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Analytic Rubrics

The who, what, why, where, when, and how of an analytic rubrics.

WHO : Analytic rubrics are for  you  and  your students .

WHAT : An analytic rubric is a scoring tool that helps you identify the criteria that are relevant to the assessment and learning objectives. It is divided into components of the assignment contains a detailed description that clearly states the performance levels (unacceptable to acceptable) and allows you to assign points/grades/levels based on the students’ performance.

WHY: Rubrics help guide students when completing their assignments by giving the guidelines to follow. Students also know what you are looking for in an assignment, and this leads to fewer questions and more time engaged in the assessment and knowledge attainment.  Rubrics help you or your assistant grade assignments objectively from the first submission to the last. Rubrics returned to students with the assignment, give the students basic feedback by selecting the correct criteria they met.

WHERE:  Create a paper rubric or use the Canvas interactive grading rubric. Learn more about using Canvas Rubrics by selecting the following link  https://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/724129-how-do-i-add-a-rubric-to-an-assignment

WHEN : Share the analytic rubric before the assessment to share the criteria they must meet and to help guide them when completing the assignment. After the assignment has been completed, return the marked rubric with the assignment as a form of feedback.

HOW:  Watch the following video on Analytic Rubrics.

Optional Handouts: Blank rubric for the session (1)

Rubric Design Activity

Teaching Online: Course Design, Delivery, and Teaching Presence Copyright © by Analisa McMillan. All Rights Reserved.

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Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Fall 2022)
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Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper, single-point rubric, more examples:.

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

Rubric Design

Main navigation, articulating your assessment values.

Reading, commenting on, and then assigning a grade to a piece of student writing requires intense attention and difficult judgment calls. Some faculty dread “the stack.” Students may share the faculty’s dim view of writing assessment, perceiving it as highly subjective. They wonder why one faculty member values evidence and correctness before all else, while another seeks a vaguely defined originality.

Writing rubrics can help address the concerns of both faculty and students by making writing assessment more efficient, consistent, and public. Whether it is called a grading rubric, a grading sheet, or a scoring guide, a writing assignment rubric lists criteria by which the writing is graded.

Why create a writing rubric?

• It makes your tacit rhetorical knowledge explicit
• It articulates community- and discipline-specific standards of excellence
• It links the grade you give the assignment to the criteria
• It can make your grading more efficient, consistent, and fair as you can read and comment with your criteria in mind
• It can help you reverse engineer your course: once you have the rubrics created, you can align your readings, activities, and lectures with the rubrics to set your students up for success
• It can help your students produce writing that you look forward to reading

How to create a writing rubric

Create a rubric at the same time you create the assignment. It will help you explain to the students what your goals are for the assignment.

• Consider your purpose: do you need a rubric that addresses the standards for all the writing in the course? Or do you need to address the writing requirements and standards for just one assignment?  Task-specific rubrics are written to help teachers assess individual assignments or genres, whereas generic rubrics are written to help teachers assess multiple assignments.
• Begin by listing the important qualities of the writing that will be produced in response to a particular assignment. It may be helpful to have several examples of excellent versions of the assignment in front of you: what writing elements do they all have in common? Among other things, these may include features of the argument, such as a main claim or thesis; use and presentation of sources, including visuals; and formatting guidelines such as the requirement of a works cited.
• Then consider how the criteria will be weighted in grading. Perhaps all criteria are equally important, or perhaps there are two or three that all students must achieve to earn a passing grade. Decide what best fits the class and requirements of the assignment.

Consider involving students in Steps 2 and 3. A class session devoted to developing a rubric can provoke many important discussions about the ways the features of the language serve the purpose of the writing. And when students themselves work to describe the writing they are expected to produce, they are more likely to achieve it.

At this point, you will need to decide if you want to create a holistic or an analytic rubric. There is much debate about these two approaches to assessment.

Comparing Holistic and Analytic Rubrics

Holistic scoring .

Holistic scoring aims to rate overall proficiency in a given student writing sample. It is often used in large-scale writing program assessment and impromptu classroom writing for diagnostic purposes.

General tenets to holistic scoring:

• Responding to drafts is part of evaluation
• Responses do not focus on grammar and mechanics during drafting and there is little correction
• Marginal comments are kept to 2-3 per page with summative comments at end
• End commentary attends to students’ overall performance across learning objectives as articulated in the assignment
• Response language aims to foster students’ self-assessment

Holistic rubrics emphasize what students do well and generally increase efficiency; they may also be more valid because scoring includes authentic, personal reaction of the reader. But holistic sores won’t tell a student how they’ve progressed relative to previous assignments and may be rater-dependent, reducing reliability. (For a summary of advantages and disadvantages of holistic scoring, see Becker, 2011, p. 116.)

Here is an example of a partial holistic rubric:

Summary meets all the criteria. The writer understands the article thoroughly. The main points in the article appear in the summary with all main points proportionately developed. The summary should be as comprehensive as possible and should be as comprehensive as possible and should read smoothly, with appropriate transitions between ideas. Sentences should be clear, without vagueness or ambiguity and without grammatical or mechanical errors.

A complete holistic rubric for a research paper (authored by Jonah Willihnganz) can be  downloaded here.

Analytic Scoring

Analytic scoring makes explicit the contribution to the final grade of each element of writing. For example, an instructor may choose to give 30 points for an essay whose ideas are sufficiently complex, that marshals good reasons in support of a thesis, and whose argument is logical; and 20 points for well-constructed sentences and careful copy editing.

General tenets to analytic scoring:

• Reflect emphases in your teaching and communicate the learning goals for the course
• Emphasize student performance across criterion, which are established as central to the assignment in advance, usually on an assignment sheet
• Typically take a quantitative approach, providing a scaled set of points for each criterion
• Make the analytic framework available to students before they write  

Advantages of an analytic rubric include ease of training raters and improved reliability. Meanwhile, writers often can more easily diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of their work. But analytic rubrics can be time-consuming to produce, and raters may judge the writing holistically anyway. Moreover, many readers believe that writing traits cannot be separated. (For a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of analytic scoring, see Becker, 2011, p. 115.)

For example, a partial analytic rubric for a single trait, “addresses a significant issue”:

• Excellent: Elegantly establishes the current problem, why it matters, to whom
• Above Average: Identifies the problem; explains why it matters and to whom
• Competent: Describes topic but relevance unclear or cursory
• Developing: Unclear issue and relevance

A  complete analytic rubric for a research paper can be downloaded here.  In WIM courses, this language should be revised to name specific disciplinary conventions.

Whichever type of rubric you write, your goal is to avoid pushing students into prescriptive formulas and limiting thinking (e.g., “each paragraph has five sentences”). By carefully describing the writing you want to read, you give students a clear target, and, as Ed White puts it, “describe the ongoing work of the class” (75).

Writing rubrics contribute meaningfully to the teaching of writing. Think of them as a coaching aide. In class and in conferences, you can use the language of the rubric to help you move past generic statements about what makes good writing good to statements about what constitutes success on the assignment and in the genre or discourse community. The rubric articulates what you are asking students to produce on the page; once that work is accomplished, you can turn your attention to explaining how students can achieve it.

Works Cited

Becker, Anthony.  “Examining Rubrics Used to Measure Writing Performance in U.S. Intensive English Programs.”   The CATESOL Journal  22.1 (2010/2011):113-30. Web.

White, Edward M.  Teaching and Assessing Writing . Proquest Info and Learning, 1985. Print.

Further Resources

CCCC Committee on Assessment. “Writing Assessment: A Position Statement.” November 2006 (Revised March 2009). Conference on College Composition and Communication. Web.

Gallagher, Chris W. “Assess Locally, Validate Globally: Heuristics for Validating Local Writing Assessments.” Writing Program Administration 34.1 (2010): 10-32. Web.

Huot, Brian.  (Re)Articulating Writing Assessment for Teaching and Learning.  Logan: Utah State UP, 2002. Print.

Kelly-Reilly, Diane, and Peggy O’Neil, eds. Journal of Writing Assessment. Web.

McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web.

O’Neill, Peggy, Cindy Moore, and Brian Huot.  A Guide to College Writing Assessment . Logan: Utah State UP, 2009. Print.

Sommers, Nancy.  Responding to Student Writers . Macmillan Higher Education, 2013.

Straub, Richard. “Responding, Really Responding to Other Students’ Writing.” The Subject is Writing: Essays by Teachers and Students. Ed. Wendy Bishop. Boynton/Cook, 1999. Web.

White, Edward M., and Cassie A. Wright.  Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guide . 5th ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015. Print.

Analytic rubric design fundamentals

A beginner’s guide to creating an analytic rubric which can be used by tutors to accurately mark and feedback on assignments, but also by students themselves to guide their work

Jamie Gilbert Mikell

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Rubrics comprise a critical part of assessment and evaluation in college courses. Regardless of course delivery format, rubrics are a tool to provide meaningful and measurable feedback to students . Rubrics help educators to define criteria by which to evaluate specific assignments, projects and other course completion standards. Communicating expectations to students via rubric scoring and feedback allows students to summarise critical components of standards for achievement before and after an assignment. When rubrics are presented alongside assignments, research shows that students use the rubrics as guidance and successful assignment completion.

For this guide, we will focus on the analytic rubric. An analytic rubric conveys levels of performance for different criteria that make up an assignment. Analytic rubrics compartmentalise the assignment criteria for independent evaluation, providing multidimensional and specific feedback to assess student performance on each of these focus areas.

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Before designing an analytic rubric, teaching faculty need to be aware of essential rubric components alongside the evaluation criteria for each assignment. Here, I will discuss developing an analytical rubric by focusing on evaluation criteria, rating scales and task descriptors.

The first step to analytic rubric creation is to define the goal and purpose of the assignment that is being evaluated. Referring to course outcomes and the assignment’s alignment to specific outcomes is a good place to start. Designing an effective rubric ensures that the criteria and expectations are clearly defined and directly aligned with course outcomes.

Evaluation criteria: An excellent starting point is clearly defining essential skills or concepts that students should know or be able to do upon successful assignment completion. Instructors should define the complexity of knowledge needed to exhibit an aptitude for each criterion.

• Evaluation criteria will vary from assignment to assignment. For example, an individual student presentation may be broken into the following criteria: presentation organisation, subject knowledge, use of visual aids, mechanics, eye contact and presentation delivery. Whereas criteria for a student essay may be broken into criteria including opening thesis statement, relevance to the topic, subject knowledge, closure statement and mechanics.
• When choosing appropriate evaluation criteria, the instructor should consider the assignment’s primary focus (to ascertain topic knowledge, focus on presentation skills or design skills?) and its weight towards the final grade.
• Evaluation criteria should be stated concisely and serve to be viewed as an overall topic.
• Specific detail for each criterion level is outlined in the task descriptors (see below).
• It is critical for instructors to remember that each evaluation criteria may be weighted differently based on comparative importance towards the assignment goals. If the assignment’s primary goal is to improve students’ presentation skills, presentation-based evaluation criteria may be weighted more heavily than criteria for incorporating a written reflection.

Figure 1 below shows the evaluation criteria in the boxes in the left-hand column in light grey: School Integration; Addressing Gaps; Health Integration; Grammar and Mechanics.

Rating scales: After the evaluation criteria are defined clearly, describe the rating scale to distinguish performance levels from one another for each evaluation criteria. When linked to a numerically graded assignment, it is common for instructors to use numerical rating scales.

• Consider limiting the rating scale to three to five criteria, with clear labels for each.
• Mindful word choice for rating scale labels is essential for instructors to convey clear expectations for success.
• It is critical to avoid overly negative or ambiguous labelling, and to incorporate labels that convey student levels of achievement. See the rating scales above titled proficient, satisfactory  and needs work . Each scale conveys the level of student performance and the appropriate range of potential points tied to each.
• Rating scale point ranges will vary from assignment to assignment. See the figure above and note that the student must earn five points for proficient consideration.
• Rating scale point ranges may differ based on the assignment type and the number of evaluation criteria.

In Figure 1, the rating scales can be seen in the boxes in top row in pink: “Proficient (5 points), Satisfactory (3-4 points) and Needs Work (0-2 points).

Task descriptors: Task descriptors define achievement levels – what students must achieve or demonstrate for each evaluation criterion. Task descriptors should be conveyed in sentence form, vary by rating scale, and clearly outline expectations for achievement.

• Expectations for each task descriptor should be listed in detail, and each descriptor should be clearly differentiated from the descriptor in the level above or below.
• They should measure progress towards mastery of the evaluation criteria and be realistic and relevant.
• When creating task descriptors, consider the top-tier evaluation criteria first. It is beneficial to begin by defining the task descriptor for maximum points and then consider what components of that descriptor must be present or absent to fit into the lower rating scale categories.
• The instructor should consider clearly defined task descriptors criteria to minimise subjectivity while allowing students space to exhibit creativity and individuality.

In Figure 1, the task descriptors can be found in the light pink directly underneath the first row and to the right of the first column.

It is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all way to design rubrics. Most importantly, it is critical to remember that when presented alongside an assignment, research shows that students tend to use rubrics as guidance towards successful assignment completion.

Jamie Gilbert Mikell is an a ssistant professor of kinesiology, health and physical education at Athens State University.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, sat essay rubric: full analysis and writing strategies.

We're about to dive deep into the details of that least beloved* of SAT sections, the SAT essay . Prepare for a discussion of the SAT essay rubric and how the SAT essay is graded based on that. I'll break down what each item on the rubric means and what you need to do to meet those requirements.

On the SAT, the last section you'll encounter is the (optional) essay. You have 50 minutes to read a passage, analyze the author's argument, and write an essay. If you don’t write on the assignment, plagiarize, or don't use your own original work, you'll get a 0 on your essay. Otherwise, your essay scoring is done by two graders - each one grades you on a scale of 1-4 in Reading, Analysis, and Writing, for a total essay score out of 8 in each of those three areas . But how do these graders assign your writing a numerical grade? By using an essay scoring guide, or rubric.

*may not actually be the least belovèd.

Feature image credit: Day 148: the end of time by Bruce Guenter , used under CC BY 2.0 /Cropped from original. 

UPDATE: SAT Essay No Longer Offered

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In January 2021, the College Board announced that after June 2021, it would no longer offer the Essay portion of the SAT (except at schools who opt in during School Day Testing). It is now no longer possible to take the SAT Essay, unless your school is one of the small number who choose to offer it during SAT School Day Testing.

While most colleges had already made SAT Essay scores optional, this move by the College Board means no colleges now require the SAT Essay. It will also likely lead to additional college application changes such not looking at essay scores at all for the SAT or ACT, as well as potentially requiring additional writing samples for placement.

What does the end of the SAT Essay mean for your college applications? Check out our article on the College Board's SAT Essay decision for everything you need to know.

The Complete SAT Essay Grading Rubric: Item-by-Item Breakdown

Based on the CollegeBoard’s stated Reading, Analysis, and Writing criteria, I've created the below charts (for easier comparison across score points). For the purpose of going deeper into just what the SAT is looking for in your essay, I've then broken down each category further (with examples).

The information in all three charts is taken from the College Board site .

The biggest change to the SAT essay (and the thing that really distinguishes it from the ACT essay) is that you are required to read and analyze a text , then write about your analysis of the author's argument in your essay. Your "Reading" grade on the SAT essay reflects how well you were able to demonstrate your understanding of the text and the author's argument in your essay.

You'll need to show your understanding of the text on two different levels: the surface level of getting your facts right and the deeper level of getting the relationship of the details and the central ideas right.

Surface Level: Factual Accuracy

One of the most important ways you can show you've actually read the passage is making sure you stick to what is said in the text . If you’re writing about things the author didn’t say, or things that contradict other things the author said, your argument will be fundamentally flawed.

For instance, take this quotation from a (made-up) passage about why a hot dog is not a sandwich:

“The fact that you can’t, or wouldn’t, cut a hot dog in half and eat it that way, proves that a hot dog is once and for all NOT a sandwich”

Here's an example of a factually inaccurate paraphrasing of this quotation:

The author builds his argument by discussing how, since hot-dogs are often served cut in half, this makes them different from sandwiches.

The paraphrase contradicts the passage, and so would negatively affect your reading score. Now let's look at an accurate paraphrasing of the quotation:

The author builds his argument by discussing how, since hot-dogs are never served cut in half, they are therefore different from sandwiches.

It's also important to be faithful to the text when you're using direct quotations from the passage. Misquoting or badly paraphrasing the author’s words weakens your essay, because the evidence you’re using to support your points is faulty.

Higher Level: Understanding of Central Ideas

The next step beyond being factually accurate about the passage is showing that you understand the central ideas of the text and how details of the passage relate back to this central idea.

Why does this matter? In order to be able to explain why the author is persuasive, you need to be able to explain the structure of the argument. And you can’t deconstruct the author's argument if you don’t understand the central idea of the passage and how the details relate to it.

Here's an example of a statement about our fictional "hot dogs are sandwiches" passage that shows understanding of the central idea of the passage:

Hodgman’s third primary defense of why hot dogs are not sandwiches is that a hot dog is not a subset of any other type of food. He uses the analogy of asking the question “is cereal milk a broth, sauce, or gravy?” to show that making such a comparison between hot dogs and sandwiches is patently illogical.

The above statement takes one step beyond merely being factually accurate to explain the relation between different parts of the passage (in this case, the relation between the "what is cereal milk?" analogy and the hot dog/sandwich debate).

Of course, if you want to score well in all three essay areas, you’ll need to do more in your essay than merely summarizing the author’s argument. This leads directly into the next grading area of the SAT Essay.

The items covered under this criterion are the most important when it comes to writing a strong essay. You can use well-spelled vocabulary in sentences with varied structure all you want, but if you don't analyze the author's argument, demonstrate critical thinking, and support your position, you will not get a high Analysis score .

Because this category is so important, I've broken it down even further into its two different (but equally important) component parts to make sure everything is as clearly explained as possible.

Part I: Critical Thinking (Logic)

Critical thinking, also known as critical reasoning, also known as logic, is the skill that SAT essay graders are really looking to see displayed in the essay. You need to be able to evaluate and analyze the claim put forward in the prompt. This is where a lot of students may get tripped up, because they think “oh, well, if I can just write a lot, then I’ll do well.” While there is some truth to the assertion that longer essays tend to score higher , if you don’t display critical thinking you won’t be able to get a top score on your essay.

What do I mean by critical thinking? Let's take the previous prompt example:

Write an essay in which you explain how Hodgman builds an argument to persuade his audience that the hot dog cannot, and never should be, considered a sandwich.

An answer to this prompt that does not display critical thinking (and would fall into a 1 or 2 on the rubric) would be something like:

The author argues that hot dogs aren’t sandwiches, which is persuasive to the reader.

While this does evaluate the prompt (by providing a statement that the author's claim "is persuasive to the reader"), there is no corresponding analysis. An answer to this prompt that displays critical thinking (and would net a higher score on the rubric) could be something like this:

The author uses analogies to hammer home his point that hot dogs are not sandwiches. Because the readers will readily believe the first part of the analogy is true, they will be more likely to accept that the second part (that hot dogs aren't sandwiches) is true as well.

See the difference? Critical thinking involves reasoning your way through a situation (analysis) as well as making a judgement (evaluation) . On the SAT essay, however, you can’t just stop at abstract critical reasoning - analysis involves one more crucial step...

Part II: Examples, Reasons, and Other Evidence (Support)

The other piece of the puzzle (apparently this is a tiny puzzle) is making sure you are able to back up your point of view and critical thinking with concrete evidence . The SAT essay rubric says that the best (that is, 4-scoring) essay uses “ relevant, sufficient, and strategically chosen support for claim(s) or point(s) made. ” This means you can’t just stick to abstract reasoning like this:

That explanation is a good starting point, but if you don't back up your point of view with quoted or paraphrased information from the text to support your discussion of the way the author builds his/her argument, you will not be able to get above a 3 on the Analysis portion of the essay (and possibly the Reading portion as well, if you don't show you've read the passage). Let's take a look of an example of how you might support an interpretation of the author's effect on the reader using facts from the passage :

The author’s reference to the Biblical story about King Solomon elevates the debate about hot dogs from a petty squabble between friends to a life-or-death disagreement. The reader cannot help but see the parallels between the two situations and thus find themselves agreeing with the author on this point.

Does the author's reference to King Solomon actually "elevate the debate," causing the reader to agree with the author? From the sentences above, it certainly seems plausible that it might. While your facts do need to be correct,  you get a little more leeway with your interpretations of how the author’s persuasive techniques might affect the audience. As long as you can make a convincing argument for the effect a technique the author uses might have on the reader, you’ll be good.

Say whaaat?! #tbt by tradlands , used under CC BY 2.0 /Cropped and color-adjusted from original.

Did I just blow your mind? Read more about the secrets the SAT doesn’t want you to know in this article . 

Your Writing score on the SAT essay is not just a reflection of your grasp of the conventions of written English (although it is that as well). You'll also need to be focused, organized, and precise.

Because there's a lot of different factors that go into calculating your Writing score, I've divided the discussion of this rubric area into five separate items:

Precise Central Claim

Organization, vocab and word choice, sentence structure, grammar, etc..

One of the most basic rules of the SAT essay is that you need to express a clear opinion on the "assignment" (the prompt) . While in school (and everywhere else in life, pretty much) you’re encouraged to take into account all sides of a topic, it behooves you to NOT do this on the SAT essay. Why? Because you only have 50 minutes to read the passage, analyze the author's argument, and write the essay, there's no way you can discuss every single way in which the author builds his/her argument, every single detail of the passage, or a nuanced argument about what works and what doesn't work.

Instead, I recommend focusing your discussion on a few key ways the author is successful in persuading his/her audience of his/her claim.

Let’s go back to the assignment we've been using as an example throughout this article:

"Write an essay in which you explain how Hodgman builds an argument to persuade his audience that the hot dog cannot, and never should be, considered a sandwich."

Your instinct (trained from many years of schooling) might be to answer:

"There are a variety of ways in which the author builds his argument."

This is a nice, vague statement that leaves you a lot of wiggle room. If you disagree with the author, it's also a way of avoiding having to say that the author is persuasive. Don't fall into this trap! You do not necessarily have to agree with the author's claim in order to analyze how the author persuades his/her readers that the claim is true.

Here's an example of a precise central claim about the example assignment:

The author effectively builds his argument that hot dogs are not sandwiches by using logic, allusions to history and mythology, and factual evidence.

In contrast to the vague claim that "There are a variety of ways in which the author builds his argument," this thesis both specifies what the author's argument is and the ways in which he builds the argument (that you'll be discussing in the essay).

While it's extremely important to make sure your essay has a clear point of view, strong critical reasoning, and support for your position, that's not enough to get you a top score. You need to make sure that your essay  "demonstrates a deliberate and highly effective progression of ideas both within paragraphs and throughout the essay."

What does this mean? Part of the way you can make sure your essay is "well organized" has to do with following standard essay construction points. Don't write your essay in one huge paragraph; instead, include an introduction (with your thesis stating your point of view), body paragraphs (one for each example, usually), and a conclusion. This structure might seem boring, but it really works to keep your essay organized, and the more clearly organized your essay is, the easier it will be for the essay grader to understand your critical reasoning.

The second part of this criteria has to do with keeping your essay focused, making sure it contains "a deliberate and highly effective progression of ideas." You can't just say "well, I have an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion, so I guess my essay is organized" and expect to get a 4/4 on your essay. You need to make sure that each paragraph is also organized . Recall the sample prompt:

“Write an essay in which you explain how Hodgman builds an argument to persuade his audience that the hot dog cannot, and never should be, considered a sandwich.”

And our hypothetical thesis:

Let's say that you're writing the paragraph about the author's use of logic to persuade his reader that hot dogs aren't sandwiches. You should NOT just list ways that the author is logical in support of his claim, then explain why logic in general is an effective persuasive device. While your points might all be valid, your essay would be better served by connecting each instance of logic in the passage with an explanation of how that example of logic persuades the reader to agree with the author.

Above all, it is imperative that you make your thesis (your central claim) clear in the opening paragraph of your essay - this helps the grader keep track of your argument. There's no reason you’d want to make following your reasoning more difficult for the person grading your essay (unless you’re cranky and don’t want to do well on the essay. Listen, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life).

In your essay, you should use a wide array of vocabulary (and use it correctly). An essay that scores a 4 in Writing on the grading rubric “demonstrates a consistent use of precise word choice.”

You’re allowed a few errors, even on a 4-scoring essay, so you can sometimes get away with misusing a word or two. In general, though, it’s best to stick to using words you are certain you not only know the meaning of, but also know how to use. If you’ve been studying up on vocab, make sure you practice using the words you’ve learned in sentences, and have those sentences checked by someone who is good at writing (in English), before you use those words in an SAT essay.

Creating elegant, non-awkward sentences is the thing I struggle most with under time pressure. For instance, here’s my first try at the previous sentence: “Making sure a sentence structure makes sense is the thing that I have the most problems with when I’m writing in a short amount of time” (hahaha NOPE - way too convoluted and wordy, self). As another example, take a look at these two excerpts from the hypothetical essay discussing how the author persuaded his readers that a hot dog is not a sandwich:

Score of 2: "The author makes his point by critiquing the argument against him. The author pointed out the logical fallacy of saying a hot dog was a sandwich because it was meat "sandwiched" between two breads. The author thus persuades the reader his point makes sense to be agreed with and convinces them."

The above sentences lack variety in structure (they all begin with the words "the author"), and the last sentence has serious flaws in its structure (it makes no sense).

Score of 4: "The author's rigorous examination of his opponent's position invites the reader, too, to consider this issue seriously. By laying out his reasoning, step by step, Hodgman makes it easy for the reader to follow along with his train of thought and arrive at the same destination that he has. This destination is Hodgman's claim that a hot dog is not a sandwich."

The above sentences demonstrate variety in sentence structure (they don't all begin with the same word and don't have the same underlying structure) that presumably forward the point of the essay.

In general, if you're doing well in all the other Writing areas, your sentence structures will also naturally vary. If you're really worried that your sentences are not varied enough, however, my advice for working on "demonstrating meaningful variety in sentence structure" (without ending up with terribly worded sentences) is twofold:

• Read over what you’ve written before you hand it in and change any wordings that seem awkward, clunky, or just plain incorrect.
• As you’re doing practice essays, have a friend, family member, or teacher who is good at (English) writing look over your essays and point out any issues that arise. 

This part of the Writing grade is all about the nitty gritty details of writing: grammar, punctuation, and spelling . It's rare that an essay with serious flaws in this area can score a 4/4 in Reading, Analysis, or Writing, because such persistent errors often "interfere with meaning" (that is, persistent errors make it difficult for the grader to understand what you're trying to get across).

On the other hand, if they occur in small quantities, grammar/punctuation/spelling errors are also the things that are most likely to be overlooked. If two essays are otherwise of equal quality, but one writer misspells "definitely" as "definately" and the other writer fails to explain how one of her examples supports her thesis, the first writer will receive a higher essay score. It's only when poor grammar, use of punctuation, and spelling start to make it difficult to understand your essay that the graders start penalizing you.

My advice for working on this rubric area is the same advice as for sentence structure: look over what you’ve written to double check for mistakes, and ask someone who’s good at writing to look over your practice essays and point out your errors. If you're really struggling with spelling, simply typing up your (handwritten) essay into a program like Microsoft Word and running spellcheck can alert you to problems. We've also got a great set of articles up on our blog about SAT Writing questions that may help you better understand any grammatical errors you are making.

How Do I Use The SAT Essay Grading Rubric?

Now that you understand the SAT essay rubric, how can you use it in your SAT prep? There are a couple of different ways.

Use The SAT Essay Rubric To...Shape Your Essays

Since you know what the SAT is looking for in an essay, you can now use that knowledge to guide what you write about in your essays!

A tale from my youth: when I was preparing to take the SAT for the first time, I did not really know what the essay was looking for, and assumed that since I was a good writer, I’d be fine.

Not true! The most important part of the SAT essay is using specific examples from the passage and explaining how they convince the reader of the author's point. By reading this article and realizing there's more to the essay than "being a strong writer," you’re already doing better than high school me.

Change the object in that girl’s left hand from a mirror to a textbook and you have a pretty good sketch of what my junior year of high school looked like.

Use The SAT Essay Rubric To...Grade Your Practice Essays

The SAT can’t exactly give you an answer key to the essay. Even when an example of an essay that scored a particular score is provided, that essay will probably use different examples than you did, make different arguments, maybe even argue different interpretations of the text...making it difficult to compare the two. The SAT essay rubric is the next best thing to an answer key for the essay - use it as a lens through which to view and assess your essay.

Of course, you don’t have the time to become an expert SAT essay grader - that’s not your job. You just have to apply the rubric as best as you can to your essays and work on fixing your weak areas . For the sentence structure, grammar, usage, and mechanics stuff I highly recommend asking a friend, teacher, or family member who is really good at (English) writing to take a look over your practice essays and point out the mistakes.

If you really want custom feedback on your practice essays from experienced essay graders, may I also suggest the PrepScholar test prep platform ? I manage the essay grading and so happen to know quite a bit about the essay part of this platform, which gives you both an essay grade and custom feedback for each essay you complete. Learn more about how it all works here .

What’s Next?

Are you so excited by this article that you want to read even more articles on the SAT essay? Of course you are. Don't worry, I’ve got you covered. Learn how to write an SAT essay step-by-step and read about the 6 types of SAT essay prompts .

Want to go even more in depth with the SAT essay? We have a complete list of past SAT essay prompts as well as tips and strategies for how to get a 12 on the SAT essay .

Still not satisfied? Maybe a five-day free trial of our very own PrepScholar test prep platform (which includes essay practice and feedback) is just what you need.

Trying to figure out whether the old or new SAT essay is better for you? Take a look at our article on the new SAT essay assignment to find out!

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Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by SAT experts . If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next.

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Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel in high school.

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Creating Effective Rubrics: Examples and Best Practices

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Rubrics are an essential component of assessing student learning effectively. A rubric is a scoring guide that clearly defines the expectations for student performance on a particular task or assignment. Teachers can use rubrics to both evaluate a student’s performance level and to provide feedback to that student. Because they provide a standardized way to assess learning, rubrics help to ensure grading is fair and consistent across all students. 

It is important that rubrics are a clear, consistent evaluation of a student’s work. This can sometimes be hard to achieve because rubrics have the potential to become cumbersome and confusing. The best rubrics will typically include specific criteria relevant to the task or assignment at hand, as well as a set of descriptors that outline the different levels of performance that learners may achieve.

There are many different types and uses of rubrics, as well as many benefits of using rubrics. Therefore, learning how to create effective rubrics and the best practices for using rubrics is important for all educators to know. Some may think rubrics are only used in upper-level grades or only for essay assignments, but rubrics can be a beneficial tool for many different subjects and grade levels. All teachable content has learning goals and outcomes, and therefore all content can benefit from the use of good-quality rubrics.

Types of Rubrics

There are three main types of rubrics that are typically used in the education realm: analytic, holistic, and developmental. These three rubrics all pair differently with certain tasks or assignments, depending on the learning goals and desired outcomes for the assignment. While each have their advantages and disadvantages, they all have an appropriate place in a teacher’s assessment toolbox.

Analytic Rubric

Analytic rubrics focus on breaking down the work into specific components or criteria and then evaluating each of those components separately. Each individual component is usually scored on a separate scale, allowing for more detailed feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the performance. Analytic rubrics are useful when there is a specific focus on particular skills or knowledge students are expected to demonstrate. Analytic rubrics are very specific and detailed, and for that reason, they can sometimes be seen as more complicated or complex to use. 

Analytic rubrics are sometimes viewed as the most reliable assessment rubric because they tend to be more precise assessments and offer more specific and detailed feedback to students. Because of this, these rubrics are often better able to align with learning objects, which can promote deeper learning. Teachers who are using more targeted instruction will benefit from using a more targeted assessment. 

Below, Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy offers a playful example of rubrics assessing breakfast in bed:

Holistic Rubric

Holistic rubrics provide a broader overall assessment of the quality of student work. They typically use a single scale to evaluate the work, ranging simply from one to five or from excellent to poor. Holistic rubrics are useful when the focus is on the overall quality of the work rather than on smaller, more specific components of the work.

Holistic rubrics can be used at any point in any subject when there is a task or assignment being assessed as a whole. For example, art classes often use a holistic grading rubric to assess broad categories such as creativity or composition. Whereas an English class may use a more analytical rubric for writing, a history class may use a holistic rubric when grading an essay for the overall success of argumentation, evidence, and organization. Holistic rubrics are often used with projects in many classes to evaluate the quality of the project on an overall scale from weak to exemplary. 

Developmental Rubric

Finally, developmental rubrics are used to assess a student’s progress or development over time. They are typically used in subjects like writing or language development, where progress is more gradual. Developmental rubrics are great for courses or assessments that require multiple assessments over a longer period of time. Within a developmental rubric, there are multiple levels of performance that show progress made from one level to the next over time. 

Because developmental rubrics are focused on growth and development, they are often best used in courses to judge progress that has been made over a length of the course. For example, English classes may assess someone’s writing growth with a developmental rubric that ranges from weak to exemplary. Math classes may assess progress on categories such as problem-solving or mathematical reasoning with a rubric including emerging, developing, and proficient levels. Likewise, art classes may track progressions of creativity and technique with descriptors like beginner, intermediate, or advanced. As a student’s knowledge and skills develop over time, teachers will see a progression in learning and mastery of those concepts.

How to Design a Rubric

While each type of rubric may have its own step in how to design it, the overall process of designing a rubric should follow a standard pattern of steps. Writing a strong rubric takes time and attention to detail, but the outcome produces a more effective rubric that will offer more benefits to students and the teacher. 

Plan your purpose and pick a rubric style . First, teachers must decide what they want to teach, what they want to assess, and then how they are going to assess it. Teachers must think all the way to the end even at the very beginning. This may determine what type of rubric will be designed.

Align the rubric with the task or assignment . Once a certain rubric has been chosen, teachers must identify the learning objectives of the assessment and determine the skills and knowledge the students need to demonstrate. If a teacher does not properly align the assessment with the assignment, then they are seemingly setting students up for failure. 

Write clear and concise criteria and levels of performance . Long and wordy does not always mean detailed or superior. Sometimes the lengthy and complex rubrics may seem detailed, but instead overwhelm or confuse students. Teachers must develop the criteria and descriptors for each criterion, but doing so in a clear and concise way will help students better understand what is expected of them. 

Provide specific and actionable feedback to students . Remember that rubrics and assessments are ultimately meant to be used as a tool for supporting student learning and growth. Therefore, rubrics should be used as a stepping stone, not an end point. Students should be able to do something with the feedback that has been presented to them on a rubric.

Reflect on what worked and be willing to revise . The first rubric designed for an assessment may not always be the final rubric used. Sometimes rubrics need edits or changes along the way, and it is better for the teacher to accept responsibility for those adjustments rather than risk inaccurately assessing students based on a poorly constructed rubric.

Online resources for rubrics are very common and range from simple rubric examples , to common core-aligned rubrics , to college university recommended rubrics. For example, NC State University offers best rubric practices and examples, including this example of a holistic rubric for a final paper:

Within the last few years, the College Board switched its AP English Language and Composition rubric from a holistic grading scale of zero to nine to using an analytic rubric, which evaluates student performance based on three main scoring categories.

Using Rubrics for Assessment

To use rubrics to facilitate fair, efficient, and effective assessment of student work, there are several things to consider when implementing the rubrics. These include the purpose of the rubric, the placement within the lesson plan, and the people using the rubric.

First, one must consider what the intended purpose of the rubric is within the assessment. For example, rubrics can be used in different types of assessments, such as formative or summative. Both types of assessments are valuable for different reasons, and therefore rubrics should be used in both scenarios. 

Another thing to consider when using rubrics is the placement of the rubric within the lesson plan. Providing the rubric at the beginning of a task or assessment can allow students to clearly see the requirements and expectations. Using a rubric in the middle of an assignment can provide more specific and actionable feedback for students before completing a project. Then, of course, using the rubric at the end of a lesson plan is where final and more formal assessment and reflection can take place.

Finally, teachers are not the only ones who can fill out and “assess” using a rubric. Allowing students to use rubrics for self-assessment and peer assessment teaches them vital skills of how to self-evaluate their work as well as how to offer constructive criticism and compliments to others.

It is important that once a rubric has been used for assessment, the data generated be evaluated, processed, and used for future assignments. Because rubrics allow teachers to assess with fairness and objectivity, the results of rubrics offer teachers and students valuable feedback for teaching and learning. 

Best Practices for Creating Effective Rubrics

Whether you are providing detailed feedback to a student on their essay, observing that a student needs improvement on a certain math skill, or assessing the overall quality of someone’s artwork, rubrics used effectively lead to less teacher stress and more student success. Creating clear, reliable, and valid rubrics might seem like a massive undertaking, but with a few simple steps and a few key strategies, rubrics can revolutionize a classroom .

Use clear and concise language . Students often struggle with heavy academic language, so providing clear instructions and understandable language can help students go into a task or assignment knowing exactly what is expected of them. This includes writing clear and concise criteria and levels of performance.

Know when to use what . Use different types of rubrics for different tasks or assignments. A teacher who uses a variety of assessments is a teacher who understands different students learn in different ways. Rubrics are not “one size fits all,” so know when to use different resources. The rubric must align with the task or assignment to be effective for both teachers and students.

Provide actionable feedback . A painful moment for a teacher is when a student looks at the number or letter at the top of a grade sheet, ignores the heartfelt feedback written on the page, and immediately tosses it into the trash can. Teachers can avoid this scenario by providing specific action steps for students to take once they have received their feedback.

Some of the common misconceptions when it comes to creating and using effective rubrics are that 1) any rubric will work for anything and that 2) rubrics are too hard to make. These two misconceptions lead people to the common mistake of taking to the Internet and downloading a rubric that looks like a good fit.

It is important to avoid these when creating rubrics because the reality is that not all rubrics will work for all assignments, but it is also not impossible to quickly and effectively create a rubric that is perfect for your specific needs. If using a rubric from another source, you must ensure the reliability and validity of the rubric. One might be better off creating a simple holistic rubric than using a detailed analytic rubric that needs a lot of checking or editing to fit your assignment. 

Conclusion: The Importance of Rubrics in Education

Rubrics are an important assessment tool for evaluating student learning and provide a consistent, fair, and clear way to assess student work. While there are a number of different rubric resources available online, rubrics are also fairly easy for educators to create and personalize to their specific needs. Creating rubrics is an ongoing process, which means it is important to continually review and revise rubrics to ensure they are still meeting the needs of the students. Just as students need to make adjustments in their learning, teachers may also need to make adjustments from time to time in their assessments.

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iRubric: Analytical Essay rubric

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9th-12th grade analytical writing rubric

Offer 9th-12th Grade students a structure for analytical writing with this standards-aligned rubric developed by educators for Feedback Studio.

Rubric suitable for formative and summative assignments with tasks involving the rigorous analysis of a text or texts. Use this rubric when asking students to analyze an author's use of rhetorical strategies, to analyze the impact of a literary element in a story, etc. Consider using the 9th-12th Grade Analysis QuickMark set with this rubric. These drag-and-drop comments were tailor-made by veteran educators to give actionable, formative feedback directly to students. While they were explicitly aligned to this particular rubric, you can edit or add your own content to any QuickMark. This rubric is available and ready to use in your Feedback Studio account. However, if you would like to customize its criteria, you can "Duplicate this rubric" in your Feedback Studio account and then edit the rubric as needed. Or, download this .rbc file and then import to your account to begin editing the content.

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What is an Analytic Rubric?

What is an analytic rubric? As teachers, we often ask ourselves – what is the best way to assess students?

In many cases, analytic rubrics are the most comprehensive way to assess students. While holistic rubrics and other informal assessments are great tools for smaller assignments,  when it comes to large projects – nothing beats an analytic rubric.

In this post, we are going to break down everything you need to know to answer other teachers when they ask: what is an analytic rubric?

An analytic rubric is a style of assessment where the student is being assessed through individual criteria. That said, it’s best when these criteria work together.

For example, in an essay rubric, you might have four or five assessment criteria that are assessed independently. These independent criteria are then collectively tallied up at the end to create a comprehensive grade.

Analytic rubrics are very accurate and provide a detailed assessment that helps students to better understand their grades. 

The five assessment criteria for our journal entry rubric are content and clarity, structure and organization, detail and voice, use of language and conventions, and word choice.

While on the surface it may seem like this is  a lot for a simple journal entry, providing a rubric like this to students help them to better formulate ideas and understand how they are being assessed.

In fact, our case studies showed that students graded with our analytic rubrics scored on average 17% higher than those assessed without a rubric.

Benefits of Using Analytical Rubrics

Now that we have a better understanding of how to answer someone when they ask what an analytic rubric let’s take a closer look at the benefits of using analytic rubrics.

1. Saves Teachers Time

Using analytic rubrics save time because every student can be assessed based on their strength and needs. Using a pre-built analytic rubric like those in our library saves you time scouring the web for resources.

2. Makes Assessment Simple

Assessment can be very complicated, but with pre-built analytic rubrics – student assessment is simple again. Teach away knowing that your students have an accurate and reliable form of being graded.

3. Analytic Rubrics are Very Accurate

Due to the comprehensive nature of using multiple evaluation criteria, analytic rubrics are very accurate. The subjective nature of simply scoring a student out of 10 is absent in this process.

4. Students Better Understand the Grade

This is a big one. When students understand  how they are being scored, it leaves more room for student growth. This means students are not just concerned with the final grade, but also the process of improving the grade in the future.

5. Analytic Rubrics are Great Tracking Tools

Whether you are planning a transition for a student into another course, or you are communicating grades to parents at a conference, having analytic rubrics saved for each student helps everyone to track ongoing progress.

Interesting in getting started using our SUPERRUBRIC builder? Get started for free using the link below.

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