Like many teachers, Justin’s mom was confident in her ability to proofread his papers and point out mechanical errors. His pristine, mechanically perfect prose reflected her strength in this area. Unfortunately, in the list of important things that need to be evaluated in each essay, mechanics is easiest to evaluate, but it ranks last in importance. If a writer doesn’t have well-organized, high-quality content, it doesn’t matter how perfectly parsed it is—piffle is still piffle.

A writing evaluator should work more like an editor than a proofreader. An editor evaluates content and organization first, judging whether the topic is fully covered and whether the sequence of ideas is clear and logical. Once content and organization are under control, the editor turns to issues of style, and evaluates the writer’s voice, word choices, and sentence fluency. These are the ingredients that can elevate a paper from tedious to memorable. Finally, when all the essential parts of the essay are satisfactorily in place, the editor passes the article down to a proofreader, who does a final check for mechanical errors.

Justin’s mom began to look a little overwhelmed. “I know I can proofread,” she said, “but I’m not sure I’ll remember what to look for in the areas of content and style. I don’t know how to think like an editor!”

I wasn’t surprised at her concern—substantive evaluation sounds complicated and time-consuming at first. I had a secret weapon to share, though—a tool that professional teachers use to provide helpful feedback to classrooms full of students. This tool, called a rubric, is simply a descriptive checklist of the goals for each area of evaluation. The evaluator reads through the student’s paper, and on the rubric, assigns a score between one and five to each goal so that the student can see how closely his writing matches the goal and what he needs to do in order to improve. The rubric provides a simple, unchanging standard against which each area of the student’s writing can be consistently measured. It makes constructive feedback simple! [Editor’s Note: You can download a free copy of Janice’s writing evaluation rubric at her Web site, www.Everyday-Education.com]

Justin reached for the rubric and looked at the goals. “You mean that I get one of these for each paper, and I can see exactly where I’m doing well and where I need to improve?” He seemed pleased at the idea. “It will help a lot to know what kind of standards I’m trying to meet and how far I have to go. It seems a lot easier than just trying to ‘make the paper more interesting!’”

They both studied the rubric for a few minutes, then Justin’s mom commented, “Okay, I think I can do this. Are there specific steps I need to follow when I evaluate a paper?”