This week’s readings were practical and helpful. I will confine my post to the feedback and evaluation processes as discussed by Chiseri-Slater and Sommers, emphasizing some of the ways I am applying what I’m learning. Hopefully, you guys will also share how these articles are changing your thinking and approaches.
Chiseri-Strater: Self-Evaluation
For me, the key takeaway from Chiseri-Strater’s article was the need for students to have a role in their own evaluation. Chiseri-Slater says that pondering her own reading habits caused her to rethink her one-way street (teacher only) approach to evaluation, and to involve her students in the process.
She examines the pitfalls of common evaluation and feedback methods, concluding that students better invest themselves in an evaluation process that is both clear and self-determined. She writes that students themselves can help develop the criteria by which they are graded. She suggests that students turn in self-evaluations and, in conference with the teacher, discuss their reasoning.
After some initial skepticism, I agreed with these ideas. Previously, I had decided to develop a rubric for the op-ed (I did not use one for the reflective essay). From now on, my students and I, through class discussion, will develop the rubric together. When turning in his or her op-ed, each student will include a completed self-assessment derived from the same rubric. We each will assess the paper independently, and then come to agreement in conference. In the end, each student’s evaluation will comprise 25% of his or her paper’s grade.
Sommers: Wide-angle vs. Close-up Feedback
After reading Sommers’ article, I felt confused. When studying her examples of actual comments on actual papers, I knew I needed to improve my feedback methods. But I did not know how.
All along, my concern has been that my feedback might become an information dump that confuses rather than helps. My own responses to my students’ writing eerily mirrored those of the teachers in Sommers’ examples. I realized I was trying to accomplish too much at once. How could I give clearer feedback that leads directly to improved writing?
While wrestling with this question, one afternoon I was shooting some photos of a long quote etched on a headstone. I could not view the entire quote because I was using a long-distance close-up lens. Then a thought hit me: this is the reason my feedback was confusing my students. I was using a micro focus when students first needed macro feedback.
From now on, I will assess papers in a two-stage process. First, I will employ wide-angle assessment. I will work with students on “big picture issues” (idea, organization, flow, thought, content, etc.). Only when those issues are improved will I shift to “detail issues,” line editing questions such as grammar, conciseness, and mechanics.
Summary
From now on, I will view student evaluation as a collaborative process, and I will respond to papers using a two-stage process that provides wide-angle feedback before offering close-up help with details.
How did you respond to Sommers’ and Chiseri-Strater’s information? Will their ideas alter how you evaluate--and respond to--your students’ work?
Jayme, thanks for your honesty with regard to your own evaluation methods. I too have begun to think through how to best leave feedback for students as to avoid this "information dump that confuses rather than helps." After reading the essays on evaluation, I feel that I need to improve and clear up what I leave as feedback. I found the Sommers essay most revealing in terms of my own evaluation/feedback. Sommers mentions how often it is the case that teachers leave comments instructing students both to "edit and develop" (151). She states that this is confusing to students as one should expect. I am guilty of leaving such comments on the PAA, but in the future I will keep all of this in mind. I believe that I might try, as Chiseri-Strater suggests, "dividing my evaluation into categories and trying to be very specific" (192). I may not elaborate quite as fully as shown on page 192, but I do think such an approach would be beneficial for students to understand what about my feedback may be most important to their revisions. I also appreciate what is said about "text-specific comments" (Sommers 152). I believe that in order to really assist students in becoming better writers, we do have the responsibility to comment, saying, "be clear, be specific, be precise" (Sommers 152). Even though I think I left these sorts of remarks on almost every paper that I have assessed, I have also left questions pertaining to what was not clear to me, as the reader. I do believe that Chiseri-Strater is right when, at the end of her essay, she writes, "Evaluation is a process. We get better as we go along" (201).
ReplyDeleteAs for allowing students a role in the evaluation process, I think that it is very important to review what I will be assessing students on. I try to do this several times, especially since a student was totally unclear about what I'd be using as a rubric. Even though students have the assignment sheets, these things have to be reviewed again and again. Although I will not allow them to participate in the grading of their own papers, I do allow them to argue with me that they should have received a better grade. I am more than open to listening to what they have to say as long as it can be said in a respectful manner.
Along with Jayme, one of the things that most stood out to me from the readings was Chiseri-Strater’s suggestion that students play an active role in the evaluation process. Like Nic, I don’t plan on letting my students determine their grades. I do, however, plan on doing an activity in which students bring ideas to the table about what’s important in evaluating an Op-Ed paper and based on their input we will construct a rubric for the assignment. Hopefully this sense of ownership will motivate them to meet those self-imposed goals.
ReplyDeleteOne additional concept from the reading that caught my attention revolved around how we portray audience through our evaluative comments. Let me explain. As I graded PAA’s I would find myself making comments such as, “I like how you’ve used the personal voice here,” or “the relevance of this is unclear to me.” The problem with comments like this is that they perpetuate the idea that we, the evaluating teachers, are the main audience (something I’ve strived to convince students is not the case) by revealing our emotions and opinions. Chiseri-Strater writes that a colleague believes that “our goal in responding to student writing should be to turn the teacher-student relationship into a ‘reader-writer’ relationship by explaining to students how we read” (182). I agree with this, but don’t know how to model it! Chiseri-Strater responds to this by saying that perhaps this distinction is impossible because as teachers we can’t separate our response from our evaluation; after all, no two readers read alike. Do you have any ideas as to whether this “reader-writer” relationship is attainable with our students? If so, what does one achieve it?
Jamie, I'm taking up this challenge to improve comments as well. Somer's point about how as teachers we ask for specifics but we hide behind a veil of vagueness in our comments really resonate with me as a students. Especially thinking back to my first could of years in college.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to try a could of these suggestions.
I agree with Jayme that I started to recognize some of my comments in Sommers’ examples. It is so easy to get carried away with grammatical errors and lose sight of giving critical feedback in regards to content and form. Something I’ve been trying to do is point out where a student does something well if I see them being inconsistent with it. An example of this is with transitions, for some of my students’ papers I would point out where they had strong transitions in contrast to where they either did not have one that made sense or used a weak transition that detracted from what should have been a strong paragraph. This seemed to help them with content because the ideas conveyed in their paragraphs should flow from one to another rather then seem forced or out of place. At the same time I still worry that I am poised to find the errors like I’m doing a scavenger hunt when I grade papers. Sommers’ addresses this idea by explain that when we grade papers “We read with our preconceptions and preoccupations, expecting to find errors, and the result is that we find errors and misread our students texts” (154). Something I have found that has helped me read my students’ texts as a whole is to read their papers through once without making any marks or comments. This helps me see their texts as a whole, rather than a series of errors that needs to be corrected. I agree with Nic that we get better as go along. One of the ways to learn what truly works is by trying it out.
ReplyDeleteNancy,
ReplyDeleteDeveloping a "reader-writer" as opposed to "teacher-student" relationship is something I strive for in my commentary--and I think one way to (at least partially) achieve it links with Sommers' discussion of useful commentary (what Jayme is here terming "wide-angle assessment"). To achieve the "reader-writer" relationship, rather than commenting on grammatical or conventional errors, I focused on issues specific to the paper that impeded my understanding as a reader--information that was not clearly presented, terms that were unexplained, quotes that needed additional context, etc. These detailed reader responses took the place of the generic comments that Chiser-Strater reveals many professors are prone to making. Thus, from my perspective, the "teacher-student" relationship is reinforced when comments "are not text-specific and could be interchanged, rubber-stamped, from text to text"(Chiseri-Strater 152). Once we start sounding like we're quoting a writing handbook in our commentary, we should all step back and consider which relationship we're promoting to our students.