What is a rubric?
The Foundation for the Atlantic Canada English Language Arts Curriculum (APEF, p. 50) states: “A rubric identifies and describes the criteria used to assess student performance.”
In the Foundation for the Atlantic Canada English Language Arts Curriculum, the APEF indicates that rating scales can be developed to assess
- Specific products, such as a piece of writing, a role-playing activity or a media project
- Specific learning outcomes
- Participation in and contribution to small-group learning
- Writing skills
- Reading strategies
- Responses to literature and visual texts (APEF, p. 51)
As additional analytic scoring rubrics are developed and used by the Department of Education of Newfoundland and Labrador for provincial assessment, they will be added to this site.
Registration
Visitors to this Web site are asked to log in using their email address. Visitors are also asked to provide minimal demographic information. This demographic information (location, status) will be used to compile and report average scores to users and to the site developers. Email addresses will NOT be distributed to any secondary source. They will be used solely within this Web site.
In the event that information is desired about your experience and success using this interactive site, the site developers will use your e-mail address to contact you. Any further participation will be voluntary and all responses provided will be strictly confidential. At no time will e-mail addresses or other contact information be provided to any individuals or organizations other than the site developers.
Instructions
After logging in, visitors will be presented the option of reading and scoring pieces of writing and reading or viewing responses at any of three levels: primary (grade 3), elementary (grade 6), and intermediate (grade 9), Secondary high school (grade 12) students in Newfoundland and Labrador are no longer required to participate in criterion writing assessments; rather they write public examinations.
Site visitors will also be invited to read the criteria developed for scoring writing, reading, viewing, and other skills. They will be introduced to both analytic and holistic reubrics, depending on which type of rubric is used for assessing the achievement level . Generally rubrics, both analytic and holistic, assess the same categories or qualities, each represented by five different levels. Thus each piece of writing or response is evaluated, on a one (lowest) to five (highest) scale, for Content, Organization, Sentence Structure or Fluency, Voice, Word Choice or Vocabulary, and Conventions. At the Primary level, voice is not included in the analytic scoring rubric as this quality usually characterizes the writing of a more practiced writer.
Creating Rubrics
Developing analytic assessment scales usually involves
- determining the criteria by which the learning will be assessed
- weighting each criterion to reflect its importance (in terms of what is valued or what has been emphasized in the learning or performance task)