Rubrics are an integral part of many writing programs, and they represent elements of good writing in essays, stories, poems, as well as other genres and forms of text. Although it is possible to use rubrics to teach students about the processes underlying effective writing, a more common practice is to use rubrics as a means of assessment, after students have completed their work. Thus, the premise of this article is to show teachers how to transform rubrics into powerful teaching devices, using foundations from strategy instruction as a means for this endeavor. Two examples are used in the article to explain this process: (a) a close examination of the comparison genre; and (b) a planning strategy for writing expository essays, called PLAN and WRITE, that was previously validated with middle school students with and without learning disabilities.
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