Configuring rubrics
Zippy marks against a rubric you choose. The rubric sets the criteria and the band descriptors, and the mark follows them.
There are three types. This page covers which one to use when, where they come from, and how a preset attaches them to an activity.
Watch the walkthrough
Where rubrics live, what each of the three types looks like, and how two of them go into one preset for an oral test.
Every mark comes from a rubric you control.
The three types
| Type | Marks | Comes back as | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Score rubric | A piece of work against criteria and bands | A band and a mark per criterion, and a total | You need a number: a report, a gradebook column, a mark out of twenty |
| Skills rubric | The individual skills in your unit | A level per skill, rolled up by trait | You are deciding what to reteach on Monday |
| Speaking rubric | A spoken answer, on delivery and on content | Delivery scored by the speech engine, content by the AI grader, merged into one grade | The answer is a recording: reading aloud, or an oral question |
Rubric types shows each one written out with a real example. This page is about choosing and setting them up.
You will find them all under Grading, on the Rubrics tab. The card tells you which kind it is: a score rubric shows a criteria count, a skills rubric shows a skill count.
Which one, and when
Most teachers want a score and a skills rubric together, and put off the second one because it looks like more work. It is worth doing in the term you teach the unit, not after.
Marking a set of compositions for a report. A score rubric on its own. You need the mark, the parents will see the mark, and the bands are what you already argue about in a moderation meeting.
Teaching a unit and deciding what comes next. Add the skills rubric. Fourteen out of twenty tells you a child is mid-table. The skills breakdown tells you it was paragraphing and precise verbs, twice, in a class of thirty. That is a lesson plan, and no total can give it to you.
Rehearsing for oral. A speaking rubric, and be honest about which criteria you are teaching. Reporting all six in Primary 3 gives a child four numbers they cannot act on. Pronunciation and completeness are plenty until fluency is the thing you are working on.
Where rubrics come from
Three ways, and they mix freely.
- Clone a ready-made set. Zippy Discover carries rubrics and skills lists aligned to real syllabuses. Clone one into your workspace and it is yours to edit.
- Adapt one. Cloning gives you a copy, so change the descriptors to match how your department actually marks. Nothing is locked.
- Build your own. Use Create Rubric on the Rubrics tab and start from an empty grid.
Most people start by cloning something close and rewriting the descriptors, which is faster than authoring criteria from nothing.
Presets: what an activity points at
A preset is the thing an activity is actually marked against. It bundles the rubrics that should run and the feedback that should come back with them: a comment, next steps, and inline annotations.
A preset can carry one rubric or several. A score rubric and a skills rubric together is the common pairing, and one pass over the work produces both the mark and the per-skill breakdown.
A speaking rubric stacks the same way. Put it with the writing rubric your department already uses, and one recording comes back marked on how it was said and on what was said, each criterion keeping its own marks. Two rubrics on one oral shows both rubrics, the preset that carries them, and the grade that comes out. The walkthrough above builds it.
That is what you are choosing when the grading screen asks for a preset.
What to check before you rely on it
Take a set you have already marked by hand and run it through the preset you plan to use. Compare the marks to your own. If the bands are landing differently from how you would band them, the descriptors are the thing to edit, not the scores.
That comparison takes twenty minutes once, and it is the only way to know the rubric is doing what you think.
Where to go next
- Bulk grading a class set to put a preset to work.
- Reading your gradebook, where the rubric breakdown view turns those criteria into a diagnosis across the whole class.