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Did you ever get a bad score on an assignment, project, or essay and you didn't know why?

Did you look at the rubric for the assignment? No?

Understanding rubrics can help you get better marks 👇

Tom Cruise asks what

What's A Rubric?

Put simply, it's a scoring guide that teachers use to evaluate how well you met the objectives of a project or task.

In other words, did you learn what you were supposed to learn?

Rubrics take many shapes, but they often take the form of a matrix, like this one for a writing assignment:

Sample Rubric

  • Column 1 (Yellow): items (criteria or objectives) that need to be graded and sometimes the value of the grade (or "weighting").

  • Row 1 (Blue): scores from low to high (or high to low).

  • Cells (Green): describe the criteria for giving scores for what has (or has not) been done.

Quiz: Getting The Best Mark

Let's take a closer look at the example rubric above:

Rubric Content Line with descriptors 4 through 1 left to right. Looking at the rubric, you know that to get the top mark of 4, you must:

  • go in-depth

  • give details

  • give examples

  • show your subject knowledge

  • include a reference section

Quiz

What's the top score you would get for "content" if you forgot to add a reference section?

Why Do Teachers Use Them?

Good teachers use rubrics for a number of reasons...

🔎 Help make goals clear

📈 Help students improve

🏁 Make scoring easier and faster

💞 Make scoring fairer for all students

🔊 Make it easier to give feedback

🤕 Reduce grade disputes

Doc Brown from Back to the Future asks why

Did you know?

Many schools, school boards, and universities REQUIRE teachers to use rubrics for all of their assignments and some even require an approval process to make sure the rubric is a reliable and valid marking tool.

Ok, Teachers Use Rubrics But Why Do I Need Them?

Doing an assignment without a rubric is a bit like trying to kick a goal blindfolded.

A good rubric will:

👀 tell you what the teacher is looking for while scoring your work

💯 tell you what you need to do to get the top marks

✅ help you make sure you didn't forget anything

❓ show you why you scored the way you did

⭐ help you know how you can do better next time

Keep calm and use a rubric

👉👉 Getting into the habit of using a rubric will improve your work and therefore your scores! 👈👈

Take Action

Rubric with task and matrix

Next time you get an assignment, essay, or project:

License:

This Byte has been authored by

DG

Donald Glass

Corporate Trainer/ESL Instructor/Learning Designer

English

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