  We develop a finite element method with continuous displacements and
discontinuous rotations for the Mindlin-Reissner plate model on quadrilateral
elements. To avoid shear locking, the rotations must have the same polynomial
degree in the parametric reference plane as the parametric derivatives of the
displacements, and obey the same transformation law to the physical plane as
the gradient of displacements. We prove optimal convergence, uniformly in the
plate thickness, and provide numerical results that confirm our estimates.
