Planning a Rubric Assessment

In this final part of our workshop, you will create your own rubrics to assess reading activities that you're planning for your new students in September.

Assessing writings, projects, and presentations, however, takes time. A good solution is to invite your students to participate in the assessment process by using your rubrics to evaluate their own work.

Here are some tips for creating reading comprehension assessments.

 

1. Select the Reading Material
Look for an interesting story or article in a magazine or anthology suitable for students at your grade level. Be sure to make a copy of the story for each student. Here are a few good magazine resources.
  • Scholastic News
  • Storyworks
  • Junior Scholastic
  • New York Times Upfront
  • The Scope
  • Action
  • Choices
 

 

2. Create the Assessment Task
Plan a task that will require your students to analyze the story or article. Determine the activity your rubric will assess.

  • story analysis
  • character analysis
  • book reports
  • artistic book projects (dioramas, models, drawings...)
  • book presentations
  • reading journals
  • small-group book discussions
  • content-area reports, projects or presentations: science, history, geography, government, math, health, other

Define the specific elements you will assess and what a high-level performance would look like.

  

 

3. Determine Evaluation Criteria
How many levels of achievement will your rubric show? (Usually three or four)

Use the following guide to identify different levels of achievement.

The key elements are evident:		 Scoring Levels
to a high degree  ----------------------------------- 4 points
to a satisfactory degree  ------------------------ 3 points
to a limited degree  ------------------------------- 2 points
few key elements are developed (or errors in mechanics and conventions interfere with the scorer's ability to understand the writing.) ---------- 1 point
 

Once you get to school in September, here's what to do:

1. Explain Your Assessment Criteria
Before your students they begin to write, show them the rubric you'll use for assessing their performance.

2. Provide a Graphic Organizer
Give your students a graphic organizer to help them plan the information they will need to include in their writing. Here are some examples.

3. Print out and use this rubric creation tool to continue to develop rubrics for assignments throughout the year.