Rubrics provide clear criteria for evaluating a product or performance on a continuum of quality. Rubrics are not simply checklists with point distributions or lists of requirements. Well designed rubrics have the following in common: 1. They are task specific: The more specific a rubric is to a particular task, the more useful it is to the students and the teacher. The descriptors associated with the criteria should reference specific requirements of the assigned task and clearly describe the quality of work at each level on the rubric. The rubrics to the left are all posted as Word documents so that teachers can tailor them to a particular task. 2. They are accompanied by exemplars: The levels of quality described in the rubric need to be illustrated with models or exemplars. These anchor papers help both the students and the teacher to see and understand what quality work looks like as it is described in the rubric. These models or exemplars can come from past student work or the teacher can create a model to share with the class. 3. They are used throughout the instructional process: The criteria used to evaluate student work should be shared as the task is introduced to help students begin with the end in mind. Rubrics and models should also be referenced while the task is being completed to help students revise their work. They should also be used after the task is complete, not only to evaluate the product or performance, but also to engage students in reflection on the work they have produced. Ideally, students should be involved in the process of generating rubrics through the careful analysis of exemplars; by studying the models, students draw inferences about the criteria that are important to a successful product and then describe different levels of performance for each criterion.
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