Making Rubrics with Students

This summer at my school's Literacy.Next professional development I had the pleasure of sitting down with Angela Stockman and talked with her about rubrics and grades. What we discussed was student's anxiety around rubrics. That rubrics set expectations, but students rarely participate in the process. My conversation was clear: students need to have agency in rubric creation.

Compared to an ideal world, my rubric isn't quite as progressive as Angela Stockman. My current rubric for students isn't evolving or growing as we are moving through class (although I would like to get to that level eventually).

Instead, I set up the expectations of what a rubric is. I created a set of four stations with four boards labeled Not Yet | Beginning | Developing | Deepening. Each board was assigned a different category: Mechanics, Craft, Originality, etc.

Round 1: A Good Enough Start
For my first class, I put up the words, spent a brief time explaining each of the four stations, and sent students to work for 2 minutes at each board and rotating through them. What I liked was that students were excited to partake in the process. Students came up with ideas. They were active in creating the rubric, and their end product was good.

Was it mind blowing? Not really.

They had the right ideas though. The problem was students made the Deepening category super hard and the Developing category too basic. To me, Developing is still good, but it needs a little bit of work. It's the difference between using correct punctuation and using punctuation to emphasize an idea. It's the use of a simile instead of the simile showing the reader an idea that couldn't be conveyed else-wise.

Take a look:

Does it really look like 8 minutes of work collaborated on by 20+ students? Not really. Still, their ideas were solid and I could work with them. Consolidating them into an easy to understand rubric was simple.

Round 2: Learning to Describe the Details
Before sending my students off in the second class, I made sure we spent time talking about the difference between Not Yet | Beginning | Developing | Deepening. I let the students, in many respects, define the differences. We talked about numerical and letter values associated with each of the four criteria. The end result was a more thoughtful response. Afterwards, students reflected on the process, and felt (unanimously may I add) that their voice was heard.

Round 3: But What about My Freshmen?
At this point, I only did the exercise with juniors and seniors. For my freshmen, who are still learning to navigate space and work together, I had serious concerns. I spent more time talking about expectations of the different categories,  and we actually practiced a made up rubric together.

We talked about our reading time and what it looks like if we're Not Yet | Beginning | Developing | Deepening. Students were thoughtful in their responses saying a Not Yet in reading means you might not even be invested in a book, a Beginning reader uses the time but it takes them a while to hit the reading zone, the Developing reader engages immediately with the text and the Deepening Reader can make text to self connections. They said many other wonderful ideas in this time as well. The example and the model made it clear what they needed to do.

When it came to working at the stations, the process was wildly successful. Students went from station to station adding on (and adding on, and adding on). At some points, I really had to push them to the next station because they wanted to stay put and keep writing.

They too commented that not only did they feel that their voice was heard, but that they found it quite fun to move around and explore different ideas.

Big Takeaways:
What I love is that students feel engaged with the process. The more modeling and discussion around expectations, the greater the results (and in many ways, it's clear the freshmen had that). The stations worked perfectly and with our gorgeous new L-Space, it feels students had many different spaces and surfaces to work on.

What's Next:
More progression. I want to see students engage with the rubric process earlier on in their writing. They need to see the rubric in an alpha state, a beta state and then a launch state. I don't want the rubric to come just at the end or the beginning, but a progress of thoughts. I'm thinking that if I build it into the class right from the introduction of the assignment, then we can see what challenges we're facing and make a more appropriate rubric. I might also see gaps in my own teaching. It will certainly be a learning experience for everyone.

Daniel Valentin teaches American Wilderness, Ethics, and English 9 at Horace Greeley High School. He is currently reading Frankly in Love by David Yoon and listening to If Beale Street Could Talk. He wants his students to feel empowered through books. Follow him @DaValentinCCSD