How to Make a Proficiency Rubric to Assess Students in Middle School ELA

Ready to take the leap into building proficiency rubrics that work? I’m going to spell out everything I know about proficiency rubrics and how they can be best utilized for Standards Based Grading in middle school ELA. If your school has selected priority reading, writing, and language standards and are in the process of building proficiency rubrics to assess reading, writing, and word study, then this post is for you. If you’re looking for more information on Standards Based Grading and Standards Based Learning and where to start to make the transition from traditional to SBG, then you might want to start with this YouTube video I created to explain the process.

Benefits for Using Proficiency Rubrics

1. Using proficiency rubrics ensures that you know your standards, revisit them often to understand their meaning, and work to define what proficiency is for each standard you are assessing. You may have gone through a long, drawn-out process of selecting priority standards with a curriculum director or through a PD workshop only to leave your priority standards sitting to collect dust on a classroom shelf. Proficiency rubrics put priority standards at the forefront and makes the selection of priority standards worthwhile.
2. Proficiency rubrics allow you and your content area colleagues to work as a high-functioning PLC team. Proficiency rubrics help with consistent grading. They also are a great way to begin a unit for backwards planning purposes and help to facilitate meaningful conversation about students and how to extend student learning and provide supports to students who are struggling with a particular concept.
3. Proficiency rubrics make Standards Based Grading Learning clearer to parents and students. SBG can be an unfamiliar concept to parents and hard to grasp. Proficiency rubrics clearly outline what students are being asked to do. For students, they are a great self-evaluation tool and can be used as a roadmap to check-in with throughout a unit.

What Should I Make Proficiency Rubrics For?

I recommend making proficiency rubrics for all formative assessments that are based on priority standards that you plan to enter into the grade book. Any formative assessment that will show up again on an end of unit summative assessment is crucial to have a proficiency rubric for. Formative assessments may include things like an exit ticket, reading response, or graded discussion.

Summative assessments are crucial to have proficiency rubrics for. This would include final pieces of writing, end of unit reading assessments, and projects. The proficiency rubrics created for formative assessments during the unit should be able to be repurposed for summative assessment proficiency rubrics.

If you’re starting from scratch and don’t have any proficiency rubrics written yet, I would recommend starting with an upcoming unit and creating them as you go without feeling the pressure to create every proficiency rubric all at once.

Qualities of Proficiency Rubrics

1. They are based on priority standards.
2. They are written for the specific formative assessment or summative assessment being given.
3. They are written to reflect the teaching and learning that has been done. This means that proficiency rubrics should change each school year, even slightly, because we rarely teach the same unit exactly the same.
4. They clearly define each proficiency level based on the priority standard being assessed. I prefer a 3, 2, 1, 0 model, but this goes for whatever scale your school uses.

Places Proficiency Rubrics Sometimes “Go Wrong”

1. They’re not based on priority standards. It’s tempting to take something that was taught prior to switching over to SBG and priority standards and continue to use and grade it the same way you always have. The foundation of a strong proficiency rubric starts with alignment to one or more priority standards.
2. Some proficiency rubrics are written to grade every single formative assessment throughout the year and are overly generalized. The problem with this is that these general proficiency rubrics lack the specificity needed to give students proper feedback and for PLC teams to calibrate on what each proficiency level truly means. A proficiency rubric should be specifically written for the assignment that is assesses.
3. Proficiency levels are general and don’t specify why a students would receive each level based on the assessment criteria. One common example of this that is so tempting to do is to define the highest level of proficiency for a “3” and then for a “2” add in the word “mostly” and for a 1 “somewhat.” Well, what does that really even mean?

Make a Proficiency Rubric with Me!

Are you ready to give a proficiency rubric a try? For the remainder of this blog post, I’m going to walk you through how to create a proficiency rubric.

Start by downloading a copy of a proficiency rubric template here. This will force you to make a copy of the template and save it into your own Google Drive. Think about a formative or summative assessment you would like to create for a specific assignment students will complete in the near future.

Step One: Title your assessment and enter the priority standard you are assessing in the furthest column to the left. If you’re assessing more than one priority standard, add in additional rows and enter the priority standards you are assessing.

Step Two: Decide what scale you will use to define proficiency. I like to go with a 3, 2, 1, 0 scale and define it below.

• 3: Meets Proficiency
• 2: Approaches Proficiency
• 1: Minimal Proficiency
• 0: No Evidence

Step Three: Define a “3: Meets Proficiency.” What does it look like to meet proficiency on this assessment. Be specific about exactly what you’re looking for in students’ understanding.

Step Four: Define a “2: Approaches Proficiency.” What is the student lacking on this assessment that indicates they are not meeting proficiency but approaching it for this priority standard? Try to be as specific as possible.

Step Five: Define a “1: Minimal Proficiency.” What does it look like for a student to show minimal proficiency on this priority standard for this assessment? What have they attempted? Where are the gaps?

Step Six: Define a “0: No Evidence.” What has the student NOT done in order to provide zero evidence of proficiency towards meeting this priority standard?

Test out Your Proficiency Rubric

Now that you have created a proficiency rubric, test it out. If you work with a team of teachers, make several copies of students’ work so that you’re all assessing the same student work. Compare how you scored students’ work and why. Talk about inconsistencies and how your proficiency rubric could be improved to help with these inconsistencies.

Another great PLC activity to try is to have each teacher in your team bring examples of student work that represents a 3, 2, and 1. Have discussions with your team with questions like, “What are we noticing that all students who scored a 3 have in common?” or “What are skills that students who scored a 1 are lacking? How can we help develop these skills with students?”

Reading Units and Proficiency Rubrics

I have full reading units available that contain 20 unique reading minilessons. Each of the 20 reading minilessons for each unit has a formative assessment with a coordinating proficiency rubric. The proficiency rubrics are designed to assess the specific formative assessments being given, and each formative assessment is aligned to a priority reading standard. Additionally, each reading unit contains an end-of-unit summative assessment with a proficiency rubric to assess six priority reading standards.

Interested in learning more? Check out my reading units linked below.

Realistic Fiction Reading Unit
Historical Fiction Reading Unit
Science Fiction/Fantasy Reading Unit
Expository Nonfiction Reading Unit
Memoir Reading Unit
Reading Unit Growing Bundle

If you’d like to check out a sample reading minilesson in its entirety, you can download a free reading minilesson here.