Why I Won’t Be Using Rubrics to Respond to Students’ Writing - Mang Zi
When we think about the word rubric, we think of the many advantages and disadvantages of using rubrics to judge students’ work. I believe the majority of people will say that using rubrics has more advantages than disadvantages because it can be used as powerful tools for assessment and instruction. Also, we have been exposed to rubrics in our everyday lives. Whenever we do an assignment or project, we are given rubrics all the time. On the other hand, there are disadvantages to using rubrics. Many think that most rubrics do not speak a language that students understand and can be harmful in many ways.
“I didn’t like how using rubrics prematurely narrowed and cemented my vision of good writing”
(Wilson, pg. 63).
First of all, I believe rubrics encourage students to do the “minimum thinking” required. Students simply follow rules and complete the assignment strictly adhering to the rubric instead of taking the time to explore their imagination. After a student has met all expectations in all categories of the rubric, they are most likely to stop there, even when they could do more and let all their thoughts out. Students are afraid to take risks, and do not push themselves to try and explore new approaches when it comes to their writing. Often times, rubrics tell us how to do our tasks and even what we have to include on our assessment. Therefore, rubrics do not encourage creativity and leave less room for imaginative approaches to papers and projects.
“…the comments on rubrics are not responsive to students’ writing and often don’t reflect what I think about their work”(Wilson, pg. 62).
I believe that general rubrics usually do not address individual differences or the different skills that each student possesses. Every student is going to have a differentiating style of writing as well as a different level of literacy. For example, if I tell a group of students to tell me of all the images and feelings that come to mind when they hear the word family, not all students will give the same answer because everyone perceives things through a different lens. And for some students, family could mean differently.
Students can often feel shame when they don’t exceed on every category on the rubric. If the criteria that is in the rubric is too complex, students may feel overwhelmed and little success will take place. Rubrics can be a disaster to students. It makes students feel like they’re less competent than their peers and are therefore less likely to succeed. It kills their confidence. This reminds me of standardized tests and how it makes students feel like they’re dumb. Just because some children do poorly on standardized test does not mean they are less intelligent than the other children. We should not label a child based on his/her standardized test scores and the same logic should be applied to rubrics.
Lastly, rubrics may not be the best tool because it may not take relevant circumstances into consideration. In the future, you could have students who have learning disabilities, so educators need to take that student into consideration when utilizing rubrics in the classroom. Therefore, teachers may want to reconsider using rubrics to grade their students’ work. When teachers give up rubrics, they’re looking at students’ work through their own eyes instead of those of the rubric’s. Also, their feedback to their students’ work will more likely help students to think critically rather than simply compare how their work measures up to the categories on a rubric.
Questions:
- Do you think educators should use rubric to grade their students’ work? Why or why not?
- In what other ways do you think rubrics negatively impact a student’s writing?
- How could we as educators facilitate a child individuality and personal writing style while also ensuring continued writing skill progression?
- Do you think educators should use rubric to grade their students’ work? Why or why not?
- In what other ways do you think rubrics negatively impact a student’s writing?
- How could we as educators facilitate a child individuality and personal writing style while also ensuring continued writing skill progression?
Mang, I loved your views on this topic and I completely agree! I feel as though this is where I personally lack in my education. When given free reign on assignments to do whatever I want, I feel lost and stressed because I'm not specifically told what to do. I think rubrics and strict assignments take creativity out of students hands. I am a personal victim of this. Instead, I believe we could put a view overarching "guidelines" to assignments/writing to give students a sense of what to do but also give them the freedom to put their own "twist" onto things. Creativity is SO important to me and I want to foster creativity in my classroom rather than destroy it. Do I think we should use rubrics in our classroom? My answer is to an extent. Like I said earlier I think loosening up our rubrics could be beneficial and also I think it depends on the assignment. Writing could be a more free and open rubric but for subjects like science or other concrete subject areas, I think rubrics could be of good use. I think it's all about HOW you use your rubric. Rubrics don't take the student into account personally. I think it takes things out of context and looks at every child's success as the "same". Therefore, I think creating guidelines to assignments that aren't too strict can facilitate progression but also keep creativity and personality into play. What subjects/circumstances do you guys think rubrics could be of good use?
ReplyDeleteMayson, I like what you said here! I like this idea of giving guidelines so that students know what they need to do, but have the freedom to do what they want to do. Rubrics can be so good or they could be so bad depending on how they're used. Like you said, its all about how you use it. I feel like if a rubric is going to be used as a way to assess a students, it needs to be made by the teacher and to make sure it only includes things that the teacher has taught. We cannot assess students on things we have not taught them. During our class discussion about rubrics, we talked about how you could circle in the middle of the row if a students work doesn't quite fit in a category.
DeleteTo answer your question, I think a rubric could be good in any subject matter. It could be a great way to measure the content of the work. It should never be used to measure a students creativity because all students have different ways of being creative.
Mayson and Hannah,
DeleteThank you for responding and thinking this topic critically. I really like what you said about GIVING GUIDLINES instead of a rubrics that tells students to do everything. That's very true that students might feel lost when they aren't given anything at all. Whenever I'm given a rubric, it just made me feel like I have to do exactly what the rubrics tell me to do, therefore there's no such things as creativity, which is extremely important, like you said.
Mayson,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on a lot of what you said. I too feel overwhelmed sometimes when I am not given instruction, because there is so many perimeters that I could meet, and I almost feel as if I am going to do the assignment wrong if I'm not told specifically what to look for. To answer the question of "do I think we should use rubrics in the classroom?" I too agree that it is to a certain extent. I like what Dr. Taylor did, where she wrote her own. I think it is good to give kids a little bit of a guide, because if not, they may write about something that's so random, or that is forever and a day long, and there has to still be some educational value at the end of the day. Not every assignment can be a free write. Going off of what Mang said, I think standardize testing can be difficult for kids. But they aren't going away, so it is important to teach them how to be prepared as best as possible. And to do that, they need to know how to write essays that meet criteria. But like every assignment we do, we can put twists on them in our own ways. I do agree though that rubrics can limit creativity, as Wilson states in her article (Wilson, 2007). She talks about how we boil down such creativity to such bland words and writing, which doesn't make it fun anymore, which is why we should try to move away from the "premade" rubrics, not just rubrics as a whole (Wilson, 2007)
Merannda-
DeleteI agree that standardized testing for writing is really difficult. You must reach certain guidelines within the writing. I think the main take away for me was that we need to not over simplify the writing of our students and boil them down to general terms. Like the word grandmother. I love that this one word can signify so many different things depending on your life experience. A rubric usually boils it down to the specific definition. I think that the use of rubrics in the classroom is necessary to some extent. IF you do not allow for specific guidelines (such as writing type, grammatical usage, etc.) to be available upfront, the students cannot be held accountable when you say "but the assignment was a narrative and you wrote an expository essay." I think that we need to use rubrics in addition to other forms of feedback. We cannot read a student's work and simply check a box. We must provide feedback in a manner that will help them grow as a writer.
Miss Best,
DeleteI went through similar emotions about rubrics when I read this article. I feel that rubrics not only help to hold students accountable, but teachers as well. I feel that it allows teachers a way to track their expectations for student work and writing. To get rid of rubrics does not mean to rid the classroom of expectations and automatically give everyone an A. Rubrics need to be culturally-sustaining just as curriculum is. I thought about what Doctor Taylor did in class and use relevant examples for "outstanding" work, "moderate" work, as well as "needs improvement". When we have a generalized, irrelevant rubric that serves as a "menu" for students' works, we see what we want to see, and not what their work is offering us insight into. According to Maya Wilson, "When we give up rubrics, we're looking at students' work through our eyes, not those of the rubric (Wilson, 2007, p. 64). As a substitute for rubrics, I feel that teachers will need to have some format in which they communicate the expectations clearly and openly to students. I personally appreciate rubrics because it allows for me to self-reflect on my work and critique myself. I guess I would have to say that I fall somewhere in the middle of the argument for rubrics and the argument against rubrics. I see both sides, so I look forward to future class discussions revolving around this topic.
Mang-
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your post. Thank you for sharing. I think that rubrics are really good for a general guideline. I think that we need to use it as a guideline to grade but it is not the end all be all of the grading process. I think that we need general guidelines such as uses grammar properly or has the correct components such as use of figurative language. Without a general rule to follow, students may not meet the basic criteria of the assignment. They may have a wonderful paper but if the paper is supposed to be a narrative and they give you an expository writing, does the student deserve full credit?
I think that overly specific rubrics could negatively impact a student. If we give them a set of rules to follow then the student could complete the task using the bare minimum. That being said, I think that if a rubric is used in addition to responsive feedback, the students will have a much better and well rounded outcome and understanding of the assignment.
I think that as an educator, I need to not fall into the trap of using a pre-made rubric for assignments. I think that if a rubric is going to be utilized then it needs to be one that I create and in broad terms. It is like Dr. Hayes tells us, "You need to be a producer of knowledge. Not just a consumer." We need to teach children how to be creative. I actually really enjoy the fact that the tasks are sometimes really broad. It makes me think and allows for exploration of understanding.
Melissa, I appreciate your comment on this topic. I really love what you said about PRE-MADE rubric. It is very important that teachers do not fall into the trap of using pre-made rubrics for assignment. Teachers shouldn't do that because that rubric was already made for other students who are different from their students. I believe some teachers do this sometimes because they have to take the time to do it and they just don't want that. As educators, it is crucial to not rely on what other people had already made but create your own material and take that ownership. Also, it is okay to take some great idea from other people if that's going to be helpful for your students but just don't copy or reply on it completely.
DeleteMiss Zi,
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree that rubrics typically serve as a step-by-step guideline to what students can quickly and non-engaging complete to get an A. This approach aligns closely with the banking method of education, in which educators "give" information to students to be encoded into their brains forever. It just does not seem very realistic, especially in regards to writing. Maja Wilson states, "Just as the options on the airline's recording were not responsive to my situation and therefore unhelpful, the comments on the rubrics are not responsive to students'writing and often don't reflect what I think about their work" (Wilson, 2007, p. 62). Rubrics do not allow for educators to be responsive to students' writing, and to me, this is a problem. We want to provide useful, constructive criticism and feedback to our students that truly align with the way we feel about their writing. Not a generalized checklist for their writing that we feel are representative of "good writing". Thank you for your feedback Miss Zi! I look forward to our discussions in class.
Miss Eaton, thank you so much for your feedback! I love how you connect this into a banking method of education, where teachers just thrown information at students and expect them to know it. I feel like this is an inappropriate method of teaching students if you want them to be creative and successful. It just doesn't seem right to me. I also think that rubrics are not responsive enough to individuals because all students are going to be different. Rubrics may be responsive for a couple students, but not overall. Like we always discussed in class, having culturally responsive curriculum is crucial for educators to implemented into their classroom.
DeleteEmma,
DeleteI too appreciated how you made the connection between rubrics and the banking method. Like you said, rubrics encourage students to get their assigned writing done in a quick and non-engaging way. In fact, I would argue that we cannot instill the idea that writing is a powerful and freeing experience in the minds of our students while giving them some letter grade that came from the dry requirements of a rubric. I think that in itself is sending a message to our students that, if they stay in the requirements outlined in the rubric, then that will be valued more than them attempting to go out of the box and really explore the power that writing can have. How can we encourage this while also attempting to label what is "good" writing and what is "bad" writing according to a rubric? We can't, and that is why it will be important for teachers to move away from relying on rubrics.
Great job, Mang! You made a lot of good points about the downsides of rubrics. I think that rubrics have a place in some assignments that are more technically-based. For example, if you’re specifically teaching a lesson on the parts of the cell. If you want students to include specific parts on a poster they’ll design and present to the class, it would be important to include that on a rubric so that students know they covered the required material. It will be important information for them to reinforce for quizzes and tests, so it’s good to remind them to focus their energy on that.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that for more creativity-based projects and assignments, a rubric could be more of a hindrance because students will get hung up on the specific language in the rubric. Concentrating more on the requirements in the case of a creative writing paper might hold back a student’s imagination because they’ll be focusing too much on sentence structure and grammar, for instance.
I think utilizing multiple drafts and peer evaluation would be a valuable way to facilitate writing development. This way, students can begin their paper without fear of more technical failures, because those will always be improved upon in later drafts. They can concentrate more on the ‘meat’ of their writing, and the creative side of their paper.
Christa, I appreciate your feedback! I like what you said about giving them a some type of guideline so that students know they covered the required material. I agree that there will be times when you need to give guidelines for students to follow. But instead of giving them rubrics, I think giving them a broader guidelines will help students know what is expected and also allows their creativity. I think rubrics give a step-by-step instructions on what students should do, which, I think is not beneficial for students. I'm grateful that you brought up about utilizing multiple draft and peer evaluation. I really like this idea because it gives student multiple chance to improve their writing, just like what Dr. Taylor made us do for our narrative writing. I think all our peer feedbacks had helped us a lot, therefore, students will too.
DeleteMang,
ReplyDeleteI agree that many things wrong with creative ideas is the idea of the rubric. I followed the rubric like it was the guide to life. I think that schools really put control I believe rubrics should not be the main thing we based a grade on. I think having certain things on the lesson or assignment should be the rubric. Like for example, let’s say that it was history and we were talking about the Medieval times and it should have one example on the art. In the article it notes, “We are, after all, their audiences, while a piece of paper is not. Do we want them writing for the rubric, or do we want them to write for them- selves and for us and for all those who hunger for the human experience melded with language” (Wilson, 2007, Pg. 64). I believe that I was never writing for myself. Even when it was a free write, I felt like I had to write like the teacher was controlling me like a puppet. Another thing that would negatively impact the student would be the free of not being on track with it the rules of the rubric. My only idea for facilitating the students progress would be asking questions as they work. Make sure they know the basic of writing and see they understand it. This way they still learn and feel free to write as they please.
Mang,
ReplyDeleteYou have a really great post here. Although you acknowledged that there are some advantages to rubrics, you did awesome at going into depth about the disadvantages as well. I particularly liked how you said, "First of all, I believe rubrics encourage students to do the “minimum thinking” required. Students simply follow rules and complete the assignment strictly adhering to the rubric instead of taking the time to explore their imagination." I can definitely see this being a reality for many students-- after all, a rubric reiterates the idea that you are writing for the purpose of receiving a grade and nothing more. So, if that is the idea that is in the student's minds going into writing, why bother going the extra mile? Why bother challenging themselves when they can follow the "blah" requirements of the rubric and get a solid grade? This was certainly a huge reason for me as to why I think teachers need to be very careful when giving rubrics. Perhaps we could get rid of rubrics and, as many of my classmates have already noted, focus more on developing a generic set of guidelines. Instead of relying on the specifics of a rubric, the students are given opportunity to take their writing in the direction they please, and the teachers can then assess based on that individual student and their past academic performances. If we want to instill the idea that writing can be a freeing and powerful experience, then I think it will be essential for teachers to move away from the strangling, limiting feeling of rubrics.
Yes Hunter, you touched on a lot of the same things I talked about in my response. We can't expect them to exceed the requirements that we give to them. Why should they be creative when you have what the assignment should look like for them. I know I have looked at rubrics and wondered can I make this creative, can I do what they are asking of me but in a different way. But I hesitate to be creative because I am afraid that I will lose points for being creative. Nice job!
DeleteMang,
ReplyDeleteAmazing post! Yes I couldn't agree more Mang. I felt the same about this reading and about rubrics while in school. Rubrics do help, they give students the expectations for the assignment and what they need to get done. But it limits it to just that, like they have to have their assignment to look exactly what the rubric is saying or you will lose points. Like you said in your blog, it encourages students to be minimal thinkers. Do exactly this and you'll get a good grade. I feel that we do need a type of rubric, but it needs to be more flexible. The students need to be able to get creative with am assignment and not lose points because of it. This sets our students up to only do what's asked of them. They don't get creative and turn the bare minimum. It's like setting low expectations, they wont exceed those expectations. We need to let them be creative and exceed our expectations and have high expectations of them. Really great job!