I recently finished a marathon of grading portfolios, and grading revised portfolios for my students. It’s a stressful and time that is busy but one thing I’m very happy about may be the method in which my use of holistic rubrics allows me to focus this grading work on student growth in reading, writing and thinking.
A couple of years ago I used analytical rubrics.
These are the rubrics that function a lot more like a checklist, where students can get 10 points due to their thesis statement, and get 7 points then with their utilization of evidence. A holistic rubric however, generally describes what an item (such as for example an essay, analysis paragraph etc.)
looks like at each level, such as this example from my “Analysis Writing” rubric:
- Student identifies details which are relevant to the text overall 1 and that clearly connect with one another, even though connection might be less interesting or clear than in the Honor Roll level.
- Student accurately describes the device( that is literary) (aka “writer’s moves”) discussed
- Student clearly and accurately describes a significant idea through the text overall 1 , although the >may not be a nuanced interpretation. However, the interpretation continues to be abstract, not clichйd.
- Student cites ev >attempts to make use of us into the most useful way
- Student completely explains the connections between details (ev >attempting to make use of words that are signal describe relationships between ideas
As the bullet points get this to rubric look a bit more “analytical,” the truth is that i take advantage of it in holistic way. We have just found that students fine it easier to grasp a rubric this is certainly broken up into pieces, in place of two long and complex sentences that describe essentially the idea that is same.
After making use of these rubrics for 2 years (with a few minor revisions in language) We have seen them help students grow far more than my analytical rubrics ever did, despite the fact that I don’t spend much time “teaching” the rubrics to my students. Let me reveal why I’m now such an admirer among these holistic rubrics and the way they are in fact facilitating the improvement of student writing in place of simply recording it.
1) Feedback, not grades, is the goal. Holistic rubrics support this. Through nearly all of a phrase I give students during my class a lot of feedback to their writing and feedback that is minimal grades. They could get a 100 out of 100 for simply completing an essay, even if it still needs a lot of development. Because my rubric is holistic and associated with terms like “Meet Expectations” in place of giving points for various areas of the writing, it is easier for students to understand how their first draft needs revision that is substantial order to “meet expectations” and even though their completion grade (which uses points instead) is 100/100.
2) Good writing and mediocre writing can have the same score on an rubric that is analytical. I’ve run into this dilemma some time time again.When I used analytical rubrics to grade essays I often unearthed that simple, formulaic writing with a 1-sentence thesis statement and some basic evidence with some bit of explanation often received exactly the same point value as writing where the student made a far more nuanced point, or used more interesting evidence that connected towards the thesis in interesting ways, or higher important developed right from the start to your end. Often it was due to the fact categories I measured were really and truly just parts of the essay: one category for thesis statement, one category for evidence, one category for reasoning, etc. With all these parts separated there is no simple method of assessing how well the writing flowed or was developed. Moreover it meant there clearly was no way that is good my analytical rubric there was no good way to recapture how students were taking chances, and important element of writing development.
3) Holistic rubrics are just better at assessing the real way that the elements of an essay come together. Once the essay that is wholeor any piece of writing) is described together it became easier for me personally to parse out what was strong and weak about student writing. Take a example that is recent I became giving students feedback about a pretty standard essay about the memoir Night. They needed to move up ion the rubric, I quickly realized that their reasoning and explanation of their evidence needed more work as I was reading student essays and considering what feedback. More specifically, students were basically paraphrasing their evidence instead of actually explaining how it supported their thesis. When I used to make use of analytical rubrics I would have thought this is an isolated problem within the “reasoning” section. However, because I was using a holistic rubric and looking during the essay more as a whole, I realized that an element of the reason the student reasoning was lacking was because their thesis statements were overly simplistic. When you yourself have an overly simplistic, obvious thesis statement it is hard to develop interesting reasoning because, really, what was their interesting to say? because of this holistic view I was able to give students feedback that helped them develop a stronger thesis and then revise their reasoning accordingly.
4) Last but not least, holistic rubrics make grading simpler and faster. You can find far fewer decisions to create about a student grade when they get one overall score in place of five or seven different scores for every part of a piece that is writing. Fewer decisions means faster grading. While I would want to tell you this faster grading leaves me with more time for personal pursuits, the reality is it simply leaves additional time for giving more meaningful feedback, give attention to trends I see in student writing by class, etc. I am able to make work more meaningful, and it certainly helps to make grading fun and enriching while I might not be able to escape work.
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