middle school narrative essay rubric

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Middle School Writing Rubrics

In my book Blended Learning in Grades 4-12 , I shared the following middle school writing rubrics with my readers. Unfortunately, the short links I provided in my book have timed out, so I wanted to share these on my blog so any middle school teachers interested in using them have access! Feel free to make a copy and adjust as needed.

bit.ly/6-8ArgumentativeWritingRubric

bit.ly/6-8InformativeWritingRubric

bit.ly/6-8NarrativeWritingRubric

I will be posting the high school writing rubrics as soon as I can get them reformatted in a shareable version. If you have rubrics you use, love, and are willing to share, I’d love to crowdsource rubrics here!

45 Responses

Thank you for this wonderful resource! I love getting the emails from your site.

What are your thoughts on putting the high score description in the 2nd column next to the criteria? Students’ eyes are naturally drawn to the columns in order of left to right, so putting the high scoring description makes it the first thing they look at. It sets the tone for them, as if to say, “Do this! This is the best!”

Thank you again for providing this rubric. The descriptions and criteria are very well-written.

You are absolutely welcome to edit and rework them! My co-teacher prefers rubrics that start with 4 on the left side for those exact reasons. Mentally, it works better for me this way. That said, they are easy to copy and change!

Thanks so much!

[…] Middle School Writing Rubrics | […]

Thank you so much for sharing such a valuable resource!

Hello, are the high school rubrics available on the website, or in the book?

They are in the book, Carly. They are also so similar to the middle school rubrics that I did not want to publish a separate post for them.

Dear Ms Tucker

I was browsing and came across you rubrics for students writing. I read them and immediately fall in love with the simplicity of their structure. Thanks for making these resource available, easing research time.

I deem it a pleasure to be able to use them for my assessment.

You’re welcome, Emileta!

I’m glad these will save you time!

These are awesome rubrics! Thank you so much for sharing! They are a great resource.

Any ideas for a poetry rubric. I hate “grading” poetry. I truly believe students should have absolute freedom, but Texas TEKS say otherwise…..so…..

I so appreciate the clarity and ease of understanding these rubrics provide!!

I tend to agree with you. However, if you are expected to assess poetry, I’d start with the language in the TEKs and work backward. What do the TEKs want you to assess when it comes to poetry? Figurative language, sensory details, thematic progression? I’d isolate each “skill” or element of poetry they want you to assess then use those as your criteria and describe what that skill or element looks like in each stage–beginner, developing, proficient, mastery.

Thank you so much for sharing your rubrics with teachers! Extremely helpful and greatly appreciated.

You’re so welcome, Vanessa!

Take care. Catlin

Thank you for sharing your rubrics.

Thank you so much for sharing the rubrics. I use them in class for students’ projects.

Thank you so much for this lovely set up! It has helped a lot of new teachers!

Words can not describe how grateful I am.

Thank you so much! I am always having trouble teaching language art since I feel much comfortable with numbers..

You’re welcome, Helen! Happy to help 😊

Thank you for this very helpful resources, appreciated it!

You’re welcome, Shiela!

Thank you so much for this resource! This is the best rubric I’ve seen for middle school writing!

Thank you, Anna!

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful resource!!! You are amazing!!!

You’re welcome, Michelle! So glad these are useful. 😊

Thank you so much for providing these! I’m “Yearbook Teacher” and these are wonderful since I have no clue how to grade written work (I normally teach a CTE course but with virtual/hybrid staff is spread thin.

Nick Pascual

You’re welcome, Nicolas! I’m so glad these are useful 😊

It appears 28 possible points can be earned……the sum of points earned would be at what grade level…..for example, if a student earned all 4’s on the Argumentative Writing Rubric what grade level would his writing rank…….or are their ranges for the sum of points……I would prefer to have a grade level…..

Hi MaryIsabel,

I assess on a 4 point mastery scale, so the final score calculates an average then that number 1, 2, 3, 4 is inserted into the grade book (if you have a mastery-based grade book option). Otherwise, you will need to convert your number on a scale.

Thank you. You are so kind. God bless you.

You’re welcome, Jennifer!

I am unable to open the rubrics. Are they still available for teacher to access?

Hi Jennifer,

The short links are below each image of the rubric, and they force you to make a copy. You’ll need to be logged into your Gmail account so your copies save in your Google Drive.

These are excellent! Thank you for sharing Dr. Tucker!

You’re welcome, Laura!

Life saver! Thank you for sharing!

You’re welcome, Carolyn!

Thank you so much for sharing these rubrics! I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been mentioned in the posts above. Love the idea of creating a “rubric bank” available to all who may need it.

You are very welcome, Carolina! I’m thrilled they are useful.

Good Evening , Ms. Tucker

Have you published a persuasive writing rubric?

Hi Yolanda,

I do not have persuasive rubrics. I focused on argumentative writing instead.

THIS IS A LIFESAVER!! THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!!

You’re very welcome, Tammy! 😊

WOW! I’m so loving these… as we are developing our standards for our program, this gives us a total jump start! By chance, do you have the High School writing rubrics?

My high school versions are very similar to these. Here is an example: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TLkY6Yt-AdXdwCwvXJ7YAqzsoYZmT6G3QiT_yefAHV8/edit

Good luck with your rubrics! AI can be a very helpful resources when generating rubrics with the skill descriptions!

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Middle school writing rubrics.

Use these standards-based rubrics to assess your middle school students’ writing skills. This set features rubrics for argument writing, informational writing, and narrative writing for sixth-grade, seventh-grade, and eighth-grade students. Each rubric covers the major standards of the grade and type of writing and uses a 3-point scale to help you indicate whether students have a beginning, developing, or proficient grasp of individual writing skills. Use these rubrics as a tool for final assessment of student writing or as a self-reflection tool for students to grade their own writing. 

Click on a worksheet in the set below to see more info or download the PDF.

Argument Writing Rubric for 6th grade

Informational writing rubric for 6th grade, narrative writing rubric for 6th grade, argument writing rubric for 7th grade, informational writing rubric for 7th grade, narrative writing rubric for 7th grade, argument writing rubric for 8th grade, informational writing rubric for 8th grade, narrative writing rubric for 8th grade, want to download this whole set as a single pdf, unlock worksheet sets.

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Bell Ringers

Middle school narrative essays and middle school writing conferences.

Five years ago, I had just started my first year of teaching 7th and 8th grade English Language Arts. We were working on writing middle school narrative essays and I did a blog post on how I taught it here .

I have grown SO much since that time. My students definitely learned a lot, but especially because I teach the same kids in 8th grade as I do in 7th, I knew that I had to really up what we are doing this year.

Disclaimer: I don’t teach “personal narratives.” I know. Writing gods across the universe are gasping in shock, but it’s a decision I made a couple years ago, kind of on a whim, but has been the best thing I have ever done. 

WHY NOT PERSONAL NARRATIVES?

I just feel like kids have written 8-10 personal narratives by the time they get to me, and we are all over it. Plus, sometimes it’s REALLY hard for kids to write something meaningful about the first time they were stung by a bee… or whatever small moment I spend hours and days trying to help them come up with.

I found that when students have to use narrative elements to become a character from a narrative mentor text, they don’t spend days trying to figure out what to write. They truly use narrative craft because they have a complete and well done mentor text to constantly reference. Plus they’re final essay and their writing are just SO FREAKING GOOD.

My first year, we read Freak the Mighty in both seventh and eighth grade. Students had to write from Freak’s or from Killer Kane’s point of view. They were some of the best essay I’ve ever read.  

I used my Realistic Fiction and Literature Terms/Devices unit, along with Freak the Mighty.

I use the novels to teach literary elements and they use that knowledge to write their middle school narrative essays. We also focus a lot on thinking critically about the texts we read.

CHANGING IT UP EACH YEAR

My first year teaching middle school ELA, I taught a lot of the same lessons to both seventh and eight grade. It was honestly perfect as I learned two new grade levels, but that meant I changed things up a lot in the following years. 

I still did the same thing with my 7th graders this year, and we are just about done writing our rough drafts.

For 8th grade, I had the same students, so I decided we would read  The Outsiders . Even more so, instead of them just having to write from the point of view of a character, I actually wanted them to have to do some of that hard thinking that they might be missing out on by not doing a personal narrative.

With this in mind, my 8th graders had to continue Ponyboy’s narrative. Their middle school narrative essays still had to have a plot and climax that was completely developed. Essentially, I was asking them to write another chapter of the book.

It was REALLY HARD for all of us, especially in the planning stages, but I scaffolded and modeled A LOT. Now we’re on rough drafts too, and they’re seriously amazing.

I have since also added a sixth grade example for everything. We used Jason Reynolds novel, Ghost for their mentor text. Again, we used my realistic fiction unit and their novel study units. 

COMPLETE NARRATIVE WRITING UNIT

Each year, I changed how we did our narrative writing unit, and I continued to update my examples and lesson plans each year. 

I have since compiled all my middle school narrative writing lesson into one complete unit that you can get here. 

Since I do teach middle school narrative essays differently than a lot of teachers, I thought I would give you a better overview of what the complete units looks like, plus show you some freebies you can get to use today! 

NARRATIVE WRITING UNIT OVERVIEW

• Session 1: Elements of Narrative Essays Part one
• Session 2: Elements of Narrative Essays Part Two
• Session 3: Narrative Plot Diagrams
• Session 4: Using Sensory Details
• Session 5: Using Dialogue Correctly
• Session 6: Using Dialogue Effectively
• Session 7: Ways to Start a Narrative, Writing Rough Drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 8: Using Narrative Transitions, Writing Rough Drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 9: Pacing Narrative Writing, Writing Rough Drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 10: Ways to End a Narrative, Writing Rough Drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 11 : Consistent Verb Tenses, Peer Editing, Writing Conferences
• Session 12 : Editing vs. Revising Rough drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 13-15: Publishing final drafts, Writing Conferences

Each lesson plan has standard alignment, lesson plans for learning period, interactive notebook pages when applicable, teacher prep, writing conference forms and examples, and more! 

INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOK PAGES

With middle school narrative essays I find that students need some front loading before drafting. Because of that, we do spend the first few days doing some interactive notebook lessons on elements of narrative. 

Personal narratives are all about teaching students to use the elements of narrative writing. Since we aren’t doing a personal narrative, I focus heavily on the elements of a narrative to start. We start by defining each of the elements but then look for examples in our mento texts. This is huge because they use their mentor text to write their essays. 

DIFFERENTIATED EXAMPLES BY GRADE LEVEL

As someone who taught all three grade levels of middle school at the same time, I always needed different examples. I like to be able to use the same units, but use different content. If there is an interactive notebook lesson, I made sure to differentiate examples by grade level. 

The same is done for all of the lesson plans when there are examples based on the mentor texts. I  use Ghost for sixth grade, Freak the Mighty seventh grade, and The Outsiders for eighth grades, so I make sure I have different examples for each. 

It drove me crazy when students would say things like, “I don’t get what to do.” So I made sure I had examples that were conceptualized for each grade level so there was no excuse. 

NARRATIVE ESSAY CHART PAPERS

I know I teach middle school ELA, but I still love using chart papers for students to reference. Most of my interactive notebook lessons were adapted and created based on the chart papers. 

You don’t have to do both the chart papers and the interactive notebook lessons, but I did include images of all my chart papers. I honestly just made them as I came up with elements that I knew we need to dig deeper into throughout the unit. 

When I was in a pinch some year, I honestly could just print the chart papers on 8×10 paper so students could glue them into their notebooks. I don’t think it is as effective as student taking their own notes, but sometimes you’re short on time. 

INDIVIDUAL WRITING CONFERENCES

I strongly believe that my students write really strong narrative essays because of how I do writing conferences with students. 

I have a separate blog post all about how I do writing conference in my middle school ELA classroom , because there was a time when I did them like I “thought” I needed to do writing conferences. 

I thought I needed to spend time training them, making them be prepared for them, and then trying to come up with discussion points. I’ve since learned that that just isn’t reality when you have 100+ middle school ELA students. 

Check out my blog post all about this here. 

I also have since made tons of editable middle school narrative essays rubrics and writing conference forms for teachers and students. 

FREE NARRATIVE REFERENCE NOTEBOOKS

One of the biggest updates I made while redoing my narrative writing unit was making a narrative reference notebook.

It’s perfect for students to create at the beginning of the units and to reference while creating their narrative essays. 

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Narrative Essay Rubric

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9th-12th grade narrative writing rubric

Rubric for formative and summative assignments with tasks involving writing that tells a story, either personal or literary.

Rubric suitable for formative and summative assignments with tasks involving writing that tells a story, either personal or literary. Use this rubric when asking students to write a personal essay or a fictional narrative.

Consider using the 9th-12th Grade Narrative QuickMark set with this rubric. These drag-and-drop comments were tailor-made by veteran educators to give actionable, formative feedback directly to students. While they were explicitly aligned to this particular rubric, you can edit or add your own content to any QuickMark.

This rubric is available and ready to use in your Feedback Studio account. However, if you would like to customize its criteria, you can "Duplicate this rubric" in your Feedback Studio account and then edit the rubric as needed. Or, you can download this .rbc file and then import to your account to begin editing the content.

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Rubric (100pts)-Narrative Essay

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