Assessment capable learners set goals and use rubrics.

Use RubricsWhen teachers encourage students to become assessment capable learners, they are helping students develop critical self-assessment skills.  Goal setting is often the initial step in the student self-assessment process. Students may first consider what they know and assess their task capabilities. Teachers can then introduce rubrics as tools to clarify specific learning targets as well as to enable student autonomy and progress in planning, monitoring and achieving goals. Students can then use the rubrics to help them take action towards achieving goals and evaluate their own progress.

Rubrics are criterion-based tools used to communicate expectations of proficiency. Rubrics are informative as they guide the learner towards mastery of learning tasks. Rubrics are also used to assess a student’s demonstrated level of performance, understanding, or knowledge around the defined criteria.

Lesson Outcomes

In this lesson, you will discover:

  • The benefits of helping your students set goals,
  • The benefits of helping your students use rubrics, and
  • Strategies for using rubrics.

Reflective Questions

What are some potential challenges of developing rubrics for your classroom? Potential benefits? How can quality rubrics help develop Assessment Capable Learners? How can you tie goal setting and learning rubrics together in your classroom?

Read through the following blog post, and think about different ways of using rubrics in your classroom.