One of my biggest pet peeves used to be writing rubrics and reviewing them with students. After spending hours agonizing over just the right language, we would read through the document together, line after excruciating line. Once the bell rang for dismissal, my frustration and disappointment would quickly set in. Many of my students would leave the rubrics on their desks or the floor as they shuffled out of class. And there I would stand, alone in my room, my text-bloated masterpiece scattered like confetti. I felt pretty exhausted by this cycle, and it made me wonder:
How would my students create great work if they didn’t care about the rubric?
How can students get involved with the creation of the rubric? I’m tired of writing these by myself!
After having enough of this repeating scenario, I discovered a strategy that shares more ownership: the co-constructed rubric. This approach not only helped me with my rubric irritations, but it also helped shift the culture of my classroom. If you’d like to reshape your rubric approach, the key steps below will serve as a guide to gain clarity around quality while amplifying student voice.
Before we begin, a few suggestions:
This process is flexible, so consider how you might personalize and adapt this process to meet the needs of your learners.
Be sure to check out the “Rubric Co-Construction in Practice” sections for a real-life example of one teacher using this process. This section aims to provide additional clarity and a visual component to accompany the rubric co-construction process.
This blog post comes with some free tools to assist you, so please read to the end for access to them.
Initial Preparation
Before you officially begin the process of co-constructing a rubric with your students, be sure to introduce the project expectations and the associated learning goals. You may also briefly review the major product for which the rubric will be developed. If students have little experience with rubrics, you might consider what type of preparation they’ll need to participate in this process effectively. Once you’ve provided this foundational information, organize students into small learning teams and proceed to the first step.
Step #1: Analyze Sample Products
Provide time for student teams to examine various product samples that represent different levels of quality. As students review and discuss, encourage them to sort the products into the following categories:
At Standard: The product includes all of the features that meet the project's learning goals and quality expectations, and only minimal revisions might be needed.
Developing: The product includes several features that meet the project's learning goals and quality expectations, but more revisions are needed.
Beginning: The product needs a significant amount of revisions to meet the project's learning goals and quality expectations.
Once teams have sorted their samples, facilitate a discussion that allows each team to explain and justify the reasoning behind their rankings.
As you prepare students for this step, consider the following:
 | Rubric Co-Construction in Practice Remember that products from the real world can serve as samples for students to examine. A high school history teacher designed a project (The History Website Project) that challenged students to create engaging and informational websites that highlighted the key events from World War II. Not having any previous examples of student work to share (this was a newly created project), the teacher decided to have students review historical and other general websites from a list that the teacher prepared in advance of this step |
Step #2: Write Quality Characteristics for an At Standard Product
Once teams have sorted and shared their rankings, instruct them to focus on the product samples that they identified as At Standard. Then, allow teams to brainstorm an extensive list of characteristics that make the At Standard product samples such high quality. You can use the framing question below to initiate their conversations:
What makes a (insert product) superior?
Be sure to encourage teams to list as many quality characteristics as possible (see the “Rubric Co-Construction in Practice” section below, for example, quality characteristics). Once teams have generated their list, provide a process for student teams to share out some of the qualities they listed.
As you prepare students for this step, consider the following:
 | Rubric Co-Construction in Practice Consider creating a starter list of quality characteristics to scaffold student understanding and to initiate their team discussions. Let’s return to The History Website Project and review some of the examples the teacher provided to get team conversations started:
Once students saw a few ideas on how to use quality characteristics to describe a superior product, student teams were able to generate extensive lists to share. |
Step #3: Develop a Criteria List
This step aims to narrow and refine their initial brainstorming into a more concise criteria list that explicitly includes the learning goals. Ensure that each team has a list of the learning goals that you previously reviewed before officially starting the rubric co-construction process. We want to keep these at the forefront during this step.
Have teams organize their list of quality characteristics into key criteria (categories) for a high-quality product. Students will need support with organizing quality characteristics into criteria, so you consider providing a process for how to do this (see the “Rubric Co-Construction in Practice” section below for one teacher’s approach).
Invite each team to share their criteria list with the whole group. During this time, you can chart these in a highly visible way to all students. As a class, collectively determine which criteria are most important and can be generally agreed upon by everyone. You may need to interject at times to ensure the learning goals are being featured in this criteria list. You may need to remind students that co-constructing a rubric is a collaborative effort, and your perspective should be represented.
As you prepare students for this step, consider the following:
 | Rubric Co-Construction in Practice Using The History Website Project again as a reference, let’s unpack a few key strategies that were employed during this step:
Curious about what the final criteria list was for The History Website Project? Click here to see. |
Step #4: Develop Criteria Descriptors & Final Draft
You might decide to end the rubric co-construction process after Step #3 and use the final criteria list as a guide to developing criteria descriptors on your own. If you decide to involve students in this step, you can assign each team to work on one criterion from the finalized list that was developed in the previous step. You will most likely have more teams than criteria, but you can assign multiple teams to the same criteria, and they can later compare and synthesize their results.
Each student team will write descriptors that describe the differences across the performance levels (Beginner, Developing, At Standard). While teams collaborate, you can create a blank rubric template on chart paper or any other way that will be visible to students. As teams share out the descriptors for their assigned criteria, you can add keywords and phrases that are mentioned to help fill in the areas for all the levels.
After this activity, you can synthesize the criteria descriptors students shared and create a final draft on your own time. During the next class session, you can review the final draft with students and clarify any questions that emerge.
As you prepare students for this step, consider the following:
 | Rubric Co-Construction in Practice Let’s go back to The History Website Project to glean a few ideas:
The teacher used an electronic document to collect criteria descriptors as teams shared out. For example, you can see the descriptors that students shared, and the teacher noted for the Website Design criteria here. |
The Final Word & Some Free Stuff!
The best way to foster rubric ownership is to include students in creating them, so think about how you might leverage the four steps above to increase student voice and clarity around achievement. After all, success in the classroom shouldn’t be a mystery.
It may not go perfectly on your first attempt, and that’s okay. This process is not about perfection. It’s about reflection:
What were your key wins?
How would you refine the process for future use?
How did this process amplify student voice and provide clarity around achievement?
Did the cultural temperature change in the classroom?
Each round of facilitation and reflection will get you closer and closer to your goals.
Free Support Tools “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint Exupéry Let us help you plan for successful facilitation of this rubric co-construction process with a few free tools:
Rubric Co-Construction Checklist: As you facilitate this process, you may want a more concise checklist to keep you on track. Click here for a checklist that you can use to keep things simple. |
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