Creating An Assessment Rubric

Last week, the group and I worked through each others assessments to prepare ourselves to create a rubric. Seeing how other people would answer our revised assessments was particularly helpful because we were able to see how others may have interpreted the question and if the phrasing of the questions correlated to our objectives. This made creating a rubric much easier because I felt much more sure of what I would be looking for while grading. It also allowed me to see how two different people would answer/interpret the same question differently.
This activity prompted me to make some changes in my assessment to test the knowledge of my students. I added a clarifying aspect to the first question. "If there are seven pairs of cheese sticks in a bag, what is the total amount of cheese sticks in the bag? Draw a picture to support your answer or explain how you got your answer." In the third question, I added a second required answer and a clarifying aspect to the question. "Use repeated addition to create TWO number sentences that represents the amount of phones above. Mark the pictures above to show how you got your answer."
After making these changes, I created the rubric. Each question had three categories (beginning, developing, and proficient) of grades you could get. I didn't give them number grades because I feel as though they may interpret that as the unchangeable value of themselves and/or their knowledge rather than seeing it as areas they may need to improve upon in the future. I would also give my students an opportunity to take the test again if they didn't like the grade they were given. Depending on how my report card would be set up, this grading system (with a lack of numbers) may not work, but that is an issue for another day.