Wow! What an amazing discussion we had last night in our webinar! If you joined us—thank you for being part of the conversation. If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry—I’ve got you covered with this recap so you can still grab the key takeaways and useful resources.

What We Talked About

1. Why Rubrics Matter in Language Learning

Rubrics are more than just grading tools—they help guide students toward success! They set clear expectations, provide meaningful feedback, and keep expectations consistent.

As Joe Feldman wrote in Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms, “In contrast to perceiving grades as something arbitrary that the teacher assigns based on mysterious factors or personal feelings toward the student, a rubric gives the student power and agency over her performance.​”

When rubrics are tied to proficiency goals, they help students focus on communicative progress and growing towards language proficiency. Beyond that, they also make grading easier and more efficient for teachers.

2. Building Better Rubrics

Want to make your rubrics more effective? Here are some simple ways to do it:

• Keep it simple and concise: Too much detail can be overwhelming. You want your rubric to focus on the key elements in the task that relate to your lesson and unit goals.

• Use student-friendly language: If they can’t understand it, they won’t use it! Make sure it’s written for your students, and not just the teacher.

• Connect it to proficiency levels: What can students do at their level? Focus on expectations that are reasonable to achieve at students’ current capacity. So, if your students are novice, they are working on phrases or a simple sentence. If they are intermediate, they are able to produce series of sentences or emerging paragraphs. You should use the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can Do Statements or performance descriptors to guide what is appropriate at each level. ​

• Align your rubric with learning objectives: The task you are using to assess your students should align with the unit or lesson goals, as should your expectations or rubric. Your rubric should outline what success on the assignment looks like and should focus on the key takeaways for students.

• Be specific: Avoid vague language like “good grammar” or “few mistakes.” Phrases like “accuracy does not impact comprehensibility” or “writes in complete sentences” are clearer and easier to understand.

3. Using Rubrics for Proficiency-Based Grading

Rubrics can make grading more consistent and fair. Here’s how to get started:

• Try Can-Do Statements: These make it easy to define proficiency levels and set appropriate expectations for them in student-friendly language, focusing on what students can do rather than what they are doing wrong.

• Use the same rubric across tasks: This saves time and keeps things consistent. You can have a standard rubric you use for presentational writing and then adjust it for each assignment, keeping your expectations consistent and saving you the work of re-creating a rubric each time.

4. Getting Student Buy-In Throughout the Process

A great rubric is clear, fair, and useful for students! Some tips for getting student buy-in include:

• Get students involved: They take more ownership when they help create rubrics or weigh in on appropriate expectations.

• Use rubrics throughout the process: Not just for grading, but also for guiding students along the way! When giving a new assignment, walk students through the rubric and an example of the task. Have students use the rubric during an assignment—checking off what they complete or filling out a reflection question at the end with their submission. Have students also reflect on your feedback when they get the rubric back. It may help not to give a grade immediately to ensure students focus on outcomes first before checking their score.

Want to Learn More? Check Out These Resources!

If you’re looking for more ways to improve your rubrics, here are some great places to start:

• Watch the webinar recording.

• Ohio Department of Education Rubrics: Ready-to-use, proficiency-based rubrics.

• Access your resource guide with links for continued learning.

• Roobrix.com: a great website for associating rubrics with numeric values for equitable grading.

Final Thoughts

Shifting to proficiency-based grading and using rubrics effectively is a process, but you don’t have to do it alone! Start small, experiment, and find what works best for you and your students.

We’d love to hear from you! What was your biggest takeaway from the webinar? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected].