Writing Rubrics: Please help

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I have yet another homeschooling question. I know I don't have to grade this way (and I am not going to, formally) but I would like to understand how these work, anyway.

Let's say there is a grading rubric that goes from 1-5 and takes three categories into account like organization/planning, communication/language/sentence structure and Grammar/Spelling conventions. They give exemplars that show what essays 1pt-5pt look like but all the exemplars are without splinter skills. The 1 pt examplar essay they show is bad all around for the given grade level and the 5 pt essays are great all around etc.

If a child has splinter skills so that the categories are vastly uneven, do teachers rate each category separately and average them together or grade based on the lowest skill? I am inclined to say I could average them together, but I don't know what real teachers do.

(I know a homeschool group would be better for this question, but the one I am in would advise me to chill and not worry about it, but I actually want to know the answer to the question, anyway. I hope someone knows how this works so I can get an idea of where we are b/c that is my obsessive way.)

The easiest way to do it would be to rate each of the three categories from 1-5, 1 being poor and 5 being excellent. Then, you would have a total of 15 points for the entire assignment. Total the points together and make it into a ratio to 15. Divide that out to get your percentage.

For example, your child gets 3/5 for spelling/grammar, 4/5 for sentence structure, and 5/5 for organization. The total would be 12/15, equaling 80%.

I personally feel that 5 points each in just three categories is not enough points because one point will make a huge grade difference. You can easily change how many points you give each category, say 10 points for each category. You could also make more categories (separating spelling and grammar, for instance.) You also do not have to use whole numbers in evaluating a category. You can easily rework a rubric to make it easier to grade. A rubric based on 50 points would be a lot easier to grade than a rubric based on 35 points.

Hope this helps.

I am not an elementary school teacher, but I am a college professor and we use rubrics heavily. I would always give students' a score that related to their average performance rather than just their weakest skill. Hope that helps!

When I was in high school, my english teachers graded exclusively using rubrics. They did what nerdygirl describes, totaling all of the columns together. However, our rubrics were usually on a 10-point scale, which made the grading more precise, and also had more categories.

I think it's generally kind of an average but if the student is very poor at certain areas they may be treated as outliers unless the goal is to alert others that the child is struggling. But once a child is identified as having dysgraphia or as having a math or reading disability, teachers sometimes grade with accommodations for the problem in place and if none were made sometimes as if they were in place.

If a child needs help to write an essay they may get help and then be graded on what they do with that help. Which might be reading a test, providing a graphic organizer, asking clarifying questions to help the child write an essay, etc.

Remember that the point of evaluation is to identify strengths and weaknesses which can be used to develop an approach to further learning. You build on strengths and use a step-by-step approach to address weaknesses. Rubrics are great because they show the strengths and weaknesses in each area. Although the final percentage will be an average or a total, rubrics are equally valuable in showing the range of skills.
Besides using general rubrics to identify challenges, you can also design rubrics to test what you are trying to teach. For instance, if you are concerned by your child's limited vocabulary, the teaching would include giving lists of synonyms and antonyms, introducing new words, etc. and the guidelines for the composition would mention the importance of a range of vocabulary. Then you design the rubric to give 10 points for using ten words from the list of new words, 10 points for using them all correctly and appropriately, 10 points for developing an organized structure or an easy-to-follow story or something else you are working on. That way you can identify progress towards a specific goal (extending vocabulary).
J.

This is good news.

I wanted to make sure that I do this the right way, as I am trying to approximate for myself how my son would score if he were in public school. I would not show him these assessments as I am trying to get him to take academic risks, and he won't write if gets (not so great) grades back on his writing.

Obviously, for my own purposes, I will continue to keep track of what I know to be his specific weaknesses, which will be easier to clarify with a rubric and guidelines.