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4 General Rubrics for Fundamental Skills

General rubrics are particularly useful for fundamental skills that develop over time. Writing and mathematics problem solving are two examples. This chapter begins by describing general rubrics for these skills. In both cases, the disciplines have agreed on the skills involved. In writing, the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics have become widely accepted as clear statements of what good writing looks like. More recently, agree‑ ment has begun to converge in the field of mathematics on what good problem solving looks like, and although there are many math problem‑solving rubrics, they tend to be more alike than different. Generally accepted criteria for mathematics problem solv‑ ing have included strategic knowledge and mathematical communication since at least 1989, when the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards (NCTM, 1989) emphasized these skills as being on a par with mathematical knowledge.

The chapter ends by describing general rubrics for report writing and creativity that I have developed. These are important school‑based skills, and I have noticed that often rubrics for these skills are wanting. For example, “creativity” rubrics are often about artistic presentation rather than true creative accomplishment. I welcome comments, suggestions, and additional examples from readers.

Brookhart, Susan M.. How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading, Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/amridge/detail.action?docID=1123215. Created from amridge on 2022-02-20 05:05:47.

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General Rubrics for Fundamental Skills | 41

Writing: the 6+1 trait Writing rubrics

For decades, the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics have been widely used by teachers, schools, districts, and states. They have become a standard way to look at student writing.

Evidence of effectiveness

A theme of this chapter is that when rubrics clearly characterize what student work should look like, instruction, assessment, and learning improve. For the 6+1 Trait Writ‑ ing rubrics, expert opinion and research bear this out. These rubrics have changed the teaching and learning of writing all across the country.

I asked Judy Arter, a professional developer, author, and researcher who has done extensive work with the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics, to comment on this notion that clear rubrics help with teaching and learning and that the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics are per‑ haps the most widely known example of that. Here is her reply (personal communica‑ tion, November 21, 2011):

I agree that 6+1 Traits transformed not only the way we think about writ‑ ing, but also the way we think about classroom assessment. It certainly changed the way I have viewed assessment. In 1980 people were saying, “We can’t assess writing, it’s too individualistic.” Then it was math problem solving. Now people are saying, “Of course we can assess writing and math problem solving, but we can’t assess critical thinking.” All it takes is a group of people that try to define, in writing, what good ________ looks like, try it out repeatedly, revise it repeatedly, get examples, etc. The more we do that, especially with learning objectives that are slippery and hard to define, the better off we’ll be.

Jan Chappuis, director of the Pearson Assessment Training Institute, says she felt she learned how to teach writing when she went through the Puget Sound Writing Program in the early 1980s. Although she found the writing process transformational for her, there were still problems when it came to conferencing with students and guiding their revisions (personal communication, December 19, 2011). She says:

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42 | How to Create and Use Rubrics

What I believe the 6+1 Trait rubrics did was take what individual teachers did and put it all together, not just responding to one piece here and one piece there, and put it together to define the domain of writing. It was the first time I’d seen everything I was trying to teach about writing [in one place]. As a guide for teaching, and as a guide for students as they are responding to other students’ writing—what do I want feedback on? The 6+1 Trait rubrics really did a wonderful job of filling all those needs, in a way that felt more rigorous, and less idiosyncratic.

Research bears out the experience of Judy Arter, Jan Chappuis, and many teachers, schools, and districts: The 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics clarify the qualities of writing and make it easier to teach and learn. A recent federally funded study (Coe, Hanita, Nish‑ ioka, & Smiley, 2011) included 196 teachers and more than 4,000 students in 74 schools in Oregon. The researchers compared posttest essay scores of students of teachers who did and did not have professional development in the 6+1 Trait Writing model. They controlled for students’ previous writing performance and school characteristics (pov‑ erty level, average hours of writing practice, along with teacher experience in general and in teaching writing) and used a statistical model that acknowledged students were clustered within schools.

This state‑of‑the‑art statistical analysis indicated that using the 6+1 Trait Writing model significantly increased student writing scores, with an estimated effect size of 0.109, a small but stable effect. Students improved significantly in three of the six traits (Organization, Voice, and Word Choice). In the other three traits (Ideas, Sentence Flu‑ ency, and Conventions), performance improved but not enough to be statistically signifi‑ cant. This study used more sophisticated research methods than two previous studies of the 6+1 Trait Writing model, one of which found improvement (Arter, Spandel, Culham, & Pollard, 1994) and one of which did not (Kozlow & Bellamy, 2004).

Criteria and levels of performance

The 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics were developed in the 1980s by teachers working with the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, now Education Northwest (education‑ northwest.org). Identifying the six traits was a large part of that work. The six (plus one) traits are the following:

• Ideas • Organization

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• Voice • Word Choice • Sentence Fluency • Conventions • (Presentation)

The “plus one” criterion, Presentation, is used when presenting a polished, published written product is part of what students are intended to learn.

Originally, the criteria had five performance levels. A more recent version with six performance levels, which also can be divided according to Proficient/Not Proficient, has been developed. Appendix A shows the six‑point rubrics for grades 3 through 12. Notice that each element in the performance description is listed in its own lettered row, making it easy to see the parallels in the descriptions across levels and also making it easier for students to see how to engineer improvement on a particular trait in their writing.

Education Northwest has also prepared a version of the six‑point 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics for K–2 students. The K–2 version includes examples of student work as part of the performance‑level descriptions. Appendix B presents this version of the rubrics.

Writing as a performance domain

If you are not familiar with the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics, I suggest you read them first and then try to apply them to a set of student work. You will see how nicely these rubrics focus your review of student work on the substance of students’ writing and how the students harnessed language to convey that substance.

If your students are not familiar with the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics, it’s a good idea to introduce them one at a time (for example, the rubric for Ideas), using examples of work at each level as well as the rubrics themselves (Arter et al., 1994). Jan Chappuis points out that using the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics allows teachers of writing to go beyond for‑ mulaic teaching of writing and really delve into the heart of it (personal communication, December 19, 2011):

When they are giving kids 5 points for this and 5 points for that, often the teachers’ vision of quality [writing] is not clear enough. This problem is the one the 6 Traits solve so beautifully. . . . The two things going on in. . . Ideas are focus and details. How do I teach kids lessons on what is a narrow focus? No amount of teaching how to write a topic sentence and supporting details

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44 | How to Create and Use Rubrics

will get you there. When you teach main idea, this is what you’re getting at, but a better way is to work on focus and support. . . . Give them tightly focused topics first, teach them how to select details that are interesting and important, give them mini‑lessons. . . . What are the main ideas inside each trait, then you teach to those pieces, you ask students to self‑assess on those pieces. When a student’s piece is an organizational mess, often the problem is focus. I’ve found the 6 Traits not only good for assessing and teaching . . . but also how to diagnose problems and where to start.

Notice that each of the six traits (seven, if you count Presentation) employs a key question to focus students and teachers on the meaning of the trait, and then four to six elements identifying characteristics to look for in the writing. For clarity, the elements are lettered. The elements are not the traits (or criteria, in the language I have been using in this book). The elements are “look‑fors”: indicators or pointers toward the criteria.

For example, the key question for the Ideas trait is “Does the writer stay focused and share original and fresh information or perspective on the topic?” The rubric identi‑ fies six elements to look for in the writing: (a) a narrow topic, (b) strong support for that topic, (c) relevant details, (d) original ideas based on the author’s own experience, (e) readers’ questions being answered, and (f) author helping readers make connections with the writing. Each of these elements could support generating examples, targeted instruction, student practice using the writing process, self‑assessment, peer assess‑ ment, and teacher feedback.

Examples for designing effective rubrics

The 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics, in my opinion, did more than revolutionize the teach‑ ing and learning of writing. They showed people what this new tool called “rubrics” could and should do.

The 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics are instructive for designing other kinds of rubrics because they illustrate good ways around the two main pitfalls that are so easy for writ‑ ers of rubrics to fall into. First, they show how to avoid counting and other formulaic approaches to description. Second, they show how to avoid narrow description that leaves room for only one kind of good answer, and instead allow for multiple routes to quality work. The antidote to both of these pitfalls is to describe what the work should accomplish. The 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics do this by using a key question for each trait and, for each element, describing the effect that successful work has on the reader.

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General Rubrics for Fundamental Skills | 45

Probably my favorite example of that is how these rubrics show teachers and other educators another way to evaluate grammar besides counting errors. In the Conventions trait, grammar per se is not the issue. Rather, as the key question shows, the issue is how much editing would be needed for readers to be able to understand the meaning the writer is trying to communicate. Even for Exceptional (Level 6) performance, “Author uses standard writing conventions effectively to enhance readability; errors are few and only minor editing is needed to publish.” The desired quality is not “zero errors,” but rather “readable.”

Another favorite example of mine is how the Organization trait allows for multiple routes to quality work. Many elementary teachers instruct their students in paragraph writing with a formulaic approach. Students start with a topic sentence, list three supporting details, and end with a concluding sentence. This is not a bad protocol, but it is also not the only way to write an organized paragraph. Similarly, some high school writing instruction teaches a five‑para‑ graph essay format. Again, this is not a bad protocol, but it is not the only approach. The key question for the Organization trait again is reading for meaning: “Does the organiza‑ tional structure enhance the ideas and make the piece easier to understand?”

Mathematics problem solving

Mathematics teachers seem to agree on the qualities of effective mathematics problem solving. Many mathematics problem‑solving rubrics now use three dimen‑ sions: Mathematical Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge, Strategic Knowledge, and Mathematical Communication. Although you will still find many different mathemat‑ ics problem‑solving rubrics, almost all of them use these dimensions, sometimes with mathematical conceptual and procedural knowledge assessed as separate criteria. These dimensions are found in rubrics for research, for state test programs, and for the classroom.

Lane, Liu, Ankenmann, and Stone (1996) used rubrics for research on the assess‑ ment of mathematical problem solving that were based, in part, on rubrics used for a state testing program at the time (California State Department of Education, 1989). Attributes they considered under each criterion included the following:

Self-ReflectIon

Do you use the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics in your

teaching? Did you learn to write using the 6+1

Trait Writing rubrics when you were in school?

What has been your experience with them?

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46 | How to Create and Use Rubrics

• Mathematical knowledge: Understanding the problem’s mathematical concepts and principles, using mathematical terminology and notation, execution of algorithms, and calculation accuracy.

• Strategic knowledge: Use of relevant outside information, identifying elements of the problem and their relationships, use of a solution process, and whether that process is systematic and complete.

• Mathematical communication: Completeness of response, clarity of explanations and descriptions, appropriateness of diagrams, communication to audience, and soundness (logic and support) of arguments.

Renee Parker (Parker & Breyfogle, 2011) found the same elements were important in teaching 3rd graders how to solve problems and write about them in ways that would prepare them to do well on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). Using problems based on released items from the PSSA and a student‑friendly rubric she found on the Illinois State Department of Education website, she developed a prob‑ lem set and associated rubric. Ms. Parker adapted the Illinois rubric to be even more appropriate for 3rd graders. She used nouns instead of pronouns (for example, “the problem” instead of “it”), made sure all verbs were simple and active, and changed some words to match the language of elementary mathematics instruction. Parker and Brey‑ fogle’s student‑friendly rubric for elementary mathematics problem solving is shown in Figure 4.1. This rubric assessed the same problem‑solving elements—mathematics concepts, planning and using strategies, and explaining mathematics work in writing— as did Lane and her colleagues; as did California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois; and, in fact, as do many other schools, districts, and states too numerous to cite here.

Parker and Breyfogle titled their project “Learning to Write About Mathematics.” Ms. Parker had embarked on her project because, although her students could solve problems, they had trouble explaining their reasoning. Mathematical communication was the area in which her students needed to improve the most, and, in fact, they did just that. By the end of five weeks, average and below‑average students were able to explain their reasoning as well as her above‑average students. The rubric itself didn’t do the trick. What did it was using the rubric in a series of class activities and individual conferences, helping the students talk about the criteria and how their work and others’ work met them.

We’ll talk more about how Ms. Parker used the rubric in Chapter 10. The purpose for showing it in this chapter is to analyze its construction. As noted, this rubric is stu‑ dent friendly. It is written from the students’ point of view, using first person, in language the students can understand. It is a great example of how “student‑friendly language”

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General Rubrics for Fundamental Skills | 47

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48 | How to Create and Use Rubrics

does not mean simply easy vocabulary. It means that the descriptions are expressed in the manner that students would think about their work. Thus student‑friendly language is not simply a matter of writing style; it’s also about students’ ways of thinking.

Probably the most important illustration in this rubric of expressing thinking from the students’ point of view is in the descriptions of levels of performance for the Showing Math Knowledge criterion. Mathematics problem‑solving rubrics written for adults describe students’ work in terms like “shows understanding of mathematical concepts and principles,” “uses appropriate terms and notations,” and “executes algorithms completely and correctly.” But you can’t ask students to evaluate their own “understand‑ ing of mathematical concepts and principles.” That is a judgment that must be made by an external observer. In this student‑friendly rubric, the concept of understanding has been flipped over, from what the adult would observe to what the student would do. So the language became “I figure out . . . .” Student understanding of mathematical concepts and principles is exhibited in the course of “figuring out” the solution to the problem.

The other two criteria, Using Problem‑Solving Strategies and Writing an Explanation, similarly use this flipping principle, describing not what an adult would observe but what a student would do. For example, “I use all the important information . . .” is what a student does when an adult would conclude that the student identified all the impor‑ tant elements of a problem. In these two criteria, incorporating how students would think, as well as

speak, about their work into student‑friendly language is not quite as obvious as for the knowledge criterion, but it’s there nonetheless.

Writing reports

Written reports are important assignments in many different subject areas. Typi‑ cally the teacher’s intention is for the students to learn some facts and concepts about the topic, analyze or process the material so that it answers a question or in some way becomes a property of the student and not just a regurgitation of sources, and com‑ municate the results in the format of a term paper or report. That means the content, the thinking, and the report writing are all important criteria. The rubric in Figure 4.2 reflects these criteria.

Self-ReflectIon

If you are an elementary school teacher, how can

you envision using the Math Problem-Solving

Rubric in your classroom? If you teach secondary

school mathematics, how might you adapt this

rubric for your students?

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50 | How to Create and Use Rubrics

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This rubric also reflects changes in my own thinking about assessing term papers and written reports (Brookhart, 1993). I have been persuaded in my own work with teachers and students, and by advances in the field shown in the work of colleagues (Arter & Chappuis, 2006), that general rubrics, used repeatedly for assessing similar skills, help students learn.

General analytic rubrics that define for students what the criteria are for good report writing as an overall skill, and that focus students on descriptions of quality of work for those criteria, are useful not only for grading but also for learning. As students use these rubrics on several different reports, they learn to focus on the elements of content (Do I have a thesis? Do I support it with detailed, accurate, relevant material? Did I get the material from appropriate sources?), reasoning and evidence (Did I write logically? Is it clear how my details support my main points? Can a reader follow my reasoning?), and clarity (Did I write clearly?).

Strategies for getting students to use rubrics to learn and to monitor their learning are shared in Chapters 9 and 10. Strategies for using rubrics for grading are presented in Chapter 11, although here I would foreshadow that discussion by noting that for some written reports the Content criterion might count double. For now, it is sufficient to see how the descriptions in these rubrics are general and would bear up under repeated use for a fundamental skill such as report writing.

creativity

Creativity is a general skill that is often incorporated as one of the criteria in task‑ based rubrics for all sorts of written, oral, and graphic student products. “Wait!” you say. “How can you assess creativity? Isn’t creativity some ineffable quality, some inspiration that just springs from the mind in a flash of insight?” Actually, not so. Creative people do have flashes of insight, but their creative processes are not different in kind from “nor‑ mal” thinking. Creativity is the exceptional use of “familiar mental operations such as remembering, understanding, and recognizing” (Perkins, 1981, p. 274). If we can name the sorts of things that creative students do, we can teach creativity and assess it. And we need to do a better job of that than often happens.

Creativity is sometimes misinterpreted as a description of student work that is visu‑ ally interesting or persuasive or exciting (Brookhart, 2010). If this is the case, it is much better to call the criterion what it is—visual attractiveness, persuasiveness, or whatever. A pretty cover on a report may be “creative,” but it is much more likely to be simply a

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52 | How to Create and Use Rubrics

good use of media (hand lettering and coloring or computer clip art, perhaps), more akin to a visual arts skill than creativity. Once the criterion is appropriately named, it may drop off the list because it becomes clear that it is not really related to the learning outcomes of interest.

I have seen creativity criteria in rubrics that intended to assess originality, and that’s closer to the mark. The top category for a Creativity/Originality criterion describes work as very original, creative, inventive, imaginative, unique, and so on. The levels below devolve from that, with work described as using other people’s ideas, like every‑ one else’s, not very imaginative, and the like. Such rubrics work for me, and they can work for students and teachers to the degree that they have good examples to show what “original” means. These would be examples not for students to emulate the con‑ tent, but for them to emulate the way in which the content stands out from others.

However, there is more to creativity than just originality, and as we have seen in the 6+1 Trait Writing rubrics, the more clearly you define the criteria, the more helpful you will be to students. If you ask, “What do creative students do?” the answer can be sum‑ marized into four categories. Creative students do the following:

• Recognize the importance of a deep knowledge base and continually work to learn new things.

• Are open to new ideas and actively seek them out. • Find source material in a wide variety of media, people, and events. • Organize and reorganize ideas into different categories or combinations

and then evaluate whether the results are interesting, new, or helpful. • Use trial and error if they are not sure how to proceed, viewing failure

as opportunity to learn. (Brookhart, 2010, pp. 128–129)

If these are the characteristics of creative students, then these characteristics should be evident in their work. Excluding the last one—which is more of a personal trait than something that would result in evidence in any one specific piece of work—we can derive four criteria for creative work:

• Depth and quality of ideas • Variety of sources • Organization and combination of ideas • Originality of contribution

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Figure 4.3 organizes these criteria into an analytic rubric. I have written the descrip‑ tions of performance along a continuum that could be labeled 4, 3, 2, 1, with 3 being the Proficient level. Because “proficient at creativity” doesn’t sound right, I have labeled the levels Very Creative, Creative, Ordinary/Routine, and Imitative. Although no one wants to be “imitative,” there are times when ordinary work is appropriate. For assignments and assessments where this is the case, my advice is don’t ask for creative work and don’t use a rubric (or any other means) to assess it.

Many major assignments already have analytic rubrics associated with them. In that situation, adding four more rubric scales to the assessment might be a bit much. Figure 4.4 organizes the same four criteria for creativity— Ideas, Sources, Organization/Combination, and Originality—into one holistic rubric for creativity. Note that there are still four criteria; it’s just that they are considered simultaneously. So although the rubric in Figure 4.4 looks one‑dimensional, it’s very different from a creativity scale that lists, for example, “very creative, creative, not creative,” or something like that. And although you might use the holistic rubric in Figure 4.4 for grading, the analytic version in Figure 4.3 would be better for teaching and learning.

Summing up

This chapter had two main purposes. The first was to make the case for using general, analytic rubrics for fundamental skills. General, analytic rubrics that are worth students’ time and effort are the antithesis of the task‑based, “directions”‑style rubrics that count things rather than evaluate quality. General, analytic rubrics are good for learning as well as for grading.

The second purpose was to show several wonderful examples. Each of them illus‑ trates the two defining characteristics of rubrics: appropriate criteria and, for each cri‑ terion, descriptions of performance along a continuum of quality. Their use of language and their treatment of both the criteria and performance‑level descriptions will help you as you prepare your own criteria and performance‑level descriptions. Most important,

Self-ReflectIon

Do you use rubrics for written reports or for cre-

ativity in your teaching? What has been your expe-

rience with them? How does that experience help

you interpret the information about rubrics for

written reports and for creativity in this chapter?

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