Rubrics in Google Classroom



I love rubrics! It is a good way to communicate your expectations to your students and how close they came to meeting them. They also make giving feedback quick and encourages consistency in grading. What is even nicer is when you share rubrics!

Google classroom allows you to:
  1. create rubrics in Google Classroom
  2. re-use rubrics
  3. share rubrics with your teaching partners
  4. create rubrics in a Google Sheet
Creating rubrics in Google Classroom
This is the place that most people start with. To create a rubric in Google Classroom you must first create an assignment. Then click +Rubric and then Create rubric. This will open up a new window. 

I am using this rubric as an example. 

This rubric has 6 criterion - Intro, Reasons, Conclusion, Structure, Transitions and Spelling/Grammar. Each criterion has a description and  four levels - Exceeding, Meeting, Approaching, and Not Meeting the Standard. You can chose to have this rubric to have points or no points. If you have it selected to use points (like in my picture below) then points are required. In our competency based system, you can use rubrics to give the MAS for each standard that the assignment is addressing.

Determine if you are using points (MAS) or not then start by typing in the first Criterion and type in the description. Then you are going to start adding your levels. You can start with adding in any level and then add more by clicking the + on either side:



Here is the first criterion entered in:



To add in the next criterion, click on +Add a criterion. 

When you are finished inputting the rubric, click Save in the top right corner.

On the students side, this is what this rubric currently looks like. Only two criterion are defined, Intro and Reasons. For the Intro the four levels are defined but for Reasons only one level is defined. Note that the Intro criterion has a grading bar broken into four segments but the Reasons bar only has one segment.





To get the details of the criterion, the student needs to click on the down arrow to the right which will turn into an up arrow.





*Important Tip: You will only get the number of segments for the number of levels that are defined for that criterion.


Re-using rubrics
Re-using rubrics in Google Classroom is a bit clunky when they are created in Google Classroom because they are "named" by the number of criterion that they contain. This can, admittedly, get a bit confusing! But... to re-use rubrics that you have used before, after you create and assignment, click +Rubric, then select Reuse rubric from the drop down menu. From the pop-out menu, select the Class and the assignment of the rubric that you want to reuse.

Sharing rubrics with your teaching partners
If you are in each others Google Classrooms, you (or your partners) can select the class and assignment and use that rubric. 

If you are not in each other class, you can share the CSV file with them. A CSV file (comma-separated values) is the easiest way to share files (they open up in a spreadsheet program). Go to the assignment that has the rubric you want to share. Click on the rubric. 



When you are in the rubric, click on the three vertical dots in the top right.


Select Export to Sheets.