This is an occurrence that I see quite often in the classes in which I co- teach as a majority of major assignments and projects are assessed using rubrics. In my own experiences, this is an issue that I feel helps make rubrics so effective. A majority of students are not always going to exceed in all areas of a rubric. Students are able to see the various areas of the provided rubric and are able to build and exceed on the areas that are their strengths while addressing and working towards improving their weakness. In fact, identifying these weakness is very beneficial to both the teacher and the student in order to improve and modify performance as necessary as to better their performance on the next assessment.

I have been a secondary English Language Arts teacher for seven years. I have found that actually having the students work with the state rubrics increases their understanding of the expectations. Sometimes the rubrics have difficult wording and/or vocabulary, so you could make a student-friendly rubric using the exact components of the state rubric. In doing this, you as the teacher will come to understand the rubric in a different way. You could place students in groups, and they can rate anonymous student examples (from the state website). They love this! In a way, it becomes a competition. If you have to holistically score their writing, the students will come to understand why their score was much lower than expected, even though they had some strong components.

It is important to remember that rubrics are meant to guide students through a task and provide them relevant feedback. Unfortunately, the district wants to take the reigns of these assessment procedures as well. A level 4 is a huge accomplishment. Their work truly exceeds standard and should meet all of the criteria. That can also be the case for a level three student that "meets" the standard. If they have failed to meet one or two of the "3" criteria then they truly are a "2" and are progressing to the standard!

When I was in internship my teacher next to my C.T., who became a C.T. to me as well, I watched her do this task with her students. She would have the students create a goal with their writing. They would create one and she would create one for them as well. Over the next few weeks when they wrote everyday, they would work towards their goals. This was, because they are aware that they are not able to get 3.5's on the writing exams. Making sure the students worked towards their goals each week helped them get those 4's and 5's on the writing exams.

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.

I think a possible solution is to create a rubric that takes into consideration the holistic aspect of the essay and the analytical side of it so that students can practice mastering both aspects when it comes down to writing their essays. Giving students a passing example will give them an idea of what wtitting skills they need to prepare to have and aim for.