GrAde 12 Chemistry • General Appendices

Appendix 10: Developing Assessment Rubrics in Science*

The Nature, Purposes, and Sources of Assessment Rubrics for Science

What Assessment rubrics Are
Rubrics are assessment tools that identify criteria by which student processes,
performances, or products will be assessed. They also describe the qualities of work
at various levels of proficiency for each criterion.
The following types of assessment rubrics may be used in classroom assessment:
• General rubrics provide descriptions of proficiency levels that can be applied to
a range of student processes, performances, or products. Using the same rubric
for similar tasks helps teachers manage marking assignments based on student
choice. It also helps students internalize the common qualities of effective
processes, performances, and products.
• task-specific rubrics describe the criteria used in assessing specific forms, such
as using a balance, writing a laboratory report, or calibrating CBL probes.
Complex student projects may require a different rubric for each phase (for
example, a group inquiry project may require a rubric for collaborative work,
information-gathering processes, oral presentations, and written reports).
• holistic rubrics are used to assign a single mark to a process, performance, or
product on the basis of its adequacy in meeting identified criteria.
• Analytic rubrics are used to assign individual scores to different aspects of a
process, performance, or product, based on their specific strengths and
weaknesses according to identified criteria. See the Rubric for Assessment of
Decision-Making Process Activity in Appendix 11.
• Checklists are lists of criteria that do not distinguish levels of performance. They
are used to assess the presence or absence of certain behaviours, and are most
suitable for assessing processes (for example, “Did the student perform all the
necessary steps?”). Because they require “Yes/No” judgements from the
assessors, checklists are easy for students to use in peer assessment.
• rating scales ask assessors to rate various elements of a process, performance, or
product on a numerical scale. They do not provide complete descriptions of
performance at various levels.

Why teachers Use Assessment rubrics

The best assessment tasks ask students to perform the sorts of scientific literacy
tasks they will be called upon to perform in real-world situations. They allow
students to demonstrate not only the declarative knowledge they have gained, but
also the interplay of attitudes, skills, and strategies that constitute their learning.

______________
* Source: Manitoba Education and Training. Senior 3 English Language Arts: A Foundation for
Implementation. Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Education and Training, 1999. Adapted from Appendices,
pp. 3–9.

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GrAde 12 Chemistry • General Appendices

Authentic assessment tasks invite a range of responses and allow students to

express their individuality. For all these reasons, assessing scientific literacy is a
complex matter.
Assessment rubrics
• help teachers clarify the qualities they are looking for in student work
• ensure that all students are assessed by the same criteria
• help teachers communicate the goals of each assignment in specific terms
• allow teachers within schools, school divisions, and the province to collaborate in
assessment
• play an important part in instruction

how Assessment rubrics enhance instruction

The best assessment tools do not simply sort and score student work; instead, they
describe it in specific terms. This assessment information
• helps teachers adjust instruction to meet student learning requirements
• tells students what teachers expect and will look for in their work, and helps
them to focus their efforts
• allows students to assess their own work using the criteria teachers will use to set
goals and to monitor their progress
• aids in the development of metacognition by giving students a vocabulary for
talking about particular aspects of their work

sources of Assessment rubrics

Teachers develop assessment rubrics in collaboration with students, on their own,
and/or with other teachers, or obtain them through published sources.
• Classroom development: Developing assessment rubrics in collaboration with
students can be a time-consuming process, but one that has many benefits in
instruction and learning. (Both the benefits and the process are explored on the
following pages.) Although it may not be possible to involve students in the
process in every instance, their experience in developing rubrics will help
students to use ready-made rubrics with more understanding.
• teacher-developed: Teachers develop general performance and product rubrics
individually in collaboration within a school or school division. Rubrics must be
adapted regularly to reflect student performance levels accurately. It is important
that teacher-developed rubrics use language that students understand, and that
teachers provide an example of work at each level of proficiency. These examples
(called anchors or exemplars) illustrate for students the descriptive phrases used
in the rubrics.
• Published sources: High-quality assessment rubrics are available in various
educational resources. The disadvantage of ready-made rubrics is that they may
not be congruent with the learning outcomes targeted in a particular assignment,
and may not accurately describe Grade 12 performance levels and criteria.

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Developing Rubrics in Collaboration with Students

student Benefits
Developing rubrics in collaboration with students requires them to look at work
samples, and to identify the attributes that make some samples successful and
others unsuccessful. Teachers assist students by providing them with the
vocabulary to articulate the various elements they see, and by ensuring that the
criteria are comprehensive and consistent with learning outcomes. This
collaborative process in developing rubrics
• requires students to make judgements about the work they see, and to identify
the qualities of effective writing, speaking, and representing of science concepts
• results in an assessment tool that students understand and feel they own—they
see that assessment criteria are not arbitrary or imposed, but rather express their
own observations about what constitutes quality work

the development Process

For their first experience in designing a rubric, ask students to articulate the criteria
they use in making judgements about something in everyday life—the quality of a
restaurant, for example. The model rubric that they develop for assessing
restaurants may help students grasp how the parts of a rubric work.
Students may also find it helpful to develop rubrics after they have done some
preliminary work on the assessment task, and so are familiar with the demands of
the particular assignment.
The process of developing assessment rubrics in collaboration with students
involves numerous steps.
1. Look at student work samples.
Develop assessment rubrics by analyzing genuine samples of student work that
illustrate the learning outcomes that the assessment task in question addresses.
Samples are usually drawn from student work from previous years, used with
permission and with names removed. Beginning teachers who do not have files
of samples may need to borrow from colleagues.
Select samples that are clear and characteristic of student work at various levels.
Streamline the process by distributing examples at only three levels of
proficiency: excellent, adequate, and inadequate. Provide two or three examples
of each level. Allow students time to read the examples and to talk about them in
groups.
2. Describe the work samples.
Suggest that students focus on the examples of excellent work first. Pose the
question: “What makes this piece successful?” Then ask students to brainstorm
attributes of, or criteria for, success. Some of the attributes students list will
describe behaviours that are useful in meeting the goals of the work (for
example, the topic is stated at the beginning, there are few spelling errors, a
graph is used to represent statistical findings).

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GrAde 12 Chemistry • General Appendices

What rubrics must attempt to articulate, beyond identifying these behaviours, is

the essence of a good product or performance. Eye contact may be important in
the delivery of an oral report, but it is possible to give a dreary talk while
maintaining eye contact (Wiggins V1–5: 6). Together with students, identify the
salient qualities of works related to science that are engaging and effective. These
may be qualities that are harder to define and illustrate (for example, the speaker
has moved beyond a superficial understanding of the subject, the producer of a
video is aware of the audience, the writer’s voice is discernible in a science
journalism piece).
3. Develop criteria categories.
From the brainstormed list of attributes, select the criteria categories that will
make up the assessment rubric. Most rubrics are limited to three to five criteria
categories. A greater number makes the rubrics difficult for assessors to use,
especially in assessing live performances. Listing too many criteria can also
overwhelm or confuse students who use the rubrics for self-assessment and
setting goals.
Develop criteria categories by combining related attributes and selecting three to
five that are considered most important. Label the criteria categories in general
terms (organization, style, content) and expand them by listing the specific
elements to be examined in assessing quality in these criteria (for example, in the
“organization” category, the elements may be statement of purpose, topic
sentences, transition words and phrases, paragraph breaks, order of ideas).
Ensure that no essential attribute that defines good performance is left out. This
means including elements considered hard to assess (such as style or creativity).
Ignoring elements such as these signals that they are not important. Addressing
them helps students grasp the things they can do to improve their own work in
these areas. If graphical analysis is identified as one criteria category, for
example, the rubric may list elements that convey the details of such an analysis
(for example, placement of dependent and independent variables, placement of
data points, line of “best fit”). It may also provide definitions.
As students collaborate to develop criteria categories, monitor whether the
criteria chosen are related to the intended learning outcomes.
4. Decide how many performance levels the rubric will contain.
The first rubric students develop should have three performance levels, based on
identifying student work samples as excellent, adequate, or inadequate. In later
rubrics, students may move to finer distinctions between levels. The number of
levels needed to make meaningful judgements regarding the full range of
proficiency is best decided by the teacher. If the scale is large (seven levels, for
example), finer distinctions can be made, but it may be difficult to differentiate
clearly one level from the next. In science, assessment rubrics designed to be

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 GrAde 12 Chemistry • General Appendices

used by students as well as teachers generally use three, four, or five

performance levels.*
Using the same number of performance levels for various tasks throughout the
curriculum has the advantage of giving students and the teacher a common
vocabulary in talking about ways to improve performance (for example, “This
piece does not have the concrete detail of level 4 writing.”). Once the number of
criteria categories and performance levels has been determined, a rubric template
such as the following can be used in developing rubrics.

Criteria Categories

1
Performance

2
Levels

3
4
5

5. Describe the performance levels.

In developing the assessment criteria (step 3), students analyze successful pieces
of work. They now fill in descriptions of excellent, adequate, and inadequate
performance in all criteria categories.
There are two ways of describing performance levels:
• evaluative rubrics use comparative adjectives (for example, “weak
organization”).
• descriptive rubrics specify the qualities of work at each performance level
with respect to the criteria (for example, “unconnected ideas appear in the
same paragraph”). The attributes listed may be negative (for example,
“subscripts and coefficients are incorrectly applied”), for sometimes the most
telling characteristic of certain levels is their failure to do what they should be
doing.
Descriptive rubrics have many advantages over evaluative rubrics. They are
more helpful to students because they spell out the behaviours and qualities
students encounter in assessing their own and others’ work. They also help
students identify the things they can address in their own work in order to
improve.

_______________________
* Many designers of rubrics advocate a five-level scale. Levels 1, 3, and 5 are developed from an initial sorting
of student work into excellent, adequate, and inadequate samples. Levels 2 and 4 describe work that is
between these anchor points. Other educators argue that an even-point scale (four or six levels) forces more
care in judging than an odd number does; it prevents assessors from overusing a middle category for work
that is difficult to assess.

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GrAde 12 Chemistry • General Appendices

When beginning to write descriptive rubrics, students may suggest generally

descriptive adjectives (such as “interesting,” “boring”), which may not convey
information about what an interesting piece looks like, and how they can
improve their work in this area. The description needs to state the attributes that
make a work interesting, and should be written in an acceptable style for
scientific communication. Classes may need to begin by using comparative
language or general descriptions. As the students and teacher collect examples,
they can fine-tune the rubric with specific descriptions.
By the end of this step, students will have a description of performance at three
levels. If the class has decided to create a rubric with four, five, or six
performance levels, it may be most efficient for the teacher to draft gradations of
quality for the middle levels, and present them to the class for revision. These
middle levels are the most difficult to write, and call on more experience and
expertise in developing a smooth continuum of proficiency.
6. Use the assessment rubric for student self-assessment, for teacher assessment,
and for instruction.
Before using the rubric on an actual assignment, students and the teacher may
want to test it against unsorted samples of work from previous years. Applying
the rubric to student work helps the class determine whether the rubric
accurately describes the qualities of the work they see, and helps students make
meaningful distinctions between work at different levels of proficiency. As
students become more adept at using the rubric, and when they have
internalized the performance levels, the teacher can present them with more
diverse samples and assessment challenges.
Rubrics make it possible for students to assess their own work on the basis of the
criteria that the teacher will use. Any differences in scores between a student’s
and a teacher’s assessment can be the subject of profitable and focused discussion
in student conferences.
If numerical scores are required, point values assigned to each level can be
totalled. If the teacher and students decide that certain criteria categories should
be more heavily weighted than others, the points assigned to these categories can
be multiplied by a factor.
A rubric developed collaboratively can also become a valuable instructional tool,
encouraging students to look closely at the specific things they can do to improve
a piece of work. If students decide that a writing sample in science is at level 3,
for example, they can be asked to work together in groups to improve the work
so that it fits the description for level 4.
7. Continue to revise the assessment rubric.
Any assessment rubric can be considered a work in progress, especially if it is
stored on the computer. Both the teacher and students should carefully review
the rubric each time they use it, asking, “Do these criteria capture the most
important qualities of excellence in this work?” “What other words and phrases
can we use to describe work at this level?” In keeping with this, the rubrics
appearing in Appendix 11 of this document are intended as templates, open to
situational revisions.

28 – General Appendices