Whenever a teacher walks around to pass back an essay, all the students seem excited, which occasionally happens to look like they’re waiting to find out if they have cancer. They anxiously await to receive their paper or get a chance to peek at their neighbor’s score. However, the return process of essays is typically a four-step process for the student.
1. Receive essay.
2. Check letter or percentage at top of essay.
3. Recycle essay.
4. Forget essay ever existed.
And then there is step five, which comes about a month later when they write their next essay.
5. Make same mistakes as made in previous essay.
As a student, I just figured this was how essays were supposed to go. You write it because you have to, you turn it in, your teacher writes hieroglyphics on it, and then you recycle it as quickly as possible.
It was only when I began teaching that I realized this was a problem, and I realized this problem rather quickly when, after a night grading until two o’clock, I noticed that my beautiful comments only mattered if they were made up of one letter that was circled at the top of the page. Even worse, I got to see all the same mistakes in their subsequent papers. It didn’t matter how many times I taught a lesson on using the serial comma in a list, the next batch of papers had serial commas murdering sentences left and right and then attempting to hide between two independent clauses.
(Sorry. That grammar joke got a little carried away.)
I began to think about assessment and what I was doing wrong. I identified six areas that I needed to change:
1. Time. I was spending around ten minutes on a paper multiple times a quarter, and the students were getting nothing out of it other than a grade. I needed a way to balance the amount of time I spent correcting their papers and the amount of time they spent understanding why things were corrected.
2. Understanding. Most of the marks I made on their papers may as well have been doodles of the things I’d rather do than sit at a table and grade for a weekend. I had to create a link between what I write and what they understand.
3. Growth. Neither myself nor the students had any idea what they needed to work on from their last paper. I had to establish some way of tracking goals and growth.
4. Specific feedback. Want to know what’s not specific? A bunch of marks on a paper. I needed a way to show them exactly which areas they were strong in and which they needed to focus on.
5. Individualized feedback. Yes, I was giving them all individual comments. No, they were not reading the comments. I had to find another way to tell them what I saw.
6. Relationships. The worst part about handing back an essay is often the distance it creates between student and teacher. Suddenly, the teacher becomes either the almighty grader or, more simply, the bad guy. I needed a way to make assessment a way to build relationships, not tear them down.
During my teaching program at Lewis and Clark, two teachers came in and talked to us about assessing student writing through conferences. At the time, I thought to myself, “That’s pathetic. If you want to avoid grading papers, then just don’t assign them at all,” and "How could that actually help students learn to write?" (In case they ever happen to read this, I apologize. You seemed like very nice people, and I now agree with you.) However, they were on to something. I've tried a number of different models, but the essence of what they had found was a way to individualize instruction with students after a written assessment. We all do this with those few students who come see us outside of class time, but what about the rest? This is the question I think I will continually tackle as I strive to become a better teacher by identifying strategies and methods that meet my students' needs.
For now, I’ll leave you with the six questions that I have started to use to establish how I assess anything I assign:
1. How can I use my time most effectively?
2. How can I help students understand why something is wrong, not just when/where?
3. Is there a way that I can track this concept to monitor growth?
4. How can I be as specific as possible about the areas that are strong and the areas that need improvement?
5. How can I give individual feedback most effectively?
6. Does this help or harm my relationships with students?
1. Receive essay.
2. Check letter or percentage at top of essay.
3. Recycle essay.
4. Forget essay ever existed.
And then there is step five, which comes about a month later when they write their next essay.
5. Make same mistakes as made in previous essay.
As a student, I just figured this was how essays were supposed to go. You write it because you have to, you turn it in, your teacher writes hieroglyphics on it, and then you recycle it as quickly as possible.
It was only when I began teaching that I realized this was a problem, and I realized this problem rather quickly when, after a night grading until two o’clock, I noticed that my beautiful comments only mattered if they were made up of one letter that was circled at the top of the page. Even worse, I got to see all the same mistakes in their subsequent papers. It didn’t matter how many times I taught a lesson on using the serial comma in a list, the next batch of papers had serial commas murdering sentences left and right and then attempting to hide between two independent clauses.
(Sorry. That grammar joke got a little carried away.)
I began to think about assessment and what I was doing wrong. I identified six areas that I needed to change:
1. Time. I was spending around ten minutes on a paper multiple times a quarter, and the students were getting nothing out of it other than a grade. I needed a way to balance the amount of time I spent correcting their papers and the amount of time they spent understanding why things were corrected.
2. Understanding. Most of the marks I made on their papers may as well have been doodles of the things I’d rather do than sit at a table and grade for a weekend. I had to create a link between what I write and what they understand.
3. Growth. Neither myself nor the students had any idea what they needed to work on from their last paper. I had to establish some way of tracking goals and growth.
4. Specific feedback. Want to know what’s not specific? A bunch of marks on a paper. I needed a way to show them exactly which areas they were strong in and which they needed to focus on.
5. Individualized feedback. Yes, I was giving them all individual comments. No, they were not reading the comments. I had to find another way to tell them what I saw.
6. Relationships. The worst part about handing back an essay is often the distance it creates between student and teacher. Suddenly, the teacher becomes either the almighty grader or, more simply, the bad guy. I needed a way to make assessment a way to build relationships, not tear them down.
During my teaching program at Lewis and Clark, two teachers came in and talked to us about assessing student writing through conferences. At the time, I thought to myself, “That’s pathetic. If you want to avoid grading papers, then just don’t assign them at all,” and "How could that actually help students learn to write?" (In case they ever happen to read this, I apologize. You seemed like very nice people, and I now agree with you.) However, they were on to something. I've tried a number of different models, but the essence of what they had found was a way to individualize instruction with students after a written assessment. We all do this with those few students who come see us outside of class time, but what about the rest? This is the question I think I will continually tackle as I strive to become a better teacher by identifying strategies and methods that meet my students' needs.
For now, I’ll leave you with the six questions that I have started to use to establish how I assess anything I assign:
1. How can I use my time most effectively?
2. How can I help students understand why something is wrong, not just when/where?
3. Is there a way that I can track this concept to monitor growth?
4. How can I be as specific as possible about the areas that are strong and the areas that need improvement?
5. How can I give individual feedback most effectively?
6. Does this help or harm my relationships with students?
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