How do we share rubrics?

Posted on October 10, 2017 by David Niguidula

Rubrics are now a common sight in classrooms; most teachers at this point use rubrics for at least some of their assessments. When they are used well, they can help students focus on the key parts of any assignment, and help them understand what it means to “meet” expectations.

Often, teachers create their rubrics in isolation, or do their own search for rubrics on the Internet. As a result, the language in a rubric can mean something different from one teacher to another within the same school — or even from one assignment to the next within the same class. This means that the feedback from one class might not mean the same thing as feedback in the next room over.

One way to handle this is for teachers to work together. But, it’s worth asking, “How do teachers share rubrics?” We’re not talking about just emailing a rubric from one person to another; we’re talking about sharing rubrics so that multiple teachers can use them.

The answer is to create schoolwide rubrics. There are a couple ways to do this:

1. You can look for common tasks and create rubrics that can be used any time that task comes up. For example, a school can create a “response to literature” rubric for a certain grade level. In one district, the 4th and 5th grade teachers agreed to a common rubric for these writing assignments; the rubric could be applied whether the student was reading The Phantom Toolbooth or Little House on the Prairie  or A Wrinkle in Time.
2. You can create common rows that can be used by teachers in different rubrics. For example, you can create a common rubric  row for “conventions,” dealing with spelling and grammar errors; teachers might agree to use this row for their writing assignments, even if the other rows in the rubric vary from teacher to teacher.

Richer Picture can help you with common rubrics; once a rubric (or a row) is entered into the system (and marked as “shared”), it can be used by any other teacher. Ultimately, this can help to provide some consistent feedback from teacher to teacher and from assignment to assignment.