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Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment 1st Edition
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The conventional wisdom in English education is that rubrics are the best and easiest tools for assessment. But sometimes it's better to be unconventional. In Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment, Maja Wilson offers a new perspective on rubrics and argues for a better, more responsive way to think about assessing writers' progress.
Though you may sense a disconnect between student-centered teaching and rubric-based assessment, you may still use rubrics for convenience or for want of better alternatives. Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment gives you the impetus to make a change, demonstrating how rubrics can hurt kids and replace professional decision making with an inauthentic pigeonholing that stamps standardization onto a notably nonstandard process. With an emphasis on thoughtful planning and teaching, Wilson shows you how to reconsider writing assessment so that it aligns more closely with high-quality instruction and avoids the potentially damaging effects of rubrics.
Stop listening to the conventional wisdom, and turn instead to a compelling new voice to find out why rubrics are often replaceable. Open Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment and let Maja Wilson start you down the path to more sensitive, authentic style of writing assessment.
- ISBN-100325008566
- ISBN-13978-0325008561
- Edition1st
- PublisherHeinemann
- Publication dateJanuary 20, 2006
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions6 x 0.29 x 9 inches
- Print length136 pages
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- Publisher : Heinemann
- Publication date : January 20, 2006
- Edition : 1st
- Language : English
- Print length : 136 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0325008566
- ISBN-13 : 978-0325008561
- Item Weight : 7.2 ounces
- Reading age : 14 - 17 years
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.29 x 9 inches
- Grade level : 9 - 12
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,432,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #570 in Secondary Education
- #1,695 in Elementary Education
- #2,071 in Study & Teaching Reference (Books)
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2010Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseI loved this book. I thought rubrics were okay to use in grading writing papers until a colleague recommended this book. The sum of the parts does not equal the whole. If rubrics were truly a foolproof way to evaluate writing, then absolutely anyone could be a book editor.
I found the history of rubrics to be illuminating. It is important to understand how and why rubrics were established in the first place. Evaluators would love to be able to make writing as quantifiable as math, but it just doesn't translate.
I think this book speaks more to middle and high school teachers than to elementary teachers. In the beginning, students need to master the physical structure of writing pieces, but as their writing evolves, so must the feedback we, as teachers, must evolve.
A standard rubric for me contained topic development, organization, supporting detail and mechanics. I thought I was covering everything. Yet I would never evaluate a book I was reading using those categories. I also thought back to the best writing teacher I ever had. He managed to help me improve my writing and give me powerful feedback without ever using a rubric.
Is there a place for rubrics? Absolutely. For me, I will always keep the basic structure of what writing pieces need in mind, but I will focus most of my feedback on how my students can make sure that they're saying what they really want to say and how to become more powerful readers and writers.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2019Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThe title caught my eye because I would like a more authentic way to review and assess student writing in my high school classroom. However, this book wasn't what I was expecting. It's a slim 98 page book, but the first 60+ pages are more or less the history of assessment and rubrics. I think it's safe to assume that if someone is purchasing this book, he or she is already somewhat turned off by generic writing rubrics and doesn't need a lengthy history trying to convince us why they are bad. The very end of the book starts to give more details about Maja's methods and I can appreciate what she does in her classroom. It would have been additionally helpful to have detailed lists/schedules/etc. on how to set this up in a classroom, as well as a section that includes the roadblocks to this methodology. It can't always be sunshine and rainbows in there and it would be helpful to troubleshoot schools, classrooms, or districts where we do need to conform to certain writing assessment schedules. I'm a big fan of Jim Burke and Kelly Gallagher because their books seem to get right to the classroom ideas and tools and look at the pros and cons of what they preach. This will go to my garage sale box.
- Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2019Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseSuper critique of traditional assessment rubics aaa well as the best practices label.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2009Format: PaperbackYou have to give it up to a writer who discusses rubrics in writing assessment and Michael Ondaatje in the same text. I dare anyone to name another education theorist who has the intellectual flexibility to do the same.
Maja Wilson recognizes some of the most important features of a writer: we are fallible. We are human. We are given to appraise writing according to our own consciences. Our qualities as a writer and the things we value in writing are not prescriptive, but are derived from different social circumstances and person experiences. Writing values are not universal, and they certainly cannot be canonized and placed in neat boxes, dissected and labeled for professional conveniences.
Wilson is delightfully plainspoken and candid. This is a thoughtful examination of an educational practice not long for this world.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2007Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseExcellent source for teachers. Not only does the text give insights to using rubrics, the material and rubric information crosses all curriculums and types of projects and writing.
Achowalogen (High School and University English Educator)
- Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2006Format: PaperbackMaja Wilson tries hard to argue against rubrics. She begins with a student paper that has merit in her eyes, but would be judged poorly by a typical rubric. She makes a good point about how actual readers, not standardized rubrics, are needed for writing assessment. Wilson's writing is energized by actual stories of her own writing and writing by her students. Wilson's solution is a return to the golden age of Nancie Atwell and personalized "kitchen table" writing, when writers wrote for their own purposes and real readers gave feedback to them. The book ends with a nice explanation of how writers can filter positive and negative feedback from readers to help them revise their writing.
The biggest problem with this text is that Wilson looks extensively at personal writing and very little at content area writing. I think rubrics are very helpful in content area writing where writers are learning the rhetoric of different professional conversations - science, history, political science and so on. The book lacks an honest discussion of the benefits of rubrics, especially the fact that many students appreciate the guidelines that rubrics provide for writing assignments. Another big problem is that Wilson suggests that assessment needs to focus on the process, not the product. Outside of school, however, it is the product that gets assessed. Many writers need a lot of scotch in their writing process, but it doesn't matter because readers just care about the final product. Think about sports or music performance or financial investing - its not the process that counts, its the performance.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2016Format: PaperbackThis is a helpful book. It contains several tips from writing in rubrics mode.