When Spandel talked about comments that teachers leave on papers, many of the exact phrases resonated with me. I still remember the comments that teachers left on my papers- the good ones, the vague ones, and the ones that are 'constructive'. If any comments were illegible or not understandable, I would ignore them completely.
As I was reading this, I thought to myself, OF COURSE we as teachers need to give specific comments that actually HELP students know where to go next and what they need to do to get there! Students need good models! My research has been addressing how students need explicit direction; and they need to know they are doing something right!!!! And exactly WHAT they are doing right! If someone just wrote 'awk' on a page, first of all, what is awk? Why is it awk? How can I make it better? Should I take it out, move it, rephrase it? That runs through students heads. But what runs through my head is: WHO EVER THOUGHT THAT AWK WAS A GOOD IDEA TO PUT ON A PAPER!?!?!?!?! Or any of those other notoriously ambiguous abbreviations. Seriously, guys, not positive or helpful. What purpose does it serve?
Sorry, my rant is over. I will leave this with one last thought:
"Whether or not the feedback is effective depends on what students need to hear."
That is the most important thing to think about when writing any comment on any student work.
Writing Assessment
What a loaded phrase.
What's most important?
Have a clear purpose!
Think:
Why are you assessing?
What will this assessment show you?
How can you use it to inform further instruction?
The best advice I ever got from a teacher: Never assign something you don't want to grade and make sure that it is worth the time. It has to tell you something valuable!
One novel concept that struck me: Is the writing assessment meant to measure on-demand (or on the spot) writing or processed writing? Many tests have students do a pre writing and a draft, then grade as though students should have edited, revised, and published their entire work within a few hours. Is this fair or a meaningful experience? So many things to consider!
In life students will do both, so as a teacher, I have started to think about creating authentic writing experiences and assessments. A quick evaluation, a press release, a response letter, a blog, or a journal can be authentic on-demand writing, while book reports, papers, drama, poetry, etc. are all polished writing, and students should have a chance to revise and work on those pieces over a more extended length of time. These should be taught as such! And assessed as such!
There is still so much more to consider when actually doing this in class. What will be on the rubric? That depends upon the goal of the writing task. How much time will they have? Depends upon the steps they need to complete, the prompt, the research (if any) needed to do that.
The last walk-away point that I appreciated?
Foster students who can become their own evaluators. The teacher is not the holder of all knowledge- and if they are, then students are sunk if they write on a test with no feedback, or outside of school. Students need to learn what is good writing, and how to evaluate their own writing. That is why we give them rubrics ahead of time, right? So they can evaluate their own work before a teacher or peer does. Also- older students should totally grade each others work anonymously! So the name of the writer and grader is unknown. That will help them become better evaluators of their own work as well!
In the end, when the year is done, will the student walk away a better, more authentic writer?
As I was reading this, I thought to myself, OF COURSE we as teachers need to give specific comments that actually HELP students know where to go next and what they need to do to get there! Students need good models! My research has been addressing how students need explicit direction; and they need to know they are doing something right!!!! And exactly WHAT they are doing right! If someone just wrote 'awk' on a page, first of all, what is awk? Why is it awk? How can I make it better? Should I take it out, move it, rephrase it? That runs through students heads. But what runs through my head is: WHO EVER THOUGHT THAT AWK WAS A GOOD IDEA TO PUT ON A PAPER!?!?!?!?! Or any of those other notoriously ambiguous abbreviations. Seriously, guys, not positive or helpful. What purpose does it serve?
Sorry, my rant is over. I will leave this with one last thought:
"Whether or not the feedback is effective depends on what students need to hear."
That is the most important thing to think about when writing any comment on any student work.
Writing Assessment
What a loaded phrase.
What's most important?
Have a clear purpose!
Think:
Why are you assessing?
What will this assessment show you?
How can you use it to inform further instruction?
The best advice I ever got from a teacher: Never assign something you don't want to grade and make sure that it is worth the time. It has to tell you something valuable!
One novel concept that struck me: Is the writing assessment meant to measure on-demand (or on the spot) writing or processed writing? Many tests have students do a pre writing and a draft, then grade as though students should have edited, revised, and published their entire work within a few hours. Is this fair or a meaningful experience? So many things to consider!
In life students will do both, so as a teacher, I have started to think about creating authentic writing experiences and assessments. A quick evaluation, a press release, a response letter, a blog, or a journal can be authentic on-demand writing, while book reports, papers, drama, poetry, etc. are all polished writing, and students should have a chance to revise and work on those pieces over a more extended length of time. These should be taught as such! And assessed as such!
There is still so much more to consider when actually doing this in class. What will be on the rubric? That depends upon the goal of the writing task. How much time will they have? Depends upon the steps they need to complete, the prompt, the research (if any) needed to do that.
The last walk-away point that I appreciated?
Foster students who can become their own evaluators. The teacher is not the holder of all knowledge- and if they are, then students are sunk if they write on a test with no feedback, or outside of school. Students need to learn what is good writing, and how to evaluate their own writing. That is why we give them rubrics ahead of time, right? So they can evaluate their own work before a teacher or peer does. Also- older students should totally grade each others work anonymously! So the name of the writer and grader is unknown. That will help them become better evaluators of their own work as well!
In the end, when the year is done, will the student walk away a better, more authentic writer?
Victoria,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this great post. That advice that you got from the teacher is very interesting! I can definitely see why she would say to only ask our students to do an assignment if we are going to grade it. This is great advice because it makes sure that we as teachers only ask our students to complete purposeful and meaningful assignments.
I think your post really captured how much teachers need to weigh/consider when assessing and providing feedback to their students. And I agree that, regardless of the kind of writing students will be tested on in standardized tests, we need to expose our students to many different forms of writing, and push them to experiment and try out various genres and styles. If they are comfortable with the writing process, students will do much better in testing situations than if they were only taught to write under artificial circumstances.
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