Smarter Balanced Writing Rubric Tracker

Are you and your students getting the most out of the hours you spend evaluating student writing?

Rubrics allow teachers to evaluate student writing based on specific criteria, but if the score ultimately goes in the grade book holistically, the time spent evaluating each trait or all of the criteria identified in the rubric is lost. In order to get the most out of rubric scores, teachers and students must track writing progress by the individual scoring criteria.

This writing progress tracker is aligned to the Smarter Balanced Writing Rubric (Informative/Explanatory/Argument) and will support teachers as they transition to the Common Core State Standards. When evaluating student writing using the Smarter Balanced rubric, teachers will use this tracker to input scores for each component of the rubric evaluated for a particular assignment. Doing so will allow the teacher to quickly identify which scoring criteria need the most attention.

This progress tracker is programmed to automatically calculate an average of all scored criteria for an assignment for individual students and for the class as a whole. It will report average scores by criteria and overall over time, as well as the highest score a student has received.

The teacher can set a class goal, and the tracker will report how many students are achieving that goal. What's more, the tracker will color code class averages for each assignment, as well as student averages and all-time highs relative to the goal. At a glance, teachers will know which students are meeting or exceeding the goal, within 15 percent of meeting the goal, and far below the goal.

Using this tracker will make the time spent grading more meaningful because it will record data in a way teachers can use to make instructional decisions and to communicate with students and families.