organization essay rubric

9 Elements of a Writing Rubric: How to Score Well on Your Paper

Writing a paper in college can feel daunting, but luckily, many writing assignments come with a rubric—clear descriptions of what your professor believes demonstrates competent writing and proficiency in research, structure, and mechanics.

Writing rubrics are a helpful tool to keep your writing aligned with the assignment and to understand exactly what your professor is looking for so you can score well on your paper.

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What is a writing rubric?

A writing rubric is a clear set of guidelines on what your paper should include, often written as a rating scale that shows the range of scores possible on the assignment and how to earn each one. Professors use writing rubrics to grade the essays they assign, typically scoring on content, organization, mechanics, and overall understanding.

Writing rubrics exist to help you understand the assignment fully and show how you can reach the score you desire. A rubric is often illustrated in a table that includes:

• Row headings that articulate the requirements
• Column headings that show the different scores possible
• Boxes inside the rubric that show how each requirement can be achieved under each level of proficiency

How do writing rubrics work in college?

Writing rubrics take the mystery out of what your professor is looking for in a well-written essay. While rubrics are used at all levels, college-level writing rubrics are often very detailed about expectations, and scoring is done according to how the student covers the topic and employs writing skills in an organized, effective way.

When a professor assigns a paper, it often comes with a writing rubric. The professor will use the writing rubric to grade your essay. Writing rubrics offer guidance and help you make sure you’re ticking every box as you write. They don’t always involve points. Sometimes, rubrics score papers on a scale from poor to excellent. Occasionally a rubric will specify which elements of a topic must be covered in a paper in a checklist structure with space for feedback, rather than a scoring system.

9 elements of a writing rubric

Staying focused in your writing is important. You want to make sure that your ideas and supporting evidence are clear throughout.

• What is the main purpose of your paper?
• Is it relevant to the assignment?
• Do you stay consistent or tend to go off on tangents to the subject?

2 Thesis statement

A thesis statement is a declarative sentence that tells the reader the argument being made or the main point of the paper.

• Is your thesis statement strong, clear, and insightful?
• Is your thesis statement relevant to the assignment?

3 Support and development

The support and development section in a writing rubric assesses how well you support your thesis with research.

• How in-depth is the analysis?
• Is it relevant?
• Do you make a strong case for your thesis using a wide range of evidence from credible primary and secondary sources?

4 Audience and tone

In a writing rubric, the audience and tone sections refer to how well your writing style aligns with the purpose of the paper and who it is intended for.

• Is the tone appropriate for the audience (e.g., other students, professors, or outside institutions)?
• Is the tone consistent, or is it formal at times and informal at others?
• Is the tone engaging and in sync with your unique writing style?

5 Structure

Structure refers to how you organize and build on each of your ideas from the beginning to the end of your paper.

• Is the paper’s structure logical?
• Is there flow between sentences and paragraphs?
• Is there a strong introduction, supporting body, and clear conclusion ?

6 Point of view

With your audience and the purpose of your essay in mind, you need to pick an appropriate point of view .

• Is the point of view appropriate? For example, the first-person point of view is often considered inappropriate for an academic paper.
• Is the point of view consistent?
• Does the point of view add to the paper’s impact and tone?

7 Sentence structure

You’ll want to avoid things like run-on sentences , filler words , and clunky transitions between paragraphs.

• Is there varied sentence structure throughout?
• Are the sentences grammatically correct?
• Are the transitions between sentences and paragraphs clean and easy to follow?

8 Mechanics

Good mechanics in a paper rely on following all of the rules in writing.

• Is your writing free of grammatical , spelling , and punctuation errors?
• Do you demonstrate a strong understanding of proper English mechanics, such as capitalization, contractions, gerunds, participles, numbers, and punctuation marks?

9 Vocabulary

In a writing rubric, a professor uses the vocabulary section to assess your word choice and how precisely you apply your vocabulary.

• Are you using words that fit the subject, or are they too basic or too complex?
• Is the word choice varied, precise, and collegiate-level?

Tip: For papers focused on academics, theory, or persuasion, a writing rubric will emphasize the need for a strong thesis statement, relevant supporting evidence, critical analysis, and clarity. For creative writing, rubrics will emphasize the importance of originality, voice, and audience appeal.

Levels of proficiency in a writing rubric

Point-based rubrics will show the total number of points you can score based on proficiency in each criterion. By ensuring your work matches the criteria in the highest categories, you should earn a good grade.

Levels of performance, given as labels, typically range from highly proficient to unproficient. Each level shows how well you did in each category based on words and phrases such as:

• Exemplary, advanced
• Proficient, good
• Emerging, needs improvement
• Unsatisfactory, poor

How to use a writing rubric to improve your paper

Before submitting your paper, you can use the rubric as a checklist to ensure you followed the assignment properly. Editing your paper with reference to the rubric is a great way to check for grammatical errors and polish your writing to be engaging, organized, and well developed.

Graded rubrics are also a great map for the revision process and can show you where your strengths and weaknesses lie in writing. Studying rubrics can even make you a stronger writer. By considering the qualities that make up a strong essay, you can work to master the different areas and continually improve your writing.

Essay rubric example

Writing rubric faqs.

A writing rubric is a scoring tool that professors use to communicate their expectations for a writing assignment and the degrees of proficiency each student can reach. Writing rubrics can help students understand how their work is graded.

How does a writing rubric work?

A writing rubric shows each of the grades you can receive based on how well you adhere to the criteria listed under each level of proficiency. It can be a helpful checklist when writing.

What are the key elements of a writing rubric?

Key elements assessed in a writing rubric include focus, thesis, organization and structure, development of ideas, support of the thesis statement, audience, tone, point of view, vocabulary, and writing mechanics.

Rubric Best Practices, Examples, and Templates

A rubric is a scoring tool that identifies the different criteria relevant to an assignment, assessment, or learning outcome and states the possible levels of achievement in a specific, clear, and objective way. Use rubrics to assess project-based student work including essays, group projects, creative endeavors, and oral presentations.

Rubrics can help instructors communicate expectations to students and assess student work fairly, consistently and efficiently. Rubrics can provide students with informative feedback on their strengths and weaknesses so that they can reflect on their performance and work on areas that need improvement.

How to Get Started

Best practices, moodle how-to guides.

• Workshop Recording (Fall 2022)
• Workshop Registration

Step 1: Analyze the assignment

The first step in the rubric creation process is to analyze the assignment or assessment for which you are creating a rubric. To do this, consider the following questions:

• What is the purpose of the assignment and your feedback? What do you want students to demonstrate through the completion of this assignment (i.e. what are the learning objectives measured by it)? Is it a summative assessment, or will students use the feedback to create an improved product?
• Does the assignment break down into different or smaller tasks? Are these tasks equally important as the main assignment?
• What would an “excellent” assignment look like? An “acceptable” assignment? One that still needs major work?
• How detailed do you want the feedback you give students to be? Do you want/need to give them a grade?

Step 2: Decide what kind of rubric you will use

Types of rubrics: holistic, analytic/descriptive, single-point

Holistic Rubric. A holistic rubric includes all the criteria (such as clarity, organization, mechanics, etc.) to be considered together and included in a single evaluation. With a holistic rubric, the rater or grader assigns a single score based on an overall judgment of the student’s work, using descriptions of each performance level to assign the score.

Advantages of holistic rubrics:

• Can p lace an emphasis on what learners can demonstrate rather than what they cannot
• Save grader time by minimizing the number of evaluations to be made for each student
• Can be used consistently across raters, provided they have all been trained

Disadvantages of holistic rubrics:

• Provide less specific feedback than analytic/descriptive rubrics
• Can be difficult to choose a score when a student’s work is at varying levels across the criteria
• Any weighting of c riteria cannot be indicated in the rubric

Analytic/Descriptive Rubric . An analytic or descriptive rubric often takes the form of a table with the criteria listed in the left column and with levels of performance listed across the top row. Each cell contains a description of what the specified criterion looks like at a given level of performance. Each of the criteria is scored individually.

Advantages of analytic rubrics:

• Provide detailed feedback on areas of strength or weakness
• Each criterion can be weighted to reflect its relative importance

Disadvantages of analytic rubrics:

• More time-consuming to create and use than a holistic rubric
• May not be used consistently across raters unless the cells are well defined
• May result in giving less personalized feedback

Single-Point Rubric . A single-point rubric is breaks down the components of an assignment into different criteria, but instead of describing different levels of performance, only the “proficient” level is described. Feedback space is provided for instructors to give individualized comments to help students improve and/or show where they excelled beyond the proficiency descriptors.

Advantages of single-point rubrics:

• Easier to create than an analytic/descriptive rubric
• Perhaps more likely that students will read the descriptors
• Areas of concern and excellence are open-ended
• May removes a focus on the grade/points
• May increase student creativity in project-based assignments

Disadvantage of analytic rubrics: Requires more work for instructors writing feedback

Step 3 (Optional): Look for templates and examples.

You might Google, “Rubric for persuasive essay at the college level” and see if there are any publicly available examples to start from. Ask your colleagues if they have used a rubric for a similar assignment. Some examples are also available at the end of this article. These rubrics can be a great starting point for you, but consider steps 3, 4, and 5 below to ensure that the rubric matches your assignment description, learning objectives and expectations.

Step 4: Define the assignment criteria

Make a list of the knowledge and skills are you measuring with the assignment/assessment Refer to your stated learning objectives, the assignment instructions, past examples of student work, etc. for help.

  Helpful strategies for defining grading criteria:

• Collaborate with co-instructors, teaching assistants, and other colleagues
• Brainstorm and discuss with students
• Can they be observed and measured?
• Are they important and essential?
• Are they distinct from other criteria?
• Are they phrased in precise, unambiguous language?
• Revise the criteria as needed
• Consider whether some are more important than others, and how you will weight them.

Step 5: Design the rating scale

Most ratings scales include between 3 and 5 levels. Consider the following questions when designing your rating scale:

• Given what students are able to demonstrate in this assignment/assessment, what are the possible levels of achievement?
• How many levels would you like to include (more levels means more detailed descriptions)
• Will you use numbers and/or descriptive labels for each level of performance? (for example 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and/or Exceeds expectations, Accomplished, Proficient, Developing, Beginning, etc.)
• Don’t use too many columns, and recognize that some criteria can have more columns that others . The rubric needs to be comprehensible and organized. Pick the right amount of columns so that the criteria flow logically and naturally across levels.

Step 6: Write descriptions for each level of the rating scale

Artificial Intelligence tools like Chat GPT have proven to be useful tools for creating a rubric. You will want to engineer your prompt that you provide the AI assistant to ensure you get what you want. For example, you might provide the assignment description, the criteria you feel are important, and the number of levels of performance you want in your prompt. Use the results as a starting point, and adjust the descriptions as needed.

Building a rubric from scratch

For a single-point rubric , describe what would be considered “proficient,” i.e. B-level work, and provide that description. You might also include suggestions for students outside of the actual rubric about how they might surpass proficient-level work.

For analytic and holistic rubrics , c reate statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.

• Consider what descriptor is appropriate for each criteria, e.g., presence vs absence, complete vs incomplete, many vs none, major vs minor, consistent vs inconsistent, always vs never. If you have an indicator described in one level, it will need to be described in each level.
• You might start with the top/exemplary level. What does it look like when a student has achieved excellence for each/every criterion? Then, look at the “bottom” level. What does it look like when a student has not achieved the learning goals in any way? Then, complete the in-between levels.
• For an analytic rubric , do this for each particular criterion of the rubric so that every cell in the table is filled. These descriptions help students understand your expectations and their performance in regard to those expectations.

Well-written descriptions:

• Describe observable and measurable behavior
• Use parallel language across the scale
• Indicate the degree to which the standards are met

Step 7: Create your rubric

Create your rubric in a table or spreadsheet in Word, Google Docs, Sheets, etc., and then transfer it by typing it into Moodle. You can also use online tools to create the rubric, but you will still have to type the criteria, indicators, levels, etc., into Moodle. Rubric creators: Rubistar , iRubric

Step 8: Pilot-test your rubric

Prior to implementing your rubric on a live course, obtain feedback from:

• Teacher assistants

Try out your new rubric on a sample of student work. After you pilot-test your rubric, analyze the results to consider its effectiveness and revise accordingly.

• Limit the rubric to a single page for reading and grading ease
• Use parallel language . Use similar language and syntax/wording from column to column. Make sure that the rubric can be easily read from left to right or vice versa.
• Use student-friendly language . Make sure the language is learning-level appropriate. If you use academic language or concepts, you will need to teach those concepts.
• Share and discuss the rubric with your students . Students should understand that the rubric is there to help them learn, reflect, and self-assess. If students use a rubric, they will understand the expectations and their relevance to learning.
• Consider scalability and reusability of rubrics. Create rubric templates that you can alter as needed for multiple assignments.
• Maximize the descriptiveness of your language. Avoid words like “good” and “excellent.” For example, instead of saying, “uses excellent sources,” you might describe what makes a resource excellent so that students will know. You might also consider reducing the reliance on quantity, such as a number of allowable misspelled words. Focus instead, for example, on how distracting any spelling errors are.

Example of an analytic rubric for a final paper

Example of a holistic rubric for a final paper, single-point rubric, more examples:.

• Single Point Rubric Template ( variation )
• Analytic Rubric Template make a copy to edit
• A Rubric for Rubrics
• Bank of Online Discussion Rubrics in different formats
• Mathematical Presentations Descriptive Rubric
• Math Proof Assessment Rubric
• Kansas State Sample Rubrics
• Design Single Point Rubric

Technology Tools: Rubrics in Moodle

• Moodle Docs: Rubrics
• Moodle Docs: Grading Guide (use for single-point rubrics)

Tools with rubrics (other than Moodle)

• Google Assignments
• Turnitin Assignments: Rubric or Grading Form

Other resources

• DePaul University (n.d.). Rubrics .
• Gonzalez, J. (2014). Know your terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics . Cult of Pedagogy.
• Goodrich, H. (1996). Understanding rubrics . Teaching for Authentic Student Performance, 54 (4), 14-17. Retrieved from   
• Miller, A. (2012). Tame the beast: tips for designing and using rubrics.
• Ragupathi, K., Lee, A. (2020). Beyond Fairness and Consistency in Grading: The Role of Rubrics in Higher Education. In: Sanger, C., Gleason, N. (eds) Diversity and Inclusion in Global Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

Essay Rubric: Basic Guidelines and Sample Template

11 December 2023

last updated

Lectures and tutors provide specific requirements for students to meet when writing essays. Basically, an essay rubric helps tutors to analyze the quality of articles written by students. In this case, useful rubrics make the analysis process simple for lecturers as they focus on specific concepts related to the writing process. Also, an essay rubric list and organize all of the criteria into one convenient paper. In other instances, students use an essay rubric to enhance their writing skills by examining various requirements. Then, different types of essay rubrics vary from one educational level to another. For example, Master’s and Ph.D. essay rubrics focus on examining complex thesis statements and other writing mechanics. However, high school essay rubrics examine basic writing concepts. In turn, a sample template of a high school rubric in this article can help students to evaluate their papers before submitting them to their teachers.

General Aspects of an Essay Rubric

An essay rubric refers to the way how teachers assess student’s composition writing skills and abilities. Basically, an essay rubric provides specific criteria to grade assignments. In this case, teachers use essay rubrics to save time when evaluating and grading various papers. Hence, learners must use an essay rubric effectively to achieve desired goals and grades.

General Assessment Table for an Essay Rubric

1. organization.

Excellent/8 points: The essay contains stiff topic sentences and a controlled organization.

Very Good/6 points: The essay contains a logical and appropriate organization. The writer uses clear topic sentences.

Average/4 points: The essay contains a logical and appropriate organization. The writer uses clear topic sentences.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The essay has an inconsistent organization.

Unacceptable/0 points: The essay shows the absence of a planned organization.

Grade: ___ .

Excellent/8 points: The essay shows the absence of a planned organization.

Very Good/6 points: The paper contains precise and varied sentence structures and word choices. 

Average/4 points: The paper follows a limited but mostly correct sentence structure. There are different sentence structures and word choices.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The paper contains several awkward and unclear sentences. There are some problems with word choices.

Unacceptable/0 points: The writer does not contain apparent control over sentence structures and word choice.

Excellent/8 points: The content appears sophisticated and contains well-developed ideas.

Very Good/6 points: The essay content appears illustrative and balanced.

Average/4 points: The essay contains unbalanced content that requires more analysis.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The essay contains a lot of research information without analysis or commentary.

Unacceptable/0 points: The essay lacks relevant content and does not fit the thesis statement . Essay rubric rules are not followed.

Excellent/8 points: The essay contains a clearly stated and focused thesis statement.

Very Good/6 points: The written piece comprises a clearly stated argument. However, the focus would have been sharper.

Average/4 points: The thesis phrasing sounds simple and lacks complexity. The writer does not word the thesis correctly. 

Needs Improvement/2 points: The thesis statement requires a clear objective and does not fit the theme in the content of the essay.

Unacceptable/0 points: The thesis is not evident in the introduction.

Excellent/8 points: The essay is clear and focused. The work holds the reader’s attention. Besides, the relevant details and quotes enrich the thesis statement.

Very Good/6 points: The essay is mostly focused and contains a few useful details and quotes.

Average/4 points: The writer begins the work by defining the topic. However, the development of ideas appears general.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The author fails to define the topic well, or the writer focuses on several issues.

Unacceptable/0 points: The essay lacks a clear sense of a purpose or thesis statement. Readers have to make suggestions based on sketchy or missing ideas to understand the intended meaning. Essay rubric requirements are missed.

6. Sentence Fluency

Excellent/8 points: The essay has a natural flow, rhythm, and cadence. The sentences are well built and have a wide-ranging and robust structure that enhances reading.

Very Good/6 points: The ideas mostly flow and motivate a compelling reading.

Average/4 points: The text hums along with a balanced beat but tends to be more businesslike than musical. Besides, the flow of ideas tends to become more mechanical than fluid.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The essay appears irregular and hard to read.

Unacceptable/0 points: Readers have to go through the essay several times to give this paper a fair interpretive reading.

7. Conventions

Excellent/8 points: The student demonstrates proper use of standard writing conventions, like spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, usage, and paragraphing. The student uses protocols in a way that improves the readability of the essay.

Very Good/6 points: The student demonstrates proper writing conventions and uses them correctly. One can read the essay with ease, and errors are rare. Few touch-ups can make the composition ready for publishing.

Average/4 points: The writer shows reasonable control over a short range of standard writing rules. The writer handles all the conventions and enhances readability. The errors in the essay tend to distract and impair legibility.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The writer makes an effort to use various conventions, including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar usage, and paragraphing. The essay contains multiple errors.

Unacceptable/0 points: The author makes repetitive errors in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, usage, and paragraphing. Some mistakes distract readers and make it hard to understand the concepts. Essay rubric rules are not covered.

8. Presentation

Excellent/8 points: The form and presentation of the text enhance the readability of the essay and the flow of ideas.

Very Good/6 points: The format has few mistakes and is easy to read.

Average/4 points: The writer’s message is understandable in this format.

Needs Improvement/2 points: The writer’s message is only comprehensible infrequently, and the paper appears disorganized.

Unacceptable/0 points: Readers receive a distorted message due to difficulties connecting to the presentation of the text.

Final Grade: ___ .

Grading Scheme for an Essay Rubric:

• A+ = 60+ points
• A = 55-59 points
• A- = 50-54 points
• B+ = 45-49 points
• B = 40-44 points
• B- = 35-39 points
• C+ = 30-34 points
• C = 25-29 points
• C- = 20-24 points
• D = 10-19 points
• F = less than 9 points

Basic Differences in Education Levels and Essay Rubrics

The quality of essays changes at different education levels. For instance, college students must write miscellaneous papers when compared to high school learners. In this case, an essay rubric will change for these different education levels. For example, university and college essays should have a debatable thesis statement with varying points of view. However, high school essays should have simple phrases as thesis statements. Then, other requirements in an essay rubric will be more straightforward for high school students. For master’s and Ph.D. essays, the criteria presented in an essay rubric should focus on examining the paper’s complexity. In turn, compositions for these two categories should have thesis statements that demonstrate a detailed analysis of defined topics that advance knowledge in a specific area of study.

Summing Up on an Essay Rubric

Essay rubrics help teachers, instructors, professors, and tutors to analyze the quality of essays written by students. Basically, an essay rubric makes the analysis process simple for lecturers. Essay rubrics list and organize all of the criteria into one convenient paper. In other instances, students use the essay rubrics to improve their writing skills. However, they vary from one educational level to the other. Master’s and Ph.D. essay rubrics focus on examining complex thesis statements and other writing mechanics. However, high school essay rubrics examine basic writing concepts.  The following are some of the tips that one must consider when preparing a rubric.

• contain all writing mechanics that relates to essay writing;
• cover different requirements and their relevant grades;
• follow clear and understandable statements.

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APPENDIX A: Sample Grading Rubrics

Discussions.

Total points per discussion: 10

Self-Reflection Journal entries

Total points per self-reflection journal entry: 3

SELF-REFLECTION ESSAY

Draft essays.

This grading rubric is designed for the first draft of an essay. It focuses more on content and organization, and it focuses less on grammar and mechanics.

Total points per draft essay: 10

Revised Essays

This grading rubric is designed for the second draft of an essay. It focuses more on grammar and mechanics, and it focuses less on content and organization.

Total points per revised essay: 10

Synthesis Copyright © 2022 by Timothy Krause is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Putting the Pieces Together: The WRIT Rubric

So, What is a Rubric?

A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly represents the performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric divides the assigned work into different parts and provides descriptions of the characteristics associated with each part, at different levels of mastery. Educators use rubrics for a wide array of assignments: papers, projects, oral presentations, artistic performances, group projects, etc. They use rubrics as scoring or grading guides, to provide formative feedback to support and guide ongoing learning efforts, or both. [1]

In WRIT, you’ll quickly become familiar with the reason and writing rubric. It’s a document your instructor will use to not only assess your writing but also to provide you with feedback on how to improve.

You should always review your rubric feedback to track how you have improved or to locate where you may need a bit more help in some areas of your writing.

WRIT Grading Rubric 

Below is the WRIT Grading Rubric used to evaluate your writing. The categories you see also reflect the organization of this textbook ( Content, Organization, Style and Mechanics ).

• Download a PDF version of the interactive rubric below.
• Grading and Performance Rubrics. Carnegie Mellon University, 2020 ↵

Putting the Pieces Together Copyright © 2020 by Andrew Stracuzzi and André Cormier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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7.2: Rubrics

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WHAT IS A RUBRIC?

A rubric communicates expectations and creates consistent criteria and standards by which to evaluate a performance or project. In writing, a rubric allows teachers and students to evaluate an activity which can be complex and subjective. A rubric is aimed at accurate and fair assessment, fostering understanding, and indicating a way to proceed with subsequent learning and teaching. A rubric can also provide a basis for self-evaluation, reflection, and peer review.

WHY ARE RUBRICS IMPORTANT?

Rubrics help to…

• bring objectivity to subjective scoring.
• take away the “guessing game” by providing students with consistent standards the teacher will be using to evaluate their writing.
• teach students to set learning goals and take the responsibility for their learning into their own hands by knowing what skills make up a desired performance so they can strive to achieve it.
• assist students in developing their personal ability to judge excellence, or the lack thereof, in their work and the work of others.
• assure students that there is equality in grading and standardized expectations.
• praise students’ strengths and identify their weaknesses because rubrics provide visual representations of areas of excellence and under-performance allowing easy identification of what areas to work on at a glance.
• provide a clear means for students to monitor their progress on specific criteria over a given period of instruction or time.
• ensure for teachers that they are evaluating student work fairly, clearly and thoroughly.

HOW DO I DO IT?

The English professors at Skyline College have worked together to create a shared rubric so that regardless of English class or instructor, students will be evaluated according to a consistent set of criteria based on a shared understanding of writing fundamentals. All of the materials designed to instruct, evaluate and comment on student writing in this Rhetoric are based on that departmental rubric. Contained here are three different approaches using Skyline College’s English Departmental rubric to evaluate and comment on writing. These rubrics can be used by students to evaluate one another, and they can be used by instructors to evaluate students. This provides further consistency and shared expectations as the students and the instructor use the same evaluating tool.

Composition Essay Rubric with Explanations

How to : Check the appropriate rubric boxes and provide explanations afterwards of the ratings. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic and use the advice when revising.

Comments: further explanations behind the scoring choices along with revision advice (for more commenting space, insert electronically or attach additional page)

Literature Essay Rubric with Explanations

Composition essay rubric.

How to : Check the appropriate rubric boxes and provide explanations afterwards of the ratings. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic (link below) and use the advice when revising.

Literature Essay Rubric

Composition essay rubric with integrated comments.

How to : Check the appropriate rubric box and provide an explanation of the ratings by answering the questions below. Fill out each section thoroughly to provide thoughtful and comprehensive feedback. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic (link below) and use the advice when revising.

Literature Essay Rubric with Integrated Comments

Rubric Design

Main navigation, articulating your assessment values.

Reading, commenting on, and then assigning a grade to a piece of student writing requires intense attention and difficult judgment calls. Some faculty dread “the stack.” Students may share the faculty’s dim view of writing assessment, perceiving it as highly subjective. They wonder why one faculty member values evidence and correctness before all else, while another seeks a vaguely defined originality.

Writing rubrics can help address the concerns of both faculty and students by making writing assessment more efficient, consistent, and public. Whether it is called a grading rubric, a grading sheet, or a scoring guide, a writing assignment rubric lists criteria by which the writing is graded.

Why create a writing rubric?

• It makes your tacit rhetorical knowledge explicit
• It articulates community- and discipline-specific standards of excellence
• It links the grade you give the assignment to the criteria
• It can make your grading more efficient, consistent, and fair as you can read and comment with your criteria in mind
• It can help you reverse engineer your course: once you have the rubrics created, you can align your readings, activities, and lectures with the rubrics to set your students up for success
• It can help your students produce writing that you look forward to reading

How to create a writing rubric

Create a rubric at the same time you create the assignment. It will help you explain to the students what your goals are for the assignment.

• Consider your purpose: do you need a rubric that addresses the standards for all the writing in the course? Or do you need to address the writing requirements and standards for just one assignment?  Task-specific rubrics are written to help teachers assess individual assignments or genres, whereas generic rubrics are written to help teachers assess multiple assignments.
• Begin by listing the important qualities of the writing that will be produced in response to a particular assignment. It may be helpful to have several examples of excellent versions of the assignment in front of you: what writing elements do they all have in common? Among other things, these may include features of the argument, such as a main claim or thesis; use and presentation of sources, including visuals; and formatting guidelines such as the requirement of a works cited.
• Then consider how the criteria will be weighted in grading. Perhaps all criteria are equally important, or perhaps there are two or three that all students must achieve to earn a passing grade. Decide what best fits the class and requirements of the assignment.

Consider involving students in Steps 2 and 3. A class session devoted to developing a rubric can provoke many important discussions about the ways the features of the language serve the purpose of the writing. And when students themselves work to describe the writing they are expected to produce, they are more likely to achieve it.

At this point, you will need to decide if you want to create a holistic or an analytic rubric. There is much debate about these two approaches to assessment.

Comparing Holistic and Analytic Rubrics

Holistic scoring .

Holistic scoring aims to rate overall proficiency in a given student writing sample. It is often used in large-scale writing program assessment and impromptu classroom writing for diagnostic purposes.

General tenets to holistic scoring:

• Responding to drafts is part of evaluation
• Responses do not focus on grammar and mechanics during drafting and there is little correction
• Marginal comments are kept to 2-3 per page with summative comments at end
• End commentary attends to students’ overall performance across learning objectives as articulated in the assignment
• Response language aims to foster students’ self-assessment

Holistic rubrics emphasize what students do well and generally increase efficiency; they may also be more valid because scoring includes authentic, personal reaction of the reader. But holistic sores won’t tell a student how they’ve progressed relative to previous assignments and may be rater-dependent, reducing reliability. (For a summary of advantages and disadvantages of holistic scoring, see Becker, 2011, p. 116.)

Here is an example of a partial holistic rubric:

Summary meets all the criteria. The writer understands the article thoroughly. The main points in the article appear in the summary with all main points proportionately developed. The summary should be as comprehensive as possible and should be as comprehensive as possible and should read smoothly, with appropriate transitions between ideas. Sentences should be clear, without vagueness or ambiguity and without grammatical or mechanical errors.

A complete holistic rubric for a research paper (authored by Jonah Willihnganz) can be  downloaded here.

Analytic Scoring

Analytic scoring makes explicit the contribution to the final grade of each element of writing. For example, an instructor may choose to give 30 points for an essay whose ideas are sufficiently complex, that marshals good reasons in support of a thesis, and whose argument is logical; and 20 points for well-constructed sentences and careful copy editing.

General tenets to analytic scoring:

• Reflect emphases in your teaching and communicate the learning goals for the course
• Emphasize student performance across criterion, which are established as central to the assignment in advance, usually on an assignment sheet
• Typically take a quantitative approach, providing a scaled set of points for each criterion
• Make the analytic framework available to students before they write  

Advantages of an analytic rubric include ease of training raters and improved reliability. Meanwhile, writers often can more easily diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of their work. But analytic rubrics can be time-consuming to produce, and raters may judge the writing holistically anyway. Moreover, many readers believe that writing traits cannot be separated. (For a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of analytic scoring, see Becker, 2011, p. 115.)

For example, a partial analytic rubric for a single trait, “addresses a significant issue”:

• Excellent: Elegantly establishes the current problem, why it matters, to whom
• Above Average: Identifies the problem; explains why it matters and to whom
• Competent: Describes topic but relevance unclear or cursory
• Developing: Unclear issue and relevance

A  complete analytic rubric for a research paper can be downloaded here.  In WIM courses, this language should be revised to name specific disciplinary conventions.

Whichever type of rubric you write, your goal is to avoid pushing students into prescriptive formulas and limiting thinking (e.g., “each paragraph has five sentences”). By carefully describing the writing you want to read, you give students a clear target, and, as Ed White puts it, “describe the ongoing work of the class” (75).

Writing rubrics contribute meaningfully to the teaching of writing. Think of them as a coaching aide. In class and in conferences, you can use the language of the rubric to help you move past generic statements about what makes good writing good to statements about what constitutes success on the assignment and in the genre or discourse community. The rubric articulates what you are asking students to produce on the page; once that work is accomplished, you can turn your attention to explaining how students can achieve it.

Works Cited

Becker, Anthony.  “Examining Rubrics Used to Measure Writing Performance in U.S. Intensive English Programs.”   The CATESOL Journal  22.1 (2010/2011):113-30. Web.

White, Edward M.  Teaching and Assessing Writing . Proquest Info and Learning, 1985. Print.

Further Resources

CCCC Committee on Assessment. “Writing Assessment: A Position Statement.” November 2006 (Revised March 2009). Conference on College Composition and Communication. Web.

Gallagher, Chris W. “Assess Locally, Validate Globally: Heuristics for Validating Local Writing Assessments.” Writing Program Administration 34.1 (2010): 10-32. Web.

Huot, Brian.  (Re)Articulating Writing Assessment for Teaching and Learning.  Logan: Utah State UP, 2002. Print.

Kelly-Reilly, Diane, and Peggy O’Neil, eds. Journal of Writing Assessment. Web.

McKee, Heidi A., and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss DeVoss, Eds. Digital Writing Assessment & Evaluation. Logan, UT: Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press, 2013. Web.

O’Neill, Peggy, Cindy Moore, and Brian Huot.  A Guide to College Writing Assessment . Logan: Utah State UP, 2009. Print.

Sommers, Nancy.  Responding to Student Writers . Macmillan Higher Education, 2013.

Straub, Richard. “Responding, Really Responding to Other Students’ Writing.” The Subject is Writing: Essays by Teachers and Students. Ed. Wendy Bishop. Boynton/Cook, 1999. Web.

White, Edward M., and Cassie A. Wright.  Assigning, Responding, Evaluating: A Writing Teacher’s Guide . 5th ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015. Print.

Sample Essay Rubric for Elementary Teachers

• Grading Students for Assessment
• Lesson Plans
• Becoming A Teacher
• Assessments & Tests
• Elementary Education
• Special Education
• Homeschooling
• M.S., Education, Buffalo State College
• B.S., Education, Buffalo State College

An essay rubric is a way teachers assess students' essay writing by using specific criteria to grade assignments. Essay rubrics save teachers time because all of the criteria are listed and organized into one convenient paper. If used effectively, rubrics can help improve students' writing .

How to Use an Essay Rubric

• The best way to use an essay rubric is to give the rubric to the students before they begin their writing assignment. Review each criterion with the students and give them specific examples of what you want so they will know what is expected of them.
• Next, assign students to write the essay, reminding them of the criteria and your expectations for the assignment.
• Once students complete the essay have them first score their own essay using the rubric, and then switch with a partner. (This peer-editing process is a quick and reliable way to see how well the student did on their assignment. It's also good practice to learn criticism and become a more efficient writer.)
• Once peer-editing is complete, have students hand in their essay's. Now it is your turn to evaluate the assignment according to the criteria on the rubric. Make sure to offer students examples if they did not meet the criteria listed.

Informal Essay Rubric

Formal essay rubric.

• How to Create a Rubric in 6 Steps
• Writing Rubrics
• What Is a Rubric?
• Holistic Grading (Composition)
• How to Make a Rubric for Differentiation
• A Simple Guide to Grading Elementary Students
• How to Write a Philosophy of Education for Elementary Teachers
• Tips to Cut Writing Assignment Grading Time
• Assignment Biography: Student Criteria and Rubric for Writing
• Rubrics - Quick Guide for all Content Areas
• How to Teach the Compare and Contrast Essay
• How to Calculate a Percentage and Letter Grade
• Rubric Template Samples for Teachers
• Group Project Grading Tip: Students Determine Fair Grade
• Grading for Proficiency in the World of 4.0 GPAs
• Stage a Debate in Class

• Houston Community College
• Eagle Online

• Lise Lafond

Narrative Essay Rubric

HCC ENGL 1301

Ms. Lise Lafond