Find Out How to Use Rubrics to Experience Blog Growth

To experience consistent growth, you need to set goals in more than one domain. Maybe rubrics can help you set goals and make progress. Here’s a samle rubric to get you started today!

Rubrics Help Students Set Goals and Experience Growth

“You gave us an assignment,” a student complained, “but you forgot to give us the rubric!”

“I apologize,” I answered. “I haven’t quite finished creating it yet, but I’ll have it printed out before the end of class.”

“Good.” The student sighed with relief and returned to their writing assignment.

Evidently, I had created rubric monsters. But, hey, teachers (and students) love rubrics for a reason.

Students find rubrics helpful to chart growth without falling into despair. Teachers love rubrics because it makes it easier to grade objectively and to chart student growth.

Maybe you’ve never heard of rubrics. Rubrics present skills and a continuum of progress in an easy-to-use chart. Teachers often assign a numerical value to each column in the continuum. This allows both the student and the teacher to evaluate the paper based on which level of skill the student demonstrates.  

The first column represents novice work—students have met the bare minimum requirements. As the columns advance to the right, the quality, and depth of production increase. The column in the far right represents what a well-executed paper looks like.

A Rubric for Blog Growth

I’ve created a blog-growth rubric that will help you chart your progress (download a printable version HERE). Do a blog audit (or ask a friend to do it for you) using this rubric. Write down the date in the upper left-hand corner, and fill in the stats. Without this information, you’ll have a hard time tracking your blog’s growth and how it corresponds to your advancement across the rubric.

I suggest choosing one growth domain to work on for a three-month period and then re-evaluating. You need to give yourself time to learn, incorporate, and celebrate your successes. Some growth, such as organic searches or Pinterest, take months to build steam.

Don’t get discouraged if your blog growth seems slow. Progress happens as long as you continue moving in the right direction.

When you outgrow this rubric, create one of your own. Check out the landing page for this series for a more in-depth analysis of the different areas of the rubric.  

My students love rubrics because when they compare their portfolios from freshman year to senior year, the changes in their writing amaze them. They have physical proof (in the form of their papers with rubrics attached) of their growth. It gives them something to celebrate before they march down the aisle into the unknown.

Come back tomorrow when we tackle opinions and how to present them so people will listen.