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Responding to Student Writing

Writing Across the Curriculum WorkshopCenter for Educational Practice

Promoting Reflective Practice

Context: Assessment as

Continual Improvement

Promoting Effective Learning

Evaluating student writing vs

Evaluating the success of how we are responding to student writing

Student Writing Problems

On left side of page, make a list

of student writing problemsyou commonly encounter

Responding to Student Writing

On right side of page, make a list of ways

you commonly respondto these problems

An Assessment Process

Continuous improvement cycleapplied to responding to

and evaluating student writing

Assignment

Response Evaluate

Blame

Unreflective

Practice

Kinds of Student Errors

Process or Product tasks?

Process Tasks

Critical reading Conducting researchAnalyzing informationDrawing conclusions

Writing process

Product Tasks

Number of pages or wordsFocus, organization, development

Presentation formatDocumentation formatStyle and correctness

Assignment

Response Evaluate

Revise

Reflective

Practice

Revising Assignment Design

Issues in Assignment Design

Distinguishing between what we want students to do and how we want them to communicate what

they’ve done.

Revising Assignment

Separate process and product tasks and reorder, putting process tasks

first and then product tasks second.

Improving Process

Demonstrate processSupport processEvaluate process

Improving Product

Samples of productReview work-in-progress

Evaluation criteria

Evaluation Criteria

Responding to Error

Intensive Correctionvs

Minimal Marking

Intensive Correction

Doesn’t teach students to write betterStudents copy what is edited

Teacher is responsible for quality of writing

Time-consuming

Steven Zemelman and Harvey Daniels in A Community of Writers argue,

 If we could prove that intensive correction works, that it is good formative evaluation, that students’ writing grows reliably and measurably as a result of such feedback, we could start weighing its costs in morale against gains.

But the research, the history, the feeling in our hearts--all of these sources tell us that the formative gains just aren’t there.

What intensive marking provides, unfortunately, is only discouragement--or the message that writing is a perfectionist’s game that growing, exploring writers can’t really win. (218)

Minimal Marking

Teaches students to write better Students fix what has been markedStudent is responsible for quality of

writingNot as time-consuming

Incorrect word

Incorrect sentence

Insertion

Reversal

Delete

Redundancy

Yes!

Wow!

Upper case/lower case

Join

Provide more support

Awkward phrasing

Combine ideas for concision

Minimal Marking

New Paragraph

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Effective Assignment DesignSupport Process

ModelsEvaluation CriteriaMinimal Marking