Friendly Letter Rubric – More like criteria

September 17, 2007 at 7:22 pm | Posted in Open Court, second grade, writing | 3 Comments

I never did learn the difference between a list of criteria and a rubric.  In any case, this is how I grade my student’s writing. 

My students are very familiar with this format and they know exactly what they need to get a good grade, because it’s charted and reviewed almost daily.  Whenever we have a related lesson, I refer back to this rubric.  For example,we’ve been working on writing in complete sentences.  I refer back to this rubric and remind my students that complete sentences are worth 5 points.  We are very goal oriented in my class.  I will post more on our second grade friendly letter writing assignment in my next post.  For now, I just wanted to share the rubric.

Why a rubric like this?  It is directly connected to writing standards.  For students, it makes explicit what they need to do in their writing.  For teachers, it makes clear what a particular student needs to work on, and through several assignments, you can measure a student’s growth in a particular area.

For those of us who work with second grade Open Court in LAUSD, we know that Unit 2’s writing assessment is to write a thank you letter to a friend.  Thus the rubric.  We are very goal oriented, did I mention that?

This rubric is modified from the Write From The Beginning program.

I translate the 20 point system into a 4 point grade like this:

• 20 points – 4
• 19-16 points – 3
• 15-10 points – 2
• <9 points – 1

Click here to download the PDF.