Single-Point Rubrics

A lot of us use rubrics to assess our students' learning.  It's a great tool to provide students at the beginning of an assignment or project so that they know exactly what is expected of them.  However, Edutopia thinks that providing only a single-point rubric would more greatly benefit students in that, "the single-point rubric includes only guidance on and descriptions of successful work..."  Why are we telling our students how to fail? Most of them can figure that out on their own.  Instead, we should be providing information on what the student needs to do to successfully complete their assignment.  Here is an example as provided by Edutopia:

They go on to list 6 reasons why we should be transitioning to this type of rubric:

1. It gives space to reflect on both strengths and weaknesses in student work.Each category invites teachers to meaningfully share with students what they did really well and where they might want to consider making some adjustments.

2. It doesn’t place boundaries on student performance. The single-point rubric doesn’t try to cover all the aspects of a project that could go well or poorly. It gives guidance and then allows students to approach the project in creative and unique ways. It helps steer students away from relying too much on teacher direction and encourages them to create their own ideas.

3. It works against students’ tendency to rank themselves and to compare themselves to or compete with one another. Each student receives unique feedback that is specific to them and their work, but that can’t be easily quantified.

4. It helps take student attention off the grade. The design of this rubric emphasizes descriptive, individualized feedback over the grade. Instead of focusing on teacher instruction in order to aim for a particular grade, students can immerse themselves in the experience of the assignment.

5. It creates more flexibility without sacrificing clarity. Students are still given clear explanations for the grades they earned, but there is much more room to account for a student taking a project in a direction that a holistic or analytic rubric didn’t or couldn’t account for.  

6. It’s simple! The single-point rubric has much less text than other rubric styles. The odds that our students will actually read the whole rubric, reflect on given feedback, and remember both are much higher.

Here is an example I made in Google Docs for my podcast project:

Some websites to get you started with making a rubric:
http://rubric-maker.com/
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
https://www.quickrubric.com/
And dozens more. Use these sites to get ideas for verbiage, but then create your own version in Google Docs with only the expected outcome listed.