Take a look at this description for the rubric that is different for more detail from the distinction between analytical and holistic rubrics

Not long ago I finished a marathon of grading portfolios, and grading revised portfolios for my students. It’s a stressful and busy time, but one thing I’m very happy about may be the way that my utilization of holistic rubrics allows us to focus this grading focus on student growth in reading, writing and thinking.

A few years ago I used analytical rubrics.

They are the rubrics that function similar to a checklist, where students will get 10 points for their thesis statement, and get 7 points then for their utilization of evidence. A rubric that is holistic, generally describes what a product (such as an essay, analysis paragraph etc.)

seems like at each and every level, like this example from my “Analysis writing rubric that is”

• Student identifies details which are strongly related the written text overall 1 and that clearly connect to one another, even though connection may be less interesting or clear than during the Honor Roll level.
• Student accurately describes the literary device(s) (aka “writer’s moves”) discussed
• Student clearly and accurately describes a significant idea through the text overall 1 , though the >may not be a interpretation that is nuanced. However, the interpretation continues to be abstract, but not clichйd.
• Student cites ev >attempts to use us into the most useful way
• Student completely explains the connections between details (ev >attempting to utilize signal words to describe relationships between ideas

Even though the bullet points make this rubric look a bit more “analytical,” the truth is in holistic way that I use it. We have just discovered that students fine it simpler to grasp a rubric that is split up into pieces, as opposed to two long and complex sentences that describe essentially the same idea.

After making use of these rubrics for two years (with a few minor revisions in language) I have seen them help students grow a lot more than my analytical rubrics ever did, and even though I don’t spend time that is much” the rubrics to my students. Here is why I’m now such a fan among these holistic rubrics and the way they are in reality facilitating the improvement of student writing rather than simply recording it.

1) Feedback, not grades, is the goal. Holistic rubrics support this. Through nearly all of buy student essays a term I give students during my class a lot of feedback to their writing and minimal feedback via grades. They are able to get a 100 away from 100 for simply completing an essay, no matter if it still needs a great deal of development. Because my rubric is holistic and associated with terms like “Meet Expectations” rather than giving points for different parts of the writing, it is easier for students to know how their first draft needs substantial revision in order to “meet expectations” and even though their completion grade (which uses points instead) is 100/100.

2) Good writing and mediocre writing can receive the same score on an analytical rubric. I’ve run into this dilemma some time time again.When I used analytical rubrics to grade essays I often found that simple, formulaic writing with a 1-sentence thesis statement and some basic evidence with a little bit of explanation often received exactly the same point value as writing where in fact the student made an even more nuanced point, or used more interesting evidence that connected towards the thesis in interesting ways, or higher important developed from the beginning into the end. Often it was due to the fact categories I measured were really and truly just parts of the essay: one category for thesis statement, one category for evidence, one category for reasoning, etc. Along with these parts separated there was clearly no great way of assessing how well the writing flowed or was created. It meant there was clearly no good way on my analytical rubric there clearly was no simple method to capture how students were taking chances, and important element of writing development.

3) Holistic rubrics are only better at assessing the method in which the parts of an essay come together. As soon as the whole essay (or any written piece) is described together it became easier for me personally to parse out the thing that was strong and weak about student writing. Take a recent example: I happened to be giving students feedback about a pretty standard essay in regards to the memoir Night. As I was reading student essays and considering what feedback they had a need to move up ion the rubric, I quickly realized that their reasoning and explanation of their evidence needed more work. More specifically, students were basically paraphrasing their evidence in place of actually explaining how it supported their thesis. When I used to utilize analytical rubrics I would personally have thought this was an isolated problem in the “reasoning” section. However, I realized that part of the reason the student reasoning was lacking was because their thesis statements were overly simplistic because I was using a holistic rubric and looking at the essay more as a whole. It is hard to develop interesting reasoning because, really, what was their interesting to say? Thanks to this holistic view I was able to give students feedback that helped them develop a stronger thesis and then revise their reasoning accordingly when you have an overly simplistic, obvious thesis statement.

4) Last but not least, holistic rubrics make grading simpler and faster. You will find far fewer decisions to create about a student grade once they get one overall score in the place of five or seven different scores for every single element of a piece that is writing. Fewer decisions means faster grading. While I would like to inform you this faster grading leaves me with additional time for personal pursuits, the stark reality is it just leaves more hours for giving more meaningful feedback, focus on trends I see in student writing by class, etc. While i would not be able to escape work, i will be able to make work more meaningful, and it certainly helps to make grading fun and enriching.