FREE Grade Rubrics and Assessments for Middle and Highschool

I know a lot of people who get nervous as their children get older and begin approaching the middle school years. It can be even scarier when they reach highschool!

One of the biggest concerns I have seen in the homeschooling community in the older years  is the concern over grading assignments. This can be especially difficult if you are an eclectic homeschooler and like to piece your curriculum together with unit studies and delight directed subjects that do not have a teacher’s guide to help you grade. This is where grading rubrics and assessments can come in handy! 

So what exactly is a grading rubric?
(From CME.edu) A rubric is a scoring tool that explicitly represents the performance expectations for an assignment or piece of work. A rubric divides the assigned work into component parts and provides clear descriptions of the characteristics of the work associated with each component, at varying levels of mastery. Rubrics can be used for a wide array of assignments: papers, projects, oral presentations, artistic performances, group projects, etc. Rubrics can be used as scoring or grading guides, to provide formative feedback to support and guide ongoing learning efforts, or both.

Grading rubrics are great for teachers:
Rubrics can reduce the time spent grading when all you need to do is refer to the rubric scoring description rather than trying to figure it out on your own to assign a specific grade. They also help you to get a clearer picture of  the strengths and weaknesses of your children in that specific subject. Since a rubric breaks down each part of the lesson (especially in writing) it can help you to see a specific area that your child may struggle with.

Grading rubrics are valuable for students: 
There are many rubrics that a student can use to help them to grade their own work. This can help your children to monitor and assess their own progress. They can also see why they were given the grade that they were given, which can help them know exactly what they need to do to improve and receive a stronger and better grade the next time. 

Here are some great free rubrics and grading assessments to help your middle and highschool students!

How to Create Your Own Grading Rubric for Highschool (free printable) from BJU Press
Autobiography Rubric – Teacher Planet
Geography Rubric – Teacher Planet
6 Traits Writing Rubrics – Teacher Planet
Algebra 1 Rubric from TPT
Algebra 2 Rubric from TPT
Math Project Grading Rubric from What is Healthy?
Homeschool Grading Rubric from Lextin Eclectic
Editable Writing Templates with Embedded Rubrics from Learning in Wonderland

How to Grade a Homeschool Unit Study for an Older Child (and high school assessment) from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus


I absolutely LOVE this grading grid booklet from Writing with Sharon Watson. It was extremely helpful when I had to grade my son’s highschool writing papers!
21 Grading Grids for Popular High School Essays and the Position Paper

Tired of the anxiety that comes from grading high school essays and research papers? Whether it’s persuasion, compare and contrast, how-to, newspaper writing, biography, or other popular high school essays,  the guesswork is gone.

Your students will earn points based on how well their essays answer certain questions. For instance, in a persuasive essay, they could earn anywhere from 1-10 points based on how clearly their introductory paragraph introduces the topic and the student’s view. Some questions are more important than others, and the potential points in the grading grid sections reflect this.

After you have evaluated all the questions and assigned the points, total the numbers to reveal the grade.

You can also grab a FREE Sample Grading Rubric from the book HERE.