You Teach What You Grade
What you grade is what you’ll teach. Recently I saw a scoring tool, a rubric, that consisted of these items:
- Sentences start with a capital letter.
- Sentences end with punctuation.
- The first line is indented.
- Spelling is correct.
What will that teacher focus her instruction on? Clearly, it will be the items on the rubric. But what is the teacher NOT assessing (and therefore probably not teaching)? Even at the kindergarten level, students should be expressing an idea, elaborating a bit, using some appropriate language and vocabulary, and showing some beginning attempts at organization.
Use a Rubric that Reflects High Standards
I worked with a kindergarten teacher once who wanted to integrate more writing into her science and social studies topics. After students read books and watch video clips about dinosaurs, she asked them to write about their favorite dinosaur. Compare these 2 answers:
Sample 1: My favrit dinosr is a T rx. It wuz scree. It had big teet. It at uthr dinosrs. (My favorite dinosaur is a T Rex. It was scary. It had big teeth. It ate other dinosaurs.)
Sample 2: I like dinosaurs. They are cool.
With an ineffective rubric, the second sample might be scored higher than the first, even though the first sample has a topic sentence (organization), elaboration (teeth, eats other dinosaurs) and vocabulary (T Rex). The second sample has correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation, but doesn’t address the assignment, and has no elaboration or vocabulary.
Examples of Using Rubrics to Assign Grades
- Pretend that you circle the cells in the “B” row for a student paper. Clearly, that student will earn a B (or somewhere between 80% and 89%) depending on your judgement of how weak or strong each category is within the B row. Probably, the score will be 85%,
| Organization and focus | Development | Sentence Structure and Clarity | Vocabulary and Language Use | Mechanics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A (90-100) | |||||
| B (80-89) | 🙂 | 🙂 | 🙂 | 🙂 | 🙂 |
| C (70-79) | |||||
| D (60-69) | |||||
| F (59 and below |
- Now imagine that the student has 4 cells in the B row, and 1 in the A row. The student will still earn a B, but the A will make it a higher B, say 87 or 88%.
| Organization and focus | Development | Sentence Structure and Clarity | Vocabulary and Language Use | Mechanics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A (90-100) | 🙂 | ||||
| B (80-89) | 🙂 | 🙂 | 🙂 | 🙂 | |
| C (70-79) | |||||
| D (60-69) | |||||
| F (59 and below |
- How about 3 items in the B row, one in the A row, and 1 in the C row? It’s still a B, probably 85%, unless you judge the A or the C to be much stronger or weaker. For example, if the student earned an A under “Development” and a C under Mechanics, I might lean toward a higher B score overall.
| Organization and focus | Development | Sentence Structure and Clarity | Vocabulary and Language Use | Mechanics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A (90-100) | 🙂 | ||||
| B (80-89) | 🙂 | 🙂 | 🙂 | ||
| C (70-79) | 🙂 | ||||
| D (60-69) | |||||
| F (59 and below |
- How about 3 in the B row, and 2 in the C row? It’s still a B, but a low B, maybe 80 or 81%
| Organization and focus | Development | Sentence Structure and Clarity | Vocabulary and Language Use | Mechanics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A (90-100) | |||||
| B (80-89) | 🙂 | 🙂 | 🙂 | ||
| C (70-79) | 🙂 | 🙂 | |||
| D (60-69) | |||||
| F (59 and below |
- Finally, how about 2 in the B row and 3 in the C row? Now the score is in the C range, but a high C, maybe 78%.
| Organization and focus | Development | Sentence Structure and Clarity | Vocabulary and Language Use | Mechanics | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A (90-100) | |||||
| B (80-89) | 🙂 | 🙂 | |||
| C (70-79) | 🙂 | 🙂 | 🙂 | ||
| D (60-69) | |||||
| F (59 and below |
Advantages of Using this Type of Rubric
- There’s no further math to do. Assign the row for each attribute, then assign your grade.
- This is a tool to use to talk to parents, teachers, and administrators about how you grade writing.
Tips
- It’s difficult for students to earn an A or an F. Most grades, especially at the beginning of the year, will fall into the B, C, D categories.
- It’s wise to collect anchor papers as your teaching career progresses. If a parent questions your judgement, and you have an A paper, a B paper, and so on from the previous year, sharing these examples (anonymously, of course) with parents often helps them understand why their student got the grade you assigned.
- As you use the rubric you’ve chosen, you’ll increase in speed and confidence.
- As you use the rubric, notice where descriptors don’t work for you. Make adjustments as needed.
You can see the narrative writing rubrics I’ve developed for grades 3-5 and 6-8 in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.