More Than a Score: Using Rubrics to Provide Meaningful Formative Feedback

Karin Evans

Students receive feedback from teachers and peers in a variety of ways, but they often dismiss the input, either because they don't recognize its value or because the feedback is neither meaningful nor actionable. When students receive effective formative feedback, they can use it to

• Improve their strategic approach to learning.
• Increase their understanding of a particular task.
• Improve their ability to communicate knowledge.

How Can Teachers Deliver Actionable Feedback to Students?

The power of rubrics to support meaningful formative feedback is often overlooked. Holistic rubrics that evaluate student work are traditionally used to provide a summative judgment of student work. However, as soon as a grade is assigned, it is usually perceived as finite—and the learning process stops. Analytic rubrics, on the other hand, which examine components of student work, can play an important role in both a student's learning path and a teacher's instructional path, because they guide the gathering of formative evidence of student learning in relation to a target. The challenge is to contextualize each rubric descriptor so that both teacher and student have a clear idea of the target. This can be accomplished by using samples of authentic student work that correlate with each performance level.

Examples

These examples illustrate the interplay of task, student work, rubric, and related formative feedback.

Mathematics, Grade 4

Task: The local track team needs to buy uniforms to wear during regional track meets. All 170 athletes need uniforms. The uniforms come in packages of 8, and only whole packages can be bought. The price of each package is $30. What is the total cost of the packages of uniforms that are needed? Please show your work.

Student work:

Observation: Response divides the number of athletes, 170, by the number of uniforms in each package, 8, using long division to find the number of packages needed. The result is 21 R 2, which is incorrectly rounded down to 21 packages (instead of rounded up to 22). This result, 21 packages, is then correctly multiplied by the cost per package, $30, to arrive at a total cost of $630.

Holistic rubric:

Verbal feedback to student: You correctly identified the multistep process involved in solving the problem using multiplication and division. However, you didn't round the remainder correctly, and therefore you used the incorrect number to multiply by $30 when calculating the total cost for the uniforms. If you multiply 21 by 8, will you have enough uniforms? If you check your work after rounding the remainder, you'll see that you have to closely read the task to decide whether the remainder needs to be rounded up or rounded down.

ELA, Grade 4:

Background: Students will read two articles that present a variety of viewpoints from teachers, parents, and students related to homework assignments and the extent to which the writers think they support learning.

Task: Should schools reduce the amount of homework assigned to students? Write an opinion essay using details and evidence from both articles for support.

Student Work: I think schools should give a little less homework becase no one can really agree on how much is to much and if adults can't decide why should kids be stuck in the middle? If kids never do homework they wont know whether its right or wrong and if we make a mistake then you'll learn how to do it right next time. Teachers think that homework is importan and helps kids learn. Parents think homework is a way for them to teach there kids what we didn't have time to learn in class. This just proves my point. Nobody knows how much homework to assign. So until they figure out what the right amount of homework is, just don't give us any.

Observation: The student's opinion is unclear and inconsistent. At the outset, the student advocates for less homework yet also acknowledges that homework plays an important role in 'learning. Later in the essay, the student becomes a total opponent to all homework until adults can decide upon the right amount.

Analytic Rubric; Aspect Is Focus:

Written feedback to student: You seem to become more comfortable with the topic as you write your essay. You also used evidence from the articles, which is great. I'm wondering, though, whether you had a chance to jot down your thoughts or create an outline before starting to write your essay. Can you take a close look at each sentence of your writing and give each a summary label as we practiced in class? You'll notice that your focus is not consistent. Underline the sentences that get in the way of keeping your opinion focused. Then rewrite your underlined sentences.

Tips for Using Rubrics Effectively

How can we convince students that rubrics are a useful means to an end? These strategies can help:

• Before exposing students to a task and rubric, pretend you are a student in your classroom. Write responses to the task at various levels of achievement. Then, add response expectations and task-specific language to your rubric.
• Provide a comparison between the selected aspects of the analytic rubric and correlated samples of student work. How do the samples match up with the descriptors in the rubric? What specific attributes does each sample have, or what elements are missing?
• Ask students to self-assess their work. Where does their understanding fall within the progression of learning as shown in the scaffolded language of the rubric?
• Promote peer-to-peer feedback so that students can deepen their own understanding of concepts as they work with others.
• Provide examples of feedback and ask students to compare. Which examples are actionable and motivate them to improve their work? Which examples are ineffective and restrictive, and why?

Many Benefits of Rubrics

For students, rubrics clarify a learning goal. Meaningful, evidence-based, and actionable feedback tells them how close they are to the goal and what they need to do to reach the goal. Rubrics help teachers review student work in an efficient, consistent, fair, and objective manner. Used formatively, rubrics also give teachers a clearer picture of the strengths and weaknesses of their students and can therefore guide their instructional decisions.

A rubric is more than a score; it's the key to supporting an ongoing feedback loop for teaching and learning.

Karin Evans is assistant director for scoring content and quality at Measured Progress. She has conducted numerous teacher-training workshops on standards-based education and on using rubrics in the classroom. Evans holds a doctorate in linguistics/German studies from Michigan State University, and a masters in English/American literature and education from the University of Giessen, Germany.

ASCD Express, Vol. 13, No. 9. Copyright 2018 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.