Assessing Understanding: General and Analytic Rubrics for Math Performance Tasks

Current trends in mathematics assessment require standards based grading systems that assess mastery and understanding beyond knowledge and skills. The standards based rubric is the method of choice for performance task assessments. I offer my rationale and two versions for use in all your standards based grading.

The General Rubric contains four grading categories that are concise, consistent, and easily translatable to traditional grading strategies. This general rubric can be used for day to day classroom use.

The Analytic Rubric is a weighted rubric that attempts to quantify these same expectations for the students and myself in a generalized capacity. Typically, this is a good rubric to give the students before the first performance task they try. Talking through the various expectations provides them a solid foundation for demonstrating their own understanding. This rubric can also be used as a back up if a student fails to fall neatly into a general category on the general rubric.

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