Customize a PK-2 writing rubric

Primary students often approach their teachers during writing time with questions like “Is this good?” or “Am I done?” Rather than answering these questions, empower students to self-assess their work using a kid-friendly writing rubric.
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When students help create the rubric, they naturally understand and embrace its criteria. This collaborative approach also ensures that the rubric is customized to each unique class and its individual writing abilities. As a result, no two first-grade rubrics will look the same; some classes have stronger writers and some have lower ones.
NOTE: This article is about instructional rubrics that grow with writers. This is not about collecting data from district-wide common writing prompts.
To create an instructional rubric fit for your students to utilize, first identify the range of writing skills that you are targeting. Select a couple of high, middle, and low writings from your writers. These should be writings that students generated all by themselves-NOT ones that were created with peers, dictated by the teacher, or copied from the board.
Then, by yourself, follow the next 5 steps to determine the rubric criteria. You will need to determine this detailed description of how the levels differ from one another BEFORE introducing a rubric to students.
Determine the rubric criteria
STEP 1: Describe the characteristics of the High level.
- Read through 2-3 writing samples that you collected from your HIGHEST students.
- Consider the picture details provided, the number of letters, words, or sentences written, the accuracy of the spacing, spelling & capitalization.
- Then list the common ingredients that these high examples include.
- Finally, consider 1-2 skills that are currently missing from these student writings. What skill(s) would make these writings slightly better? List these additional skills in the next column.
STEP 2: Describe the characteristics of the Low level.
- Read through 2-3 writing samples that you collected from your LOWEST writers.
- Analyze the quality of the picture, the number of letters or words, the correctness of the spacing & spelling, etc.
- Then list the writing skills demonstrated within these low examples.
STEP 3: Describe the characteristics of the Middle level.
- Read through 2-3 writing samples that you collected from your average writers.
- Again, list the ingredients that they have in common. (This will include ALL of the skills listed in the Low level and SOME of the skills listed in the High level.)
STEP 4 (Optional): Split the Middle column.
- Often there is a big difference in the expectations listed between the High and Low levels.
- Split the Middle column into two levels to show a more gradual progression.
STEP 5: Create anchor papers to illustrate the different levels.
- Young writers are young readers-so we need to visually depict each rubric level. This is where anchor papers or benchmark papers come into play.
- The anchor papers should ALL be on the same topic as they anchor each level with a visual example.
- Although you used student writing to determine the rubric criteria, you will NOT use ANY student writings as anchor papers on the final class writing rubric. (No one wants to be the author of the lowest level.)
- Consequently, in Step 5 YOU will create a set of NEW writing samples that mirror the criteria you have listed for each level.
- As you choose the topic for your anchor papers, be sure to select one that your students can relate to, but not a topic they would be writing about at any point this year.
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