Essay Writing Rubrics for Teachers

Essay Writing Rubric: The Main Features and Samples

The rubric for writing an essay helps teachers to simplify the process of grading and assessing the students’ papers. This is a good way to see in which moments the student has done the task successfully and where he or she has got some problems. Rubrics take some time to make them. In our article, we will tell about the main features of the college essay writing rubrics as well as provide useful samples to use this instrument for grading students without wasting time.

The Main Features of Essay Rubrics

The rubric template usually has these features:

• It includes a description of the task
• It has criteria to divide the paper into several categories
• It has a scale (with 3 qualifiers or more on your choice) that shows if the student has met their expectations.

Below, we will list the description of the main features:

• Description. It must show what the student must fulfill, show, or do. Remember that verbs for descriptions are quite important and don’t use negative language. The description should tell what the student has to do without listing what they don’t have to do. The description must be very specific and clear to determine the students’ performance without doubts and wasting time. Here are examples of good verbs to include here: interpret, apply, demonstrate, predict, make connections, identify, communicate, express.  
• Criteria. This feature qualifies every aspect of work fulfilled by the student. It evaluates individual skills and abilities connected with students’ performance. Sometimes you may notice that the student’s work satisfies several criteria but only approach others. This is fully normal because all the students learn at various speeds. It may need more time to satisfy these criteria.
• Qualifiers. The scale of qualifiers shows how the student has met expectations. For example, here is a four-point scale that describes levels of success:
  • 0 points: bad quality, no or very little evidence, doesn’t meet expectations, needs a lot of improvement.
  • 1 point: average quality, some evidence, meets expectations partially, fair.
  • 2 points: good quality, good evidence, meets all the expectations, good.
  • 3 points: high quality, best quality, strong evidence, exceeds expectations, excellent.

You can begin your rubric for essay writing scale with 1 instead of 0 and make a different range of points. Remember that you have to be very clear in defining the characteristics of every degree. Thanks to the qualifiers, you can easily define the overall score for every student without wasting time. 

How the Teacher Should Use an Essay Rubric

Here are some useful tips for teachers on using scoring rubrics for essay writing:

• First of all, students must know what’s expected of them. We suggest giving them the rubric before they started to write their tasks. Give good examples of each criterion of what you want to see in their work.
• Then require students to create a paper with all the expectations and descriptions you have made before.
• When the essay is finished, ask students to switch papers with a partner to score each other work. This is a fast and reliable process to grade the assignment. It’s useful for students to get some critics from friends and improve their skills.
• When the editing and scoring are finished, ask students to switch papers back. Now every student has to evaluate the task following the criteria on the rubric essay. If students didn’t meet the criteria or just approached, make sure you gave them the right examples. 

Sample of the Grading Rubric for Essay Writing

Here is a sample of a rubric for essay writing in high schools. Create your rubric and score students precisely and fast!

The Main Details of SAT Essay Writing

SAT Essay Writing Guide

Many colleges require the SAT essay writing as an assignment where you have to analyze a text (usually its length is about 650-700 words). Use our effective SAT essay writing tips to fulfill this task perfectly and show the college you have got great writing, analysis, and reading skills. You will find useful SAT essay writing prompts and tips for writing the SAT essay that will help you to make a perfect manuscript without stress. 

What Is the SAT Essay?

Here is what you will have to do with this task:

• Read a text.
• Define how the writer uses and builds their arguments to persuade readers.
• Support your writing using evidence from the text.

In general, this may sound easy but many students feel that it’s difficult for them to complete this task successfully. 

And, here are some new requirements for writing the SAT essay:

• In general, this is an optional piece of writing but some schools may require it. For example, if you are not planning to write this paper but you have excellent writing and reading skills, a school may require completing this task.
• Now you will have 50 minutes to create your document. Earlier, schools were given students 25 minutes less, so now you have got more time for successful writing.
• You can write as you prefer without forcing to agree or disagree with the author of the piece of writing. It’s your choice to make your decision and support it with good evidence. 

Why Do You Need to Write a SAT Essay?

The main goal of this writing is to see how the student understands the text and uses it for a written discussion. Your paper will be checked in these categories:

• Reading. A good SAT essay shows that a student understood the text from the author, including all the important details. It also shows that a student can use textual evidence effectively.
• Analysis. If your essay is created on a high level, it means you understand how the author uses and builds their arguments in the text. It means that you can examine this noticing various writing techniques the author uses. Plus, you support your claims with good evidence taken from the text.  
• Writing. Needless to say that for writing a good SAT essay, you have to choose a particular style, organize your paper well, and focus your writing precisely. 

In each of these categories, you can score from 1 to 4 points. Of course, the highest score you get, the better! 

SAT Essay Writing Prompts

We will show a question that will be in every SAT essay without exception. Only the section with a text you will have to analyze is changeable. Read the prompt to understand what you will have to do. This will help to save your time and be prepared to create a successful paper. 

Here is a prompt version:

Read the text below carefully and define how the writer uses evidence like examples or facts, to support their claims in the piece of writing.

 

• Examples and facts used as evidence to support the argument.

• Developing ideas and connections between evidence and claims.

• Elements of persuading like emotion or word choice to make the writing stronger and express ideas more clearly.

 

Create a paper where you need to explain which things the writer uses to build their argument to persuade the readers. In the essay, please make a detailed analysis of the features listed above. Make sure your paper is concentrated on the relevant features of the given text. Take into consideration your document must explain what the author does to persuade their readers but not to write about if you agree with claims written in the text or not.  

As we already said above, only the text is different but the prompt is always the same. Here are more details that will be helpful for your writing. Remember that all the texts for the SAT essay writing usually have these things:

• They are created for various readers
• They are arguable
• In these texts, the author expresses their view on a subject
• You can find evidence that supports the author’s claims
• Usually, these texts are about debates, ideas, sciences, arts, or politics and culture.
• These pieces of texts are taken from articles that have been published.

We wish you good luck in creating a perfect paper after reading our new SAT essay writing tips.