TEaCHTOPIA Supports Teachers

How to make a Rubric

What are rubrics? How do you make rubrics that will help students create quality work and learn?

Teachtopia’s Guide to making A rubric. 

Rubrics are much more than just a grading tool. Rubrics guide and inform students of teacher expectations for an assignment or assessment.
Guidelines for Rubrics:• Rubrics should be written without jargon. This means that rubrics should both be comprehensible to parents and their students. Students should have clear expectations. If there is any vocabulary in the rubric that might be not understood by parents or their children it should be clearly defined in the rubric. Rubrics should try to focus on the clear criteria for each level of a grade (example a 4 include this, a three includes this) rather than what should not be on a paper.  A good rubric would not say a disorganized messy paper gets a low level or a 1 but rather it would say in order to get a 2 there must be an outline, examples of pre-writing, typing etc. Another example would be very specific criteria like stating for a level 3, students must write 300 words or more. . Rubrics are best if shared in advance with students. Students should not be surprised by their grades.


• Many teachers use online rubric maker tools to help them make a rubric.