A Drama Teacher needs grading rubrics for writing plays!?

Question

Does anyone have any ideas or any grading rubrics that they use? I want to be fair in my grading practices so that I can tell the students what they need to work on for improvement. All Ideas are welcomed!

Answer 1

Go to this website: http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php

You can easily create rubrics for just about any type of project for free. It's fast and easy to use.

They have templates for stories, musicals, set design, and various performances. I didn't see one for plays specifically, but you can start with one of theirs and customize it to fit your assignment.

Answer 2

Involving students in the creation of rubrics is a great way to help them understand the criteria for a good performance. I usually get it started by showing a fake rubric based on arbitrary indicators--10 points for writing in purple pen, for instance. When students complain that that has nothing to do with a good piece of writing, it naturally leads to the question--what is a good piece of writing? In your case, what makes a good play? Have students work in groups to create a list of criteria and assign points, then build toward a class consensus. (Depending on how old and how sophisticated your students are, they might need some help in this process. I've found that middle schoolers tend to overemphasize issues of form, like spelling and grammar, at the expense of ideas.) Then, put the rubric into practice and have them score a play that you view or read together. They might find out that they want to fine tune their rubrics.

Or maybe you don't have time to do this. In that case, I've found that the six traits rubrics can work very well, even for plays. They produce a score for ideas, organization, sentence fluency, voice, conventions, and word choice. Search "six traits" and you'll find tons.

Answer 3

Creativity (everyone likes a play thats not mundane...), Depth and Meaning (Bobby chases cat -> cat scratches Bobby, no matter how well written, isn't going to be very interesting b/c its only surface deep [and not very creative at that]. And everyone likes a good soap opera. ^.^), Writing and Connection of Dialogue w/ Part (B/c tabacco-chewin' farmer Bill shouldn't talk like a rich french woman). Put a few lines at the bottom of the rubric for comments on improvement and also on strong points(I hate it when my teachers only point out everything I did wrong).

Answer 4

I was going to recommend Rubistar, but someone already beat me to it!