I don't know about other people, but I felt really good about the "critical friends" group that took place on Friday. For those of you who weren't there, it was my turn to share student work, and I brought in an email from one of my students to her "book buddy" in Kenya. The letter was two paragraphs long, and the first paragraph (social) included text messaging language, while the second (academic -- about the books she is reading) was written in standard written English. We used a protocol that I adapted from the National Writing Project's protocol for looking at digital composition, a protocol that I will be using in a presentation on this digital writing exchange at the MacArthur Foundation's "Digital Is..." conference in Philadelphia next month. The protocol asks participants to focus on what they notice, what they wonder, what questions the piece raises for them, and what's working. They are asked to withhold all judgment. This is an approach that was central to a graduate class I took at Bread Loaf a few years ago with an incredible professor named Michael Armstrong. His work is all about looking at what's working in student writing.
I left the "critical friends" group on Friday feeling energized and excited about the work our students are doing. So often I can get bogged down in what they're doing wrong in their writing, and I forget to look at what they're doing that's working. So often I can get judgmental -- not just of them, but of myself as a teacher, since I feel responsible for every mistake they make -- and I forget to appreciate and learn from what they write. The NWP/Michael Armstrong approach has been invaluable to me as a writing teacher, and I was very happy to share it with my colleagues.
This weekend I am reading and responding to my students' epic stories (based on structural elements we found while reading Beowulf). They are long. I have been dreading this weekend of grading... But as I read through them, I am reminding myself to notice, to wonder, to question, and to appreciate what is working.
As part of the writing process for this piece, students all commented digitally on their peer's epics, and they used these comments (theoretically!) to revise. I'm pleasantly surprised as I look at the comments they left for each other and the revisions they did to see that they really took their roles as commenter and reviser seriously. As I read, I am responding to their comments (things like, "I agree with what Jafah noticed here... I see how you changed this paragraph in response to his comment"). I am also writing a two-part comment at the end of each piece: What I noticed/what's working (this part is a narrative... 4-6 sentences), and a bullet-point list of "suggestions for next time," which tends to focus more on mechanical elements.
Then I'm slapping a grade at the end, which still feels a bit problematic... This process just isn't easily quantifiable!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
New assessment (Tamar)
I'm grading the kids' creative endings to The Giver, and after much deliberation about how to balance the nitty-gritty (mechanics) with the touchy-feely (creativity, effectiveness, style, voice), I came up with a combo-rubric of sorts. I can't seem to paste the document here, so I'll just describe it. The top half is a chart with 4 columns labeled: "Based on this piece, the writer is..." "a novice (just learning)" "an apprentice (shows some skill, but needs work)" "a master! (very few mistakes)". There are 6 rows: "paragraphing," "capitalization," "spelling (including homonyms,""consistent verb tense," "complete sentences (no run-ons or fragments)," and "correct formatting." The bottom half of the page is a empty box labeled: "The effect of this piece on the reader (Ms. Paull)." I'm pretty happy with this as far as teacher-friendliness. I'm not marking any mistakes on the writing itself, which saves time and also satisfies my goal of not wanting to bleed ink all over the kids' work. The chart allows me to give the kids specific feedback on their mechanics. I'm trying to reserve the bottom box for positive or judgment-free comments. If anyone would like to try (or adapt) the rubric, let me know.
Now I better get back to that grading...
Now I better get back to that grading...
Friday, October 2, 2009
Tamar's Update: A Positive Approach
I had a really eye-opening goal conference with a student in August. He told me that he loved reading, but was a bad writer. He wanted to learn to make fewer mistakes in writing, but really didn't like writing... because he made so many mistakes! Makes sense, I thought. So what would happen if I focused on getting him to love writing, and addressed his "mistakes" some other way?
I decided to try a new approach with the first set of writing pieces this year. No corrections. None. Only positive feedback. OK, maybe a few tiny little suggestions. But NO circles, cross-outs, "frags" or "awks." This was not as easy as it sounds...
I have never been so aware of my inclination to mark up student work as I was when I read and responded to these papers. I had to keep reminding myself of this experiment, and its purpose. I want my students to become better writers. In order to become better writers, they need to enjoy writing. As my student reminded me in his goal conference in August, nobody likes doing things they are "bad" at. So my goal in responding to this first set of papers was to make everyone feel like they had done a good job. And they had... when I looked at the papers through a purely positive lens.
I underlined my favorite lines in their pieces, looking primarily for sensory detail, which was the focus of this narrative assignment. I then wrote a few sentences at the end telling them what I liked the most about their pieces. I did make the suggestion in several cases that they read their work aloud to make sure it said what they meant to say, but that was the closest I came to mentioning mistakes.
When I handed back the papers, I told them what I had done and why. I said that I didn't circle a single mistake, not because there weren't any ("everybody makes mistakes," I reminded them), but because I wanted to focus on what was best about their writing, and I wanted them to do the same. Then I did a lesson on some of the most common errors that I noticed in their writing (capitalization and homonyms. I mentioned that they would probably notice some of these things in their writing, and that next time they could catch the errors before handing in their work.
Today they completed their second big writing assignment, a creative ending to The Giver. They have spent the week writing, peer conferencing (with a set of questions, all of which focus on revision, not editing), revising (which I am still struggling to get them to see is different than editing), and editing (using a checklist of the skills I have taught them thus far). Now I'm torn about how to respond to these pieces. I really want to stick with the positive approach that I used on their last pieces. I still strongly believe that correcting their work won't teach them much of anything... Yet I'm concerned about my own accountability. I'm also torn about the role of their writing assignments in their final grades. I'm thinking about not assigning a grade to their writing pieces at all, but instead giving them narrative feedback that I think will actually make them enjoy writing more (which, I believe, will lead to them becoming better writers). I'm toying with giving more skills-based assessments that I can grade objectively, and really separating that part of grading from the much more subjective process of responding to their writing pieces. Any thoughts? Thanks!
I decided to try a new approach with the first set of writing pieces this year. No corrections. None. Only positive feedback. OK, maybe a few tiny little suggestions. But NO circles, cross-outs, "frags" or "awks." This was not as easy as it sounds...
I have never been so aware of my inclination to mark up student work as I was when I read and responded to these papers. I had to keep reminding myself of this experiment, and its purpose. I want my students to become better writers. In order to become better writers, they need to enjoy writing. As my student reminded me in his goal conference in August, nobody likes doing things they are "bad" at. So my goal in responding to this first set of papers was to make everyone feel like they had done a good job. And they had... when I looked at the papers through a purely positive lens.
I underlined my favorite lines in their pieces, looking primarily for sensory detail, which was the focus of this narrative assignment. I then wrote a few sentences at the end telling them what I liked the most about their pieces. I did make the suggestion in several cases that they read their work aloud to make sure it said what they meant to say, but that was the closest I came to mentioning mistakes.
When I handed back the papers, I told them what I had done and why. I said that I didn't circle a single mistake, not because there weren't any ("everybody makes mistakes," I reminded them), but because I wanted to focus on what was best about their writing, and I wanted them to do the same. Then I did a lesson on some of the most common errors that I noticed in their writing (capitalization and homonyms. I mentioned that they would probably notice some of these things in their writing, and that next time they could catch the errors before handing in their work.
Today they completed their second big writing assignment, a creative ending to The Giver. They have spent the week writing, peer conferencing (with a set of questions, all of which focus on revision, not editing), revising (which I am still struggling to get them to see is different than editing), and editing (using a checklist of the skills I have taught them thus far). Now I'm torn about how to respond to these pieces. I really want to stick with the positive approach that I used on their last pieces. I still strongly believe that correcting their work won't teach them much of anything... Yet I'm concerned about my own accountability. I'm also torn about the role of their writing assignments in their final grades. I'm thinking about not assigning a grade to their writing pieces at all, but instead giving them narrative feedback that I think will actually make them enjoy writing more (which, I believe, will lead to them becoming better writers). I'm toying with giving more skills-based assessments that I can grade objectively, and really separating that part of grading from the much more subjective process of responding to their writing pieces. Any thoughts? Thanks!
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