Check out this description of the different rubric types for more detail on the distinction between analytical and holistic rubrics

Not long ago I finished a marathon of grading portfolios, and grading revised portfolios for my students. It’s a stressful and busy time, but the one thing I’m very happy about may be the way that my usage of holistic rubrics allows me to focus this grading work on student development in reading, writing and thinking.

A couple of years ago I used rubrics that are analytical.

They are the rubrics that function similar to a checklist, where students can get 10 points for their thesis statement, and get 7 points then because of their utilization of evidence. A holistic rubric however, generally describes what an item (such as an essay, analysis paragraph etc.)

seems like at each and every level, similar to this example from my “Analysis Writing” rubric:

• Student identifies details which are relevant to the written text overall 1 and therefore clearly connect to each other, even though connection might be less interesting or clear than during the Honor Roll level.
• Student accurately describes the literary device(s) (aka “writer’s moves”) discussed
• Student clearly and accurately describes a significant idea from the text overall 1 , though the >may not be a nuanced interpretation. However, the interpretation is still abstract, not clichйd.
• Student cites ev >attempts to use us into the most useful way
• Student completely explains the connections between details (ev >attempting to make use of signal words to describe relationships between ideas

Even though the bullet points make this rubric look much more “analytical,” the reality is in holistic way that I use it. I have just discovered that students fine it better to grasp a rubric this is certainly split up into pieces, in the place of two long and complex sentences that describe essentially the idea that is same.

After using these rubrics for 2 years (with some minor revisions in language) I have seen them help students grow a lot more than my analytical rubrics ever did, even though I don’t spend enough time “teaching” the rubrics to my students. Let me reveal why I’m now such a fan among these holistic rubrics and the way they are now facilitating the improvement of student writing in place of simply recording it.

1) Feedback, not grades, could be the goal. Holistic rubrics support this. Through nearly all of a phrase I give students within my class a great deal of feedback on the writing and minimal feedback via grades. They could get a 100 out of 100 for simply completing an essay, regardless of if it still needs a great deal of development. Because my rubric is holistic and associated with terms like “Meet Expectations” in the place of giving points for different parts of the writing, it really is easier for students to understand how their first draft needs substantial revision in order to “meet expectations” and even though their completion grade (which uses points instead) is 100/100.

2) Good writing and mediocre writing can receive the same score on an analytical rubric. I’ve run into this problem time and time again.When I used analytical rubrics to grade essays I often unearthed that simple, formulaic writing with a 1-sentence thesis statement and some basic evidence with some bit of explanation often received exactly the same point value as writing where in actuality the student made a far more nuanced point, or used more interesting evidence that connected towards the thesis in interesting ways, or maybe more important developed right from the start into the end. Often it was considering that the categories I measured were actually just areas of the essay: one category for thesis statement, one category for evidence, one category for reasoning, etc. With all these parts separated there was clearly no good way of assessing how good the writing flowed or was developed. Moreover it meant there is no simple method on my analytical rubric there clearly was no good way to recapture how students were taking chances, and important element of writing development.

3) Holistic rubrics are just better at assessing the real way that the areas of an essay work together. As soon as the essay that is wholeor any piece of writing) is described together it became easier in my situation to parse out the thing that was strong and weak about student writing. Take a recent example: I happened to be giving students feedback about a pretty standard essay in regards to the memoir Night. They needed to move up ion the rubric, I quickly realized that their reasoning and explanation of their evidence needed more work as I was reading student essays and considering what feedback. More specifically, students were basically paraphrasing their evidence in the place of actually explaining how it supported their thesis. I would have thought this was an isolated problem in the “reasoning” section when I used to use analytical rubrics. However, I realized that part of the reason the student reasoning was lacking was because their thesis statements were overly simplistic because I was using a holistic rubric and looking at the essay more as a whole. When you’ve got an overly simplistic, obvious thesis statement it is hard to develop interesting reasoning because, really, what was their interesting to state? by way of this holistic view I became in a position to give students feedback that helped them develop a stronger thesis and then revise their reasoning accordingly.

4) last but most certainly not least, holistic rubrics make grading simpler and faster. You will find far fewer decisions to make about a student grade if they get one overall score rather than five or seven different scores for every part of a piece that is writing. Fewer decisions means faster grading. While i might love to tell you this faster grading leaves me with increased time for personal pursuits, the stark reality is it simply leaves more hours for giving more meaningful edu-birdies orgcustom-writing-service feedback, focus on trends I see in student writing by class, etc. While I might not be able to escape work, i will be capable of making work more meaningful, and it also certainly really helps to make grading fun and enriching.