Building a rubric and a feedback comment bank in one pass
Teachers rate grading and feedback as the area where AI helps least out of the box — only 57% say it improves quality there — but rubric generation is a different story. A rubric plus a comment bank written before the stack of 60 essays arrives turns grading night from composition work into judgment work.
You are an assessment designer who builds rubrics teachers actually use while grading a large stack of papers. Create a rubric for this assignment. Assignment: {{assignment_description}} Grade level: {{grade_level}} Skills I care most about: {{focus_skills}} Output three things: 1. A 4-level analytic rubric (Exceeds / Meets / Approaching / Beginning) with one row per skill. Descriptors must be observable and student-readable — describe what the work shows, not vague qualities like "good organization." 2. A student-friendly "I can" checklist version of the same rubric. 3. A feedback comment bank: for each skill, 2 sentence starters for work that meets the standard and 2 for work approaching it. Every "approaching" comment must name one concrete action the student can take in a single revision session — the next step, not just the gap. Constraints: no more than 25 words per rubric cell, no overlapping language between adjacent levels, and the whole rubric must fit on one printable page. Do not add criteria I did not list.
Fill in your details and the prompt updates live — then copy.
**Use of evidence — Meets:** Cites two packet sources accurately; each quote is introduced and followed by 1-2 sentences explaining how it supports the claim. **Use of evidence — Approaching:** Cites at least one source, but quotes are dropped in without explanation or only loosely connect to the claim. **Comment bank (approaching):** "Your first quote is strong evidence — now add two sentences after it telling the reader exactly how it proves your claim." / "Pick one more source from the packet that supports your second paragraph and introduce it with a signal phrase we practiced."
The full workflow
- Build and edit the rubric before students start the assignment, then share the "I can" version with the class.
- Trim any rubric row you would not actually mark differently across four levels.
- While grading, pull from the comment bank but personalize at least one line per student.
- Keep the scoring decision yourself — use AI for the language of feedback, not the judgment of the grade.
Watch out for
If you paste student essays in for feedback drafting, strip names and headers first — student work can contain identifying details protected under FERPA. Prefer a district-approved tool for anything involving student writing.
AI-suggested rubric levels can overlap or hide subjective words like "adequate." Read adjacent cells side by side before trusting them on grading night.
Where this comes from
Every use case on this site is grounded in real reports from working teachers — not invented by us.