What Does Understanding Look Like? Enter the Rubric
Blog 3 of the Extended Blog Series: Leveraging Deep Learning
Written by: Tania Lattanzio
“For students truly to be able to take responsibility for their learning, both teacher and students need to be very clear about what is being learnt, and how they should go about it...”
About this series:
This blog series is based on ideas from Andrea Muller and my latest book, Leveraging Deep Learning: Strategies and Tools for Continuous Assessment of Conceptual Understanding. Each post shares practical insights and tools designed to support educators in planning for deeper learning, involving students in the assessment process, and making understanding visible in everyday teaching. I hope these reflections help spark thinking and support you in your practice.
Imagine trying to get better at something without knowing what ‘better’ looks like. That’s what learning without clear criteria can feel like. That’s where the Rubric for Understanding comes in.
A Rubric for Understanding doesn’t just assess a final product it clarifies the pathway to deeper thinking. It helps both educators and learners see what growth in understanding actually looks like. It’s developmental, not judgmental.
This kind of rubric moves through phases from recalling and describing, to explaining and connecting to analysing and applying. Each phase makes learning progression visible and attainable. Students don’t just know what’s expected; they understand where they are and where they’re headed. As Hattie and Donoghue (2016) state, “Students who can articulate or are taught these success criteria are more likely to be strategic in their choice of learning strategies, more likely to enjoy the thrill of success in learning, and more likely to reinvest in attaining even more success criteria.”
In Leveraging Deep Learning, we explore how these rubrics can be co-constructed with students and used throughout the learning, not just at the end. They provide a shared language for feedback, dialogue, and reflection. They help educators moderate learning across classes and year levels. Most importantly, they shift the focus from task completion to deep thinking and transfer.
These rubrics are most effective when used as living documents, not static checklists. They guide students to reflect on their learning and help teachers focus on evidence of growth not just performance. They can also be used to scaffold learning engagements, making them an essential planning tool.
Another key aspect of deepening learning through rubrics is the use of command terms, that are shared and understood by students, verbs such as describe, explain, analyse, and justify. These help define the kind of thinking we’re inviting students into. Moving from “identify” to “analyse,” for example, raises the cognitive demand and encourages richer evidence of understanding. When command terms are aligned with rubric language, they create consistency and clarity between what’s expected and what’s assessed.
Rubrics for Understanding also strengthen collaborative learning. When groups of students work together using shared criteria, they can give each other feedback, hold one another accountable, and work toward common goals. In this sense, rubrics help develop not only academic growth but also communication and interpersonal skills that are crucial for lifelong learning. Paul Main iterates this when he says, rubrics allow students to “develop their capacity for critical thinking, problem-solving, and cognitive flexibility, all of which are essential skills for success in today’s complex and rapidly changing world.”
Ultimately, rubrics support the development of metacognition. When students engage with the rubric regularly not just to see how they performed, but to reflect on how they’re progressing, they internalize what understanding looks like. They become more aware of how they learn, what they need, and what they can do next, they become “assessment capable.” That’s where real ownership begins.
Helpful Hints
Introduce the rubric early and revisit it often during the unit.
Use it to design differentiated engagements aligned to the levels.
Allow students to suggest what evidence might look like at different levels.
Pair rubric use with reflective dialogue and peer moderation.
Make it visible in the classroom and have students suggest where their learning (evidence) is in connection to the levels.
References
Hattie, John A.C. and Gregory M. Donoghue. (2016). “Learning Strategies: A Synthesis and Conceptual Model.” Science of Learning 1, no. 1 (2016).doi: 10.1038/npjscilearn.2016.13.
Main, Paul. “Webb’s Depth of Knowledge.” n.d. www.structural-learning.com. https://www.structural learning.com/post/webbs-depth-of-knowledge.
Found this article helpful? Get more of such strategies and tools for making learning visible in my book, Leveraging Deep Learning: Strategies and Tools for Continuous Assessment of Conceptual Understanding. Get the paperback in the link below: