Much like having students work together to with the teacher to generate the classroom rules, I believe that rubrics that have students involved in their creation will have greater student buy-in. Student buy-in is a key to success in my experience.

One way I involve students is to break them into groups of 3. Handout red and green markers with 3 samples of previously completed assignments one strong, one weak and one middle ground. Students would independently review the works and mark them with green for strong and red for weak. Then have them meet with their groups to compare. If they judged something the same: what made it strong or weak? Identifying strong qualities and weak qualities become the foundations of a student based rubric.

After students come up with strong and weak traits in small groups we meet as a class to share, the teacher records the strong points. If the weak points do not have a strong counterpoint, guide students to create the strong point. Teachers go over Common core state standard(s) that this lesson covers and ensure students understand what it means and then work with the students to ensure that it is addressed by the things they have identified as being a part of a strong assignment.