Text 5 Write Descriptors for Each Level of the Rubric

This is probably your most difficult step in creating a rubric.Here, you will need to write short statements of your expectations underneath each performance level for every single criteria. The descriptions should be specific and measurable. The language should be parallel to help with student comprehension and the degree to which the standards are met should be explained.

Again, to use an analytic essay rubric as an example, if your criteria was "Organization" and you used the (4) Exceptional, (3) Satisfactory, (2) Developing, and (1) Unsatisfactory scale, you would need to write the specific content a student would need to produce to meet each level. It could look something like this:

	4 Exceptional	3 Satisfactory	2 Developing	1 Unsatisfactory
Organization	Organization is coherent, unified, and effective in support of the paper’s purpose and consistently demonstrates effective and appropriate transitions between ideas and paragraphs.	Organization is coherent and unified in support of the paper’s purpose and usually demonstrates effective and appropriate transitions between ideas and paragraphs.	Organization is coherent in support of the essay’s purpose, but is ineffective at times and may demonstrate abrupt or weak transitions between ideas or paragraphs.	Organization is confused and fragmented. It does not support the essay’s purpose and demonstrates a lack of structure or coherence that negatively affects readability.

A holistic rubric would not break down the essay's grading criteria with such precision. The top two tiers of a holistic essay rubric would look more like this:

6 = Essay demonstrates excellent composition skills including a clear and thought-provoking thesis, appropriate and effective organization, lively and convincing supporting materials, effective diction and sentence skills, and perfect or near perfect mechanics including spelling and punctuation. The writing perfectly accomplishes the objectives of the assignment.
5 = Essay contains strong composition skills including a clear and thought-provoking thesis, but development, diction, and sentence style may suffer minor flaws. The essay shows careful and acceptable use of mechanics. The writing effectively accomplishes the goals of the assignment.