Grading rubrics are rather helpful and detailed tools for evaluation. Sometimes, quizzes do not provide suitable feedback on the student’s skills, which makes this tool more reliable. Both teachers and students can benefit from using grading rubrics in various ways. In the following text, I will review the purpose of grading rubrics and share my personal experience of using this means of assessing one’s capabilities.
Primarily, it is crucial to understand the purpose of grading rubrics and how they assist both sides. They are commonly used for science projects, essays, and other various assignments. This file helps teachers and students in two different ways: the former is allowed to assess the students’ skills; while the latter will have a more specific depiction of the task they were assigned (Teachers First, n. d.). Thus, both sides are provided with a brief explanation of the necessary qualifications for a suitable score.
I have used a grading rubric for an essay to check the skills of one of my ESL (English as a second language) students. The paper featured different criteria, such as grammar, cohesion and coherence, spelling, and vocabulary. The four categories were equally important, as I wanted to assess whether my student would need to work with one of them more thoroughly. Some of the grading rubrics I have seen previously usually overemphasized the importance of grammar and vocabulary, while diminishing the value of the cohesion and coherence category. This would lead to essays being written about topics that were irrelevant to the original tasks.
My grading rubric had a maximum score of 25 points per category, with a total score of 100 being the highest one. Each section thoroughly depicted the justification of the scores that may be received. That way, my student knew what to be concerned about and what qualifications to follow. The essay my student wrote received a score of 75 points, as he made some serious grammar mistakes and misused some words in his work. Thus, the grading rubric helped me explain why he received that score while being brief and clear in my depiction of the results.
Reference
Teachers First. (n.d.). TeachersFirst – Rubrics to the rescue: Why use rubrics? TeachersFirst.