Teaching In The Margins:
Commenting On Student Writing

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The most effective rubrics lay out three kinds of information for students:

1. the key evaluative criteria, defined as concretely as possible,
2. an evaluative range for each criterion so that students can see where they succeeded (or not) for each criterion, and
3. weightings for each criterion.

Rubrics typically are set up as tables with criteria running down the left side of the table and the evaluative scale running across the table. Teachers sometimes leave the right-most block on each line of the grid for handwritten comments or for a "score" for the criterion.

Many teachers also choose to write a very brief individual comment below the grid as a summation of the key points for students to attend to or to praise students for success on the assignment. We include several examples of typical rubrics under the following links:

• Rubric for Conducting an Experiment in the Lab
• Grading Rubric for Metamorphosis Paper
• Scoring Rubric for Projects, Consulting-Style Reports, and Reports on Technical Topics