around rubrics, but I’ll leave it at those four principles for now.

I also want to acknowledge my instructional background is in secondary education. As such, I can’t truly say how useful this rubric is at the elementary (or even lower level junior high) level. I’m writing and crafting from a vantage point of a high school teacher. Also, one of the things I really struggle with when creating a rubric is that first column (in this case, I’ve dubbed it “Emerging.” I end up using more negative language than I would care to: “fails,” “does not,” etc. Right off the bat, I know that’s something I need to improve about the rubric.

At this point I’d like to state that I’m by no means an expert. Maybe I’ll be able to claim expertise when I complete my PhD program (which I’ve yet to start), but for now I’m just someone who’d like to have a good tool to assess and teach the MPs, and currently I’m not able to find a satisfactory one. It’s very possible (probable) I’ve misinterpreted the MPs and how they show up in student work. I genuinely struggle with differentiating between MP7 and MP8. It’s quite possible this rubric isn’t particularly useful in a virtual environment. It’s certainly not top of mind for most educators right now. However, I wanted to put it out into the world so that A) you’d have it for the following school year, particularly if you intend to use some sort of portfolio assessment system, and B) so that we can improve it. I hope you’ll offer the gift of constructive feedback so we can make this tool more useful, more instructive, and more edifying for a student and teacher.

Some of the MPs (and therefore, the rubric indicators) are as much behavioral as they are artifactual. For example, how do students demonstrate “perseverance?” Unless you have students journal about their problem solving experience (which is an entirely valid task) it is hard to measure “perseverance” based on the student work alone. You may have to assess that row based on conversations with students, evidence based observations, or other method.

Now let’s get to the rubric. You’ll find a google doc and PDF version below.

• CCSS MP Rubric ( Google Doc )

I leaned heavily on this rubric throughout my mini-series on crafting and using rubrics. I recommend checking out those posts, and we explore terms like “common indicators” to help us consider how to use this rubric in class.

Here are a few of my posts on rubrics and assessment that may be instructive.

• Equalizing practice and assessment (Part 1)
• Equalizing Practice and Assessment (Part 2): What You Value Should Be What You Assess
• Specifics before Strategies (the creation of a rubric)
• Your Student Portfolio System Begins Now
• Portfolio Problems: Rebuilding Assessment with Rich Tasks
• Assessment via audibles

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My First Math Assignment Rubric

Thursday june 12, 2014, •  math education  •  mathematics  •  teaching  •  umgc  • .

Grading can be a difficult proposition. In a math course, the mechanics of a solution, meaning the correct addition and subtraction, may be correct. However, a student may have misapplied a solution or not correctly understood the application of the mechanics to the problem in question. As a result, it can be better to grade these different aspects differently. In a writing course, this would be akin to grading spelling and grammar separately from organization of the argument.

Grading rubrics , which outline the different facets of a solution and provide tiered assessments appropriate to the problem provide a solution to this for instructors. Historically, I have given my undergraduate math students a 5-question quiz each week of class. I grade these on a five-point scale (from 0 to 4) where 4 is a perfect solution, 3 is some small math (mechanical) error was seen, 2 is a good start, 1 is something somewhat relevant was written down, and 0 is nothing meaningful was stated. This is a type of informal grading rubric. It is also one-dimensional, which causes some issues.

As the University of Maryland University College converts from its custom WebTycho platform to Desire2Learn , I have noticed that formalized grading rubrics are baked into the platform and can be associated with each assessment. Then, when grading, the rubric guides the process. So I created my first formal rubric and attached it to this my quizzes. This grading rubric essentially formalizes the informal grading rubric I had already used:

• Detailed response given with no mathematical errors.
• Detailed response given that shows understanding of the problem. Final answer may not be correct.
• Explanation or diagram unclear. Final answer is not correct, but response shows some understanding of the problem.
• Misses key points and no appropriate supporting diagram provided. The response shows no understanding of the problem.
• No answer given or response is not aligned to problem.

While formalizing the prior process is useful, it is self-evident this should be revised to reflect the multidimensional grading process used in college-level mathematics.

Watch Reimagine Education and learn what's new with responsible AI in education >

• AI in education
• Published Jun 18, 2024

Enhancing Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Education

• Content Type
• Career readiness skills
• Learning Accelerators
• Education decision makers
• IT professionals
• Microsoft 365
• Microsoft Copilot
• Microsoft Forms
• Microsoft Teams
• Minecraft Education

Today, we’re announcing new capabilities built to help educators and students save time, create impactful content, and deepen learning experiences within Copilot for Microsoft 365. We’ll also share over a dozen updates including global expansion of Khanmigo for Teachers, Minecraft Education Lesson Crafter, Learning Accelerators and Teams for Education news, free access to Figma through our new partnership, and more value coming to Microsoft Education.

We’re thrilled to share over 20 updates and resources and show them in action next week at ISTELive 24 in Denver, Colorado, US. Join us at the show to learn more and hear about the latest from Microsoft Education at our booth and in dozens of sessions .

Enhancing Copilot for Microsoft 365 in education

We’ve loved seeing the early adoption and benefits from education institutions already using Microsoft Copilot , our no-cost AI-powered chat with data protection, and Copilot for Microsoft 365 , an add-on for AI assistance integrated with the apps you use every day. We’re excited to now bring even more value to education in Copilot for Microsoft 365 with a new set of capabilities designed for relevant and powerful use by educators and students. These features will be included in Copilot for Microsoft 365 and will be in private previews over the coming months. Education institutions with any academic license are eligible to purchase Copilot for Microsoft 365, with no minimum, for their faculty, staff, and students aged 18 and older.

Educators will be able to use a guided content generation experience to easily kickstart materials like assignments, lesson plans, lecture slides, and more based on pedagogical requirements across Microsoft 365 apps such as Teams, Word, and PowerPoint. This includes the ability to align content to over five million education standards from 35 countries for both public and private institutions through EdGate .

Additionally, educators now have access to quiz generation through Copilot in Forms which allows them to generate quizzes and correct answers, support students with step-by-step solutions for each question, and easily assign quizzes to classes in Teams for Education. Educators can use Copilot to generate quizzes based on their own files or pasted text. Later this year, educators will be able to align the quizzes to education standards. 

Our recent research found that students are already using AI to quickly receive initial feedback on their work. We’re excited to help educators do the same in meaningful ways with suggested AI feedback . Educators review, edit, or discard suggested student feedback, which is based on individual student progress, rubrics selections, or assignment instructions. Educators can start by selecting initial rubric scores and then add the corresponding draft feedback directly into student Word documents in the form of comments or share overall feedback in a Teams Assignment.

AI has the potential to further support students by accelerating and deepening their learning process in engaging ways. Interactive practice experiences will be available for educators to create and share with their students, or for students to generate on their own to help them save time and increase subject matter retention on their specific learning content. They’ll be able to use Copilot functionality across Microsoft 365 apps like OneNote to easily build study materials like flashcards and guided chat experiences based on their learning content. The guided chat experience is designed to help learners walk through and engage with the content to ask questions, get immediate feedback, and test their knowledge. 

To better support educators and students with their daily tasks, we’ll be launching built-in learning and teaching extensions to help guide them through relevant activities and provide contextual, persona-based support in Copilot. They’ll see custom prompts to get started with tasks like building an interactive lecture or receiving initial feedback on their work.

For staff, educators, and students to be able to maximize the value of Copilot for Microsoft 365, it’s essential to have access to relevant data and files. We’re introducing education data integration to generate more helpful responses, insights, and content based on personal and organizational information. This will include data from Teams for Education such as Classwork, Assignments, Grades, class rosters, and more. We’ll also interoperate data from Learning Management Systems (LMS) in the future for simpler, connected, experiences across platforms including many of these new AI-powered capabilities.

Read more about guided content generation, standards-alignment, suggested AI feedback, interactive practice experiences, learning and teaching extensions, and education data integration in the June Edition of What’s New in Microsoft EDU .

Getting started on your AI journey for free

To help get started on your AI journey, we’re excited to continue offering free tools and resources. Read about products available at no cost for educators and students like Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and more in our recent blog on our free AI offers .

Last month we announced that Khanmigo for Teachers is free for all US educators thanks to our new partnership with Khan Academy . We’ve heard from educators around the world who look forward to using Khanmigo for Teachers, and we’re excited to share that we’ll be expanding free availability globally in the coming weeks. Educators can sign up to be notified regarding availability in their country . Khanmigo for Teachers is an AI-powered teaching assistant that helps streamline class prep with no prompting required. Learn more from our Khanmigo for Teachers Quick Guide .

Minecraft Education will be previewing its new Lesson Crafter web tool at ISTE, which will be available for free in the coming months. Lesson Crafter allows educators to generate custom easy-to-teach lesson plans for Minecraft Education tailored to the needs of their learners on any topic and age range. Lesson Crafter will make it easier to get started teaching with Minecraft and give more teachers the opportunity to bring fun, immersive game-based learning into their classrooms.

In addition to these free tools, we believe in the importance of building a foundation of AI literacy for everyone. Get started today with the following resources:

• For pre-service educators: Next week at ISTELive 24 , we’ll be sharing a new collaboration with ISTE and ASCD focused on AI skills for pre-service educators. Stay tuned for more details coming soon.
• For educators: AI for educators learning path , AI Classroom Toolkit , AI literacy resources from Minecraft Education including lessons, PD, and Minecraft Prompt Lab playbook.
• For educators, guardians, and IT: Microsoft Copilot resources for education .
• For education leaders and IT: Microsoft Education AI Toolkit now refreshed with updates including use cases from AI Navigators and more research and resources.

Empowering educators and learners with Learning Accelerators, Teams for Education, and Learning Management Systems

Our newest Learning Accelerator , Speaker Progress, will be generally available by July! Speaker Progress helps students build confidence in their presentation skills with real-time feedback. Educators can create presentation assignments where students will receive real-time coaching on their public speaking skills like their pace, pitch, filler words, and more. Students and educators can view a rehearsal report of top strengths and top opportunities with targeted feedback to help students improve.

Math Progress, coming to preview in July, enhances numeracy gains by streamlining the creation, review, and analysis of math practice for educators and providing feedback to students on the problems they did not solve correctly. Both Speaker Progress and Math Progress provide actionable insights to help educators collect and visualize presentation and numeracy data to track progress and improve student outcomes. 

A powerful communication app with built-in AI tools

To ensure convenient access to all education institutions, we’re bringing the Learning Accelerators and Teams Assignments to your LMS through a new LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) private preview. Educators will be able to use all the capabilities of Teams Assignments within their LMS and sync content like files and grades. Learn more from our blog about existing LMS integrations .

Partnering with Figma to help prepare students for the future

Now more than ever, skills like collaboration, creativity, and strategic planning are critical for students in an ever-changing world. That’s just one of the reasons we’re excited to announce a new partnership with Figma to provide free access to Figma and FigJam enterprise tiers for all Microsoft K-12 educators and students. Figma and FigJam are design and collaboration software used by professional designers, engineers, and makers of all kinds. They can support students in building together—in a fun, interactive space that simultaneously prepares them for future career opportunities. Figma’s education offering through Microsoft 365 schools will be available in the US, UK, and Japan today, with plans for future international expansions. Admins and school leaders can apply here to get started .

We’re thrilled to partner with Microsoft to bring Figma into more classrooms. Currently, Figma is available in over 5,000 K-12 schools through our free education plan, and teaming up with Microsoft will help even more students across the world access Figma. Today’s students are tomorrow’s product builders, designers, developers and problem solvers—and we want to equip them with the best tools to bring their ideas from imagination to reality. Yuhki Yamashita, Chief Product Officer, Figma

Bringing more value to Microsoft Education

• Clipchamp is coming to Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 licenses at no additional cost, starting next month. In today’s digital world, communication skills are increasingly important. Clipchamp equips educators and students with the ability to convey ideas visually, fostering essential skills for success—from the classroom to future careers. Integrated with Microsoft 365, Clipchamp makes video editing easily accessible. To learn more, visit the Clipchamp webpage and Clipchamp Support . 
• Preview exciting updates from Minecraft Education coming for Back to School including a new Computer Science curriculum and AP CS Principles course launching at CSTA next month, esports program playbook, credentialing with Prodigy Learning, and new product updates including cloud storage on OneDrive and an AI-powered Lesson Crafter. Visit the Minecraft Education blog for details, and sign up for free summer training to learn how to bring Minecraft into your classroom or district.
• Visual Studio Code for Education , an online computer science education platform, is now available for free to empower the next generation of developers. It helps students learn to code at their own pace, develop in-demand skills with the same platform used by professionals, and bring their ideas to life. Visit the Visual Studio Code for Education webpage for more information.
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint – Student (MDE P2 – Students) is an affordably priced version of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P2, tailored specifically for student devices that are covered by an A5 license. It encompasses the comprehensive range of features that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers. With a focus on the security of students, Microsoft ensures that student devices receive the same robust protection as faculty devices do with MDE P2. This initiative is designed to protect student devices against vulnerabilities, proactively neutralize threats, halt attacks, facilitate swift investigation and remediation, and provide access to threat intelligence. Read more in our blog on ensuring secure learning experiences with MDE P2 – Students .

In such an exciting time for technology innovation, we look forward to continuing to share our progress, new capabilities, and resources to help you make the most of them. Check out the Microsoft Education Blog for the latest news and come join us next week at ISTELive 24 to explore AI in education!

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Explore insights from the AI in Education Report  

Kickstart your school’s AI journey with the Microsoft Education AI Toolkit  

Ensure secure learning experiences with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P2 – Students  

Ai in education brings opportunity to life.

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