evaluating student writing: focus on learning and improvement!
DESCRIPTION
How can we evaluate student writing in ways that shift the emphasis from grades and onto learning and improvement? How can we provide substantive feedback that both challenges and encourages? How can students begin to perceive and talk about their own growth as writers?TRANSCRIPT
EvaluatingStudentWritingAcross theCurriculum
Freewrite
• Why do we grade assignments?
• Why do we give quarter grades?
Elbow’s Beefs with Grading
• They aren’t trustworthy • They don’t have clear meaning • They don’t give students feedback
about what they did well or badly• Figuring out grades is difficult, and
the task often makes us anxious because fairness is so hard to achieve
Elbow’s Beefs with Grading
• They undermine the teaching-and-learning situation in the following ways:
– They lead many students to work more for the sake of the grade than for learning
Elbow’s Beefs with Grading
• They undermine the teaching-and-learning situation in the following ways:
– They lead to an adversarial atmosphere; students often resent or even fight us about grades; many students no longer feel the teacher as ally in the learning process and try to hide what they don’t understand
Elbow’s Beefs with Grading
• They undermine the teaching-and-learning situation in the following ways:
– They force us to write comments to justify our grade—yet these comments are often not the ones we want to write to help the student write better
Elbow’s Beefs with Grading
• They undermine the teaching-and-learning situation in the following ways:
– They lead to a competitive atmosphere among students themselves.
Elbow’s Beefs with Grading
• They undermine the teaching-and-learning situation in the following ways:
– They give too much encouragement to those students who score high—making them too apt to think they are already fine-and too little encouragement to those students who do badly
Voices from Students
Brian Kate
Mary Polly
Voices from Students
“Jennifer”
Voices from Students
“Neo”
My Research Project
• Do you work harder or less hard without grades? Do you think harder or less hard? Do you learn more or less?
• 100% work/think/learn “harder” or “the same”
My Research Project
• “I think I learn more and can enjoy it more”
• “I work the same…but I work for myself instead of for the teacher.”
• “I work harder because I’m not as stressed [and can] open up more”
• “I think you work harder without grades but you learn like 3 times as much.”
My Research Project
How do you know how well you’re doing on an assignment or in the class?
• “Verbal feedback”• “He lets you know.”• “You just do.”• “You compliment us.”• “Hunley will tell you how good your
papers are or not.”
My Research ProjectHow do you know if you’re improving or not?
• “Well, if I didn’t approve of my last paper than I will work harder on my next paper.”
• “…by talking about my work.”• “Because I can go even farther than I
[have] ever gone and I know that my writing is better.”
• “Because of feedback, and you tell us [to] straighten up.”
A Student’s Journey: Reagan
1. Do you consider yourself a good writer? Why or why not?
2. What kinds of writing do you most like to do? What kinds do you least like to do? Why?
3. What about writing is hardest for you? What is easiest?
4. How do you feel about sharing your writing (both drafts and finished work) with others?
5. How would you most like to improve as a writer?
A Student’s Journey: Reagan
1. I do not consider myself a good writer. I can never think of what to write about. Also, it doesn’t flow very well, I think.
2. I really don’t like writing at all. It just not fun to me.
3. The hardest things in writing for me are thinking of what to write and how to put it.
4. I do not like sharing my writing at all. I don’t know why, I just don’t.
5. I would like to improve at thinking about what to write about.
Reagan’s Portfolio Reflection“When I was flipping through my
portfolio, I noticed a big change in my writing…. I became less and less afraid of writing my opinion on things. I didn’t hold back like I used to. I was able to write freely without being criticized.
“Also, during this year I discovered that I could write. I hadn’t written something in forever and when I did, I was surprised. I did better than I thought I ever could write, ever.”
Reagan’s Grading Questionnaire• Did you miss having grades? No…when I
did get grades I would usually score low. All the low grades I got would make me hate writing!
• How did you know how well you did on each paper? By the feedback he would give us on his comments sheet. It would always be constructive criticism.
• How did you track your progress? By reviewing my previous writings. I would look to see the difference.
Reagan’s Grading Questionnaire
• How would your work habits have been different if I had graded all your work? I probably would have not written as much as I did. I would have been conscience of my writing.
Authenticity and Intrinsic Motivation
Thank you.