ASSIGNMENT

RUBRIC
SECONDARY/COLLEGE

TEACHER’S GUIDE
 ASSIGNMENT RUBRIC
SECONDARY/COLLEGE
TEACHER’S GUIDE
Copyright ©2017 by Jennifer Gonzalez

The rubric included in this product is protected by copyright. Your single-user

license gives you permission to use, reproduce, modify, and distribute the rubric for
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 This rubric was designed to help you assess the kind of

RUBRIC
HOW TO USE THIS
work students do multiple times over multiple days:

• Math homework done several times per week

• Bell-ringers completed nearly every day
• Journal entries or reflections done on a regular basis

Ideally, these kinds of tasks wouldn’t get graded at all;

they would be used for practice and feedback with skills
you assess at a later date. But if you need to put down
some kind of grade for these tasks, this rubric will help
you do that quickly, while still retaining the value of the
tasks.

WHAT IS BATCH SCORING?

Instead of grading every single assignment one at a time,
you’d put one student’s work into larger batches and
grade them holistically, giving one broad score for
accuracy, completeness, punctuality, and neatness over a
one- or two-week period. This allows you to evaluate
work habits as a whole.

Here’s an example:
• Suppose I teach seventh grade math. I give students
10 homework problems four nights per week.
• Rather than collect this homework every day, I go over
it during the first ten minutes of class. We review the
correct answers, maybe do a close-study activity like
My Favorite No, and have students correct their errors.
This is the most valuable use of the assignment,
because it is when students get timely feedback on
their understanding of the concept.

ASSIGNMENT RUBRIC | ©2017 CULT OF PEDAGOGY 3

 • Meanwhile, I visit each student’s desk to make sure she
or he has done the work—maybe I have a stamp to
mark their paper, or I might just initial it—a note to my
future self that the work was done on time. I’m not
checking for accuracy here; just looking to see if the work
was done.

• Once that day’s work has been reviewed, students might

store it in their binders or a folder kept in class,
depending on how organized they are.

• After the week is over, students turn in all four days’

worth. I use the assignment rubric to give a single score
to the whole batch. Remember, the assignments have
already served their purpose as a practice and feedback
instrument. I’m not checking each problem for accuracy.
My only job now is to record a score for general work
habits, things like completeness, legibility, and whether
the work was done on time.

• To take things a step further, I could have students give

themselves a score with the assignment rubric. This
would provide a good opportunity for reflection and
would require every student to really look at the
assignment rubric, deepening their understanding of the
expectations. I would still look over each student’s work
and give it my own score, but having the student take
the extra step of self-evaluation should help me
determine their score more quickly and will likely result
in improved work from the student over time.

ASSIGNMENT RUBRIC | ©2017 CULT OF PEDAGOGY 4

 EDITING THE RUBRIC
• Changing the Point Values
This rubric uses a 1-4 point scale, but you can adjust this
to fit your system. If you give 100-point tests, you might
make the weekly homework grade something like 10
points, where the top score would be 9-10 points, the
next level would be 7-8 points, and so on.
• Changing the Criteria
All of the written criteria in this rubric is editable, so you
can use whatever terminology fits your needs.
• About the Word “Fidelity”
One of this rubric’s descriptors of quality work is that it is
done “with fidelity.” This means the student did the task
as intended. I included this to make “completeness”
mean more than just filling in blanks. A student can
quickly make a task look “done,” even if all the answers
are incorrect. Including this in the criteria allows students
who produce some errors to still score well on a task if
those errors are a result of misunderstanding or small
mistakes, not because they ignored directions or rushed
through their work.
Although some teachers may feel their students might
not understand this term, I would encourage you to
teach it to them. Show students examples of work done
with fidelity, and work done without it—such as a
vocabulary worksheet where every term is just written in
at random. Explain that doing something with fidelity
doesn’t mean you get every answer right, but that you
made your best effort, followed instructions, and gave
yourself enough time to do the work. Talk about how
this value can be applied in other situations, like hand
washing or doing household chores, and see if you can
make it part of your class culture.

RUBRIC PACK | ©2017 CULT OF PEDAGOGY 5

 USING THE GOOGLE SLIDES VERSION
If you click on the link below, you’ll be taken to a browser
window that will ask if you want to make a copy of the
assignment rubric. Click “Make a Copy” and you will be
taken to your own, editable copy of the Slide. To find it
later, look in the main file area of your Drive. It will be called
“Copy of Assignment Rubric.”

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qvKN_d1uhAPf
XA4o7AU8KcfJ8nB0SLtdiX8BDHTHxJw/copy

REDUCING FILE SIZE (WINDOWS ONLY)

The template for Windows computers has fonts embedded
into it (Open Sans Light and Open Sans Semibold). This
makes the file size bigger than usual. If you do not plan to
use these fonts or just want to reduce the file size, follow
these steps:

(1) Open the template, then go to FILE –> OPTIONS.

(2) Click SAVE in the sidebar. Near the bottom of the
screen that opens up, you’ll see a line that says “Embed
fonts in the file.” It will be checked. To stop embedding,
uncheck that box, then save the file again and it should
be a much smaller file size.

Alternately, you may want to just install these fonts on your

computer. If they are already installed, there will be no need
to embed them.

To download the whole Open Sans family for free, visit

https://www.1001freefonts.com/open_sans.font

RUBRIC PACK | ©2017 CULT OF PEDAGOGY 6

 AUTHOR
ABOUT THE

Jennifer Gonzalez is the creator of Cult of Pedagogy, a

website that has been helping teachers crush it in the
classroom since 2013. She has over 10 years of classroom
experience at the middle school and college level and is a
National Board Certified Teacher in Early Adolescence/
English Language Arts.

ASSIGNMENT RUBRIC | ©2017 CULT OF PEDAGOGY 7