When it comes to assessing student learning, nothing matters more than effective, clear rubric templates! To keep things consistent and fair to your students but mostly for your own teacher sanity!
"A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria that is relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome, and states in a specific, clear, and objective way the possible levels of achievement"
Using rubric templates in your classroom can ease your marking workload and ensure that all students are evaluated fairly and consistently.
There is nothing worse than designing an assignment and then throwing together a vague and ineffective rubric at the end.
That’s why I have a bundle of both single point and traditional 4 point rubrics that I use in my classroom!
I always try to remind myself that rubrics are for students FIRST, and for us teachers second.
Well-designed rubric templates provide clear guidelines to students about what will be evaluated.
1. The 4 Point Rubric Template
These are the rubrics that teachers have been using for years.
By now, students are very familiar with 4 point rubrics and assessing with them usually just involves checking off boxes.
This style of rubric usually has four performance levels, from “developing” to “exceeding expectations.”
Each level is assigned a point value ranging from 0-3 or 0-4 points.
Although I prefer single-point rubrics, I do occasionally use 4 point rubric templates in my classroom for quick assessments.
I added visuals to my 4 point rubrics, and I find it helpful for students to have more information presented visually to go with the typically sparse table.
2. The Single Point Rubric Template
Single point rubrics are newer to the assessment game and my favourite style of rubric templates to work with!
I have over 8 different single point rubric templates that I use regularly.
What makes single point rubrics different from the traditional four point rubric is that they usually consist of a single list of success criteria used to grade the student’s work.
This descriptive success criteria means that the focus is on proficiency, and any evidence of students going above and beyond, or areas that need improvement are noted in the left and right columns.
Single point rubrics have several advantages over other types of rubrics:
- They are much easier for students to understand and use.
- They can be easily customized to fit the specific task or activity being evaluated.
- They can increase student ownership in learning by providing a clear and concise list of success criteria.
To make single point rubrics effective, ensure that the success criteria is clearly defined and easy for students to understand.
3. The Student Ownership Rubric Template
Student self-assessment is a powerful strategy to help students reflect on their learning and progress.
Research shows that when students are able to communicate their own learning, they take greater ownership of their education and become more invested in their own success.
By using rubrics that require students to self assess, you can gather valuable information and insight into where a student is at in their learning.
Participating in self assessment allows students to reflect and consider how they meet the criteria or expectations of a task or assignment, rather than the ownership being on the teacher to tell them where they are at.
What I love about rubric templates that force students to self assess, is that it forces them to slow down and pay attention to the criteria, which results in a better understanding of the expectations and standards for a particular assignment or task.
Using a self assessment rubric template, your students must take ownership to identify what they need to work on to meet the expectations.
In addition, self-assessment can help students to monitor their own progress over time. This is especially important if you have gradeless assessment practices in your classroom.
I hand out a sheet of sentence stems and writing helpers to students to support them in communicating their own areas of strength and areas for improvement.
4. The Next Steps Rubric Template
Ideally, rubric templates should provide space for students to communicate their goals for the future, this is called feedforward.
"When we give feedforward, instead of rating and judging a person’s performance in the past, we focus on their development in the future"
Making goals for learning is essential for students because it allows them to track their progress, set expectations, and stay motivated.
By having a goal in mind, students can better gauge how well their skills are developing and what areas they need to continue to work on.
Additionally, setting goals gives students something to strive for and keeps them motivated to continue learning.
Finally, communicating one achievable goal can help students focus on the one specific thing they can improve next time.
Carley 📚 Teacher Author @ Visual Thinking Classroom
B.A., B.Ed., Graduate Certificate in Teacher Librarianship // carley@visualthinkingclassroom.com
