Rubrics

Grades are not required until high school, and not recommended by Faithful Scholars in elementary school or even during the middle school years. We idealist plan on practicing in 8th grade, but the reality is that we are intensely instructing, guiding, and living leaving no time in which to squeeze trial runs.

What is a Rubric? A rubric is a planned, fair, & methodical manner of grading. It is a pre-set plan or strategy of assessing students work. Created by the instructor (you) to insure the consistent grading of assignments, tests, projects, etc per subject to insures consistent outcome. Each rubrics should be unique and tailored toward each child.

Why use a Rubric?   Giving your student(s) a clear understanding of what is expected in order to succeed in each subject.  Each subject/course will have it’s own rubric.

Each and every teacher in traditional settings has their own unique manner/method of grading which may seem ‘grey’ and frustrating, but it’s truly good news for we home school graders. It means that we can create our own methods/expectations that work accordingly with our unique styles of organization and individual levels of (student) ability.

• For Math there may be partial credit or simply correct and incorrect.
• For Composition there might be effort, neatness, content, grammar, spelling or any variation thereof -or more -or fewer (requirements).
• There are as many rubrics as there are teachers, but is is simply an efficient and fair minded manner in which an instructor puts forth his/her expectations to the student and then arrives at a grade.

Rubric Samples:  A basic rubric includes the following items, but can be greatly varied according to your focus:  First, determine the areas of your assignment that you wish to measure (grade) and the criteria you wish to include.

• content, spelling, number correct, effort, etc
• define areas listed– example: content includes number of audiences addressed, appropriate materials used, varied style and technique, required length, neatness, and etc.
• a self created measurement scale (weighing of criteria)– example: 25% assigned to each area therefore a perfect content score would be 25 of 100 points.

Recording subject assignments, tests, projects, and etc. can be done in a variety of manners, but we cannot stress how important it is to record them as they are completed.  This will save such a mountain of unearthing, sorting, calculating work at the end of the year that you will count this preemptive time invaluable.- I promise!

Record keeping can be maintained in simple or complex form as long as you are tracking graded assignments, tests, projects (per subject) for end of semester or year GPA.  This is an example of paper/pen record keeping methodology, but as our personalities vastly vary so do our means and methods of record keeping vary.  From complex spreadsheets to simple teacher planners, the range is wide.

The only common variant is that keeping up with your daily/weekly records will bring peaceful surety when the high school deadlines (to submit end of year high school subjects/graded) approach, and you are quickly able to submit courses/grades/weights.