Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Writing Rubrics My district recently had a practice run of the writing portion of the new state testing (4th grade). To assess the students, we used the rubrics that the state will be using. The problem is that what the state is calling an analytical rubric seems to function much more closely to a holistic rubric. To receive a level 4, the student must have all components (strong introduction, conclusion, etc.). The dilemma comes when the student has a strong introduction with a weak conclusion. Apparently, you are unable to give in between scores, such as a 3.5. How do you address assigning a score to a student who has some strong components, while others are weak or non-existent? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) i would create rubrics that have more point allocation for specific details of the essay. If I noticed my students having trouble with introduction or conclusions, then I would make sure my rubrics focus on those aspects and give points for specific details within the introduction and conclusion. The introduction may be worth six points, introduction sentence, thesis sentence, conclusion sentence, punctuation, spelling, and neatness. Allocating specific points allow the students to focus on improving more detail aspect os the paragraph and enables me to give points for parts of the paragraph the student is writing correctly.