This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 117 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast.

In this episode, we are digging into rubrics.

Specifically, five changes you can make so your rubrics work better.

If you're a teacher and if you're listening to this podcast, I'm assuming you teach or

have taught in some capacity at some point, you have no doubt used rubrics.

These charts tell students how they will be evaluated on a given task.

And although they are probably most common in English language arts classes, they can

and should be used in any content area where an assignment can't be graded with a simple

score that measures correct answers.

But as common as they are, their effectiveness really runs the gamut.

I've seen rubrics that are perfectly clear in how they outline expectations for an assignment,

offering guidance to students about how to approach a task, and valuable information about

what to do differently the next time around.

I have also seen some that are incredibly convoluted and hard to follow.

Others that include way too much subjective criteria.

And others that pack in so much that I suspect most students never bother to read them.

It's a shame because the more full the world gets with ineffective rubrics, the worse their

reputation will be with students, parents, and teachers.

We need to shift that trend so that better, more effective rubrics become the norm rather

than the exception.

I've been meaning to do a post and podcast on this topic for a while, just digging into

some best practices with rubric design.

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