Blogging "How to Create and Use Rubrics": Part 3

These Reader Response Journals are helping me to learn the strengths and weaknesses of my student's
reading and writing skills, but how do I assess them -- and assign a grade -- in a reasonable amount of time? 

So now I am faced with a real conundrum.  I have stacks and stacks of journals to be graded, and each one takes a prohibitive amount of time to grade using this somewhat ineffective rubric that I created.  After reading chapter three of How to Create and Use Rubrics, I am getting a clearer picture of the source of some of my problems.  This chapter, entitled "Writing or Selecting Effective Rubrics", provides some doable adjustments that teachers can easily make to increase the effective of rubrics as a tool to improve learning outcomes; however, some decisions will (in may case) create major paradigm shifts in order to align performance tasks to learning outcomes. To highlight the major points of the chapter:

1. Rubric characteristics should be on a quality continuum from high to low. (24)
   This much I knew.
   
2. Effective rubrics do not list all possible criteria; they list the right criteria for the assessment's purpose.
   This seems like a no-brainer, but I see now that I have elements in my rubric, such as neatness, that are not relevant to the standard that I want to address through this task.
3. The overarching question to ask yourself: What characteristics of student work would give evidence for student learning of the knowledge or skills specified in this standard?
   This one makes my brain hurt.  I will need to continue to reflect on this.
4. Aim for the lowest-inference descriptors. 
   While she advocates against using the rubric descriptors as a dressed-up checklist, she advises teachers to choose precise words that clarify instead of words that are open to several interpretations.

Brookhart included a rubric "makeover" in this chapter, which I found very helpful.  She added a before and after shot of a rubric for a elementary science class that underwent her keen evaluation and remodeling.The improvement is substantial, creating a targeted rubric that addresses a learning outcome.  I realize now that some of my criteria are unnecessary and cumbersome.  I also need to reflect upon my desired learning outcome in order to narrow the focus.  In either case, it looks like my rubric needs a makeover.

I have read ahead a bit, and I was struck by how vital it is to have students analyze the rubric and how the growth comes by having students assess themselves using the rubric.  While everyone of my students had a copy of the rubric taped into their journals, I don't think that any of them actually evaluated themselves against it before submitting them for interim grading. I was disappointed the vast majority of the work that I saw.  So not only am I overwhelmed with the time commitment of grading these rubrics, I'm not happy with the quality of most of their products.