I believe that rubrics can be beneficial for students if utilized the right way. Students need to have some guidelines to help them be successful and have some ideas of what they can/should be working towards. I personally have a tough time with open ended assignments that do not have some sort of guidelines (maybe this is from years of being conditioned to use rubrics!) and I think having an idea of what to work on is helpful for students.

In first grade our rubrics are very basic and help students address things they might need to think about with editing and revising. For example, we may include topics such as, “I spelled sight words correctly.” They would see that and then know to check their work for sight words. We also use rubrics for showing 1 star, 2 star, and 3 star pictures and writing. Students see a 1 star writing as something like, “I have a dog.” A 3 star example might say, “I have a brown dog with white spots. Her name is Sophie. We like to play outside and go on walks together. One time she ran away and we had to search all night to find her!” and it gives students an idea of how they can add more details, etc. to their writing and drawing using a visual example.

Naturally with first grade, I don’t put emphasis on “grades” but just “doing your best work” so students are not too focused on the rubric, but instead on the writing process and the rubric is more for parents (we are standards based) because they like to know what kind of things their student is being graded on in writing.