Friday, May 16, 2008

Short Story Rubric

OPTION A.
You will create your own rubric today that I will use when grading your short stories.

A rubric is a tool used by teachers to evaluate student work. Usually the teacher will pick out what is important for student work to include and place it on the rubric. For your final short story, however, you will develop your own grading rubric that I will then use to evaluate your work. You will get to decide what I should focus on.

Process:
1. Revisit your blog entry where you listed 7-10 characteristics of a well-told story.
2. Review the Characteristics of Well-told Story sheet I passed out to you.
3. Develop your rubric.
4. Although you can decide what I will focus on, you need to follow some guidelines.
A. You must include at least FOUR different categories of areas I will look at. Pick out categories that you think are the most important things a short story needs. You may want me to focus on your word choice, your characterization, your theme, etc. EXPLAIN EACH CATEGORY IN ONE SENTENCE. How do you define excellence in that category? What are great word choices versus mediocre choices?
B. Your rubric must total 50 points, and you must allocate those points to each area. You may decide that 20 points will be awarded in the word choice category and 10 in the conventions category. It is up to you.

I reserve the right to ask you to change your rubric if it is not fitting to the assignment. I will also add points for conventions and a title so you need not include these in your rubric.

When you are finished, visit two other blogs and give your opinions on their rubrics.

I have included a sample rubric on Edline for you to see as an example. your rubric, however does not need to be as detailed as mine (but it could be!).

OPTION B.
If you want me to use my rubric when grading your story you have that option. Instead of creating your own rubric write freely on your blog for the entire class. You can write about whatever is on your mind today. If you'd like to write a short story or a poem, that is fine, too. You must be writing the entire time.