“Writing
in isolation without lively response is like other solitary activities…They do
not get much better” –Dan Kirby
I never
thought about why people respond to actions or products that others make, but
it is built in us to provide some sort of response. The thing about grading
writing in the classroom is that most teachers respond with corrections rather
than responses, which doesn’t help the writer get any better. This just keeps
them right where they are because they know their grade, but do not know how to
make it better.
I say most teachers and I do not
include myself because I have a tendency to ignore grammar and spelling. If the
paper is a good paper, the writer gets a good grade. I think it’s because I was
scared as a student in grade school when all of my papers came back bleeding
because of all my grammar errors and my grade only made it worse. I often
wondered what my teachers thought of it and if they liked it even if it was an
awful paper. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I had an
awesome teacher who told us from the get go, “when you get your papers back,
you will see plenty of red, but find your grade to be higher than you expect.”
He made sure we noticed all of our errors so we could fix them, but he actually
read what we had written. He and I would also talk about my papers and he would
talk about other kids’ papers in class. He actually read our work! That changed
my outlook on grading papers forever. And curiously enough, most of my
teachers after that have given me great feedback on the things I write.
I make it an effort to respond with
genuine responses to my students writing, but what if there is no time to
respond genuinely to everyone’s writing? What are some things you do to respond
genuinely to student writing and still have enough time to sleep and other necessities?
So far, I have assigned shorter writing assignments, even essays are no more than 2-3 pages in length so that I can read through all of them. It takes me a while to grade formal writing because I take my time to grade the errors that need fixing, but I also write a personal response in the margins or make notes for writing improvement. I usually opt to lose sleep to give the students my best effort.
ReplyDeleteReply from Chris:
ReplyDeleteI completely understand how you feel and I agree with you. It’s important to truly read their writing and give some kind of thoughtful response. I just finished reading about 70 papers as a part of the Graduation Vacation project my seniors were doing. It was not easy because there were other elements of the project to grade as well. On top of that, my CT put a little pressure on me to get them done as soon as I could so that the students would know where they stand for graduation. It was not easy, but I managed to give some thoughtful remarks. Although I think we all have to find our own way of doing this and not killing ourselves in the process.