“Teaching with Rubrics” – Andrade

This article was a good review for me about the reasons to use rubrics. I was reminded that rubrics serve as a concrete way to assess student achievement in a variety of areas, including writing. Good rubrics “orient us toward our goals as a teacher.” (pg. 27) They are evaluation tools to help us see the areas where our students succeed, excel, and need improvement.
I learned about the function of different types of rubrics, such as scoring rubrics for assigning grades and instructional rubrics when we wish to include the students in the design and implementation of the rubric. Rubrics help us give our students informative feedback on what they need to improve, and what is working.
Rubrics often need explanation, especially to students. Students may need practice with rubrics before using one to score assignments. Rubrics should be designed with reliability and validity in mind and also aligned with the standards for the curriculum being taught.
I do not have much experience with using rubrics at the Kindergarten level. There are assessments and other concrete pieces that I use for grading, but developing a rubric for writing would be a very useful tool when doing grades each quarter. I should take the time to create or find a rubric for my emergent writers in Kindergarten.