Think about how far negative/constructive comments have gotten you. All those times you pointed out subject-verb agreement errors, tense errors, then vs. than, fragments and run ons, error number five on your list of frequently displayed errors, writing infraction number seventeen. Do you see student writing improve because of that?

I haven’t.

Commenting Types

If you’re at all like me, you’ve gone through the various response styles: circling all occurrences, focusing on a single error type, correcting only the first page, highlighting nothing and letting the rubric scores do the talking, writing a summative note at the end, fitting notes into the margin, revising papers throughout the semester, and the list goes on. Have you seen the benefits? Do you note a drop in errors because of your diligent feedback? From even the most thoughtful input you’ve provided, do you witness an increase in “good stuff” as a result? Are you making fewer and fewer of those remarks on every paper throughout the year? By the final paper, are you faced with pieces of writing that no longer need the exact same comments you left on the first paper?

For me… nope.

Ideally

In an ideal world, we’d deliver ongoing feedback as students write, helping them move through the various steps of the writing process in pursuit of an ever-improving final draft. There are lots of ways we’d improve the process of writing and evaluation. Step into most classrooms, though, and I bet you’ll see a model much like mine: working on defining the writing style, reading examples, practicing some of the genre techniques, peer editing, conferencing, then turning in a final draft for evaluation. It’s on to the next one after that. And I’m still struggling to get six pieces of formal writing assigned and graded each year.

If students look at comments and don’t take any action to improve those errors, think of all the time wasted. Let’s think of another way to approach our jobs during the evaluation, then.

“I like…”

Perhaps it’s better to let students come to you to find out what they did wrong rather than to find out what they did right. A paper full of the errors committed doesn’t give a writer much hope. Even if you’re there for a conference after school. Even if you have ton of things that you’re proud of in that writing and you’re ready to gush as soon as that writer comes to see you.

What if we let rubric scores tell them where they need to improve (if they are interested) and we just focus our comments on what they need to keep doing in the future? If I tell what I enjoy about the writing, even if it’s only a single sentence, would writers would be more likely to use feedback then? Could the next essay be an attempt to exhibit that same characteristic I pointed out? Would that writer view my class differently?

I set a goal to write at least one “I like” sentence and one mention of “your readers” on the last essay. Mission accomplished. And I managed to get all of those papers back to students within a week of the due date, another goal of mine for at least one paper this semester. One batch I returned the weekend after they handed it in: Thursday collection day, Monday distribution day. The grading went very quickly when I was only trying to put two sentences on each paper.

A victim of even the most modest habit, I then started to do the same thing on the paper I’m grading now without even thinking. It occurred to me that I enjoy reading papers more when I’m looking for what they’ve done well.

Negative observations are my tendency so I didn’t think I could keep this up. I see how things can be disastrous far more often than how they can be amazing. But I’ve quickly become good at pointing out something positive in even the worst piece of writing I come across. My mental bank of traits to discuss as defaults if nothing stands out is growing nearly every day. You can do this, too.

Extension

Want to turn this into a bit of research? Want to set up tests and controls next year? Want to give the same prompts to different groups and give different types of feedback to see what works, both in terms of students writing and teacher satisfaction?

Leave me a comment!

Content

Each class’s focus on a theme seemed to work OK. Nothing fantastic, but it added a certain cohesion that I can build on next year since I carved a big part of that out already. We always knew that everything we were reading was read for a certain view of our theme and I like the idea of that a lot. I’m just not sure of the reality of how to make it more meaningful to the students. Also, book groups are a great idea if I structure them a bit differently. Groups of students, all reading the same book together, resulted in more students liking what they were (supposed to be) reading and commenting about that. Some negatives there, too, but it’s a nice development for the outside reading requirement.

Interactions

It’s the negative interactions that stick out and haunt me. Students probably think I say what I say and do what I do, never giving it another thought. But I agonize over ever word I’ve said, every action I’ve taken. Even if I think I was right, if a student feels I’ve done something wrong, a small part of me agrees because I should never make a student feel that way in the first place. I had a bunch of great students this year and a lot of positive connections with the overwhelming majority of my students. I keep telling myself this to make up for the few negative ones. The thing is, those negative ones are ones I keep having year after year. Oh, sure, the names and details change, but I keep having that one kid that really should get along with me just fine and, for some reason, doesn’t. I keep having that kid whose skills don’t budge at all the whole year. I keep having that student who loved reading at the beginning of the year and who hardly read a single book independently by second semester. I keep having these archetypes and I haven’t figured out a way to deal with them. Plus, I just need to pay more attention to the people I share fifty-three minutes at a time with. I get caught up in the content and ignore chances for interactions entirely too often.

So how about you? Can you tell me one good thing that happened in the 2010-2011 school year, one thing you’ll definitely do again next year? And can you match that with one thing you’ll do everything to avoid? The comments, as always, are open.

They seemed intrigued and willing. Now I need to provide the context for them to engage in that discussion. Debate is still what I’m thinking here.

I gave my English 3 students outlines for keeping track of notes on the different sections of the novel. Those notes come in to me and I grade them for completeness. They help us walk through class presentations and take notes on what we all have to say. When I put this all in the frame of needing to write an essay when we get back from Winter Break, I think several perked up and saw the need for all of this paperwork. We still are presenting instead of discussing the novel, but this is a step in the right direction.

They seemed a bit more goal oriented in their group work today. Two-hundred pages later (the end of the novel) is too long to wait for the payoff for keeping notes and up to date on the reading. I need to make something happen sooner that rewards the notes and writing and reading.

Handout

This outline for notes is based on our Essential Questions, Section Paragraphs, and In-class Discussion questions, handouts that I’ve already given the students and posted in yesterday’s entry.

• OFOTCN 83-128 notes outline (Excel, PDF)

In both of my classes right now, we’re into a certain way of running things and it’s not working. But the way I’m running things involved a lot of planning and I see where this could lead us and it’s where I want us to go. This ain’t the route to get there though, not exactly like this. I think there are some things I can do, though. But I wonder what you think.

Handouts

• F451: Discussion Prompt 1 (Word, PDF)
• F451: Essential Questions (Word, PDF)
• OFOTCN: Essential Questions (Word, PDF)
• OFOTCN: Section Paragraphs (Word, PDF)
• OFOTCN: In-class Discussion (Word, PDF)

Happenings And Observations

On the one hand, it seems like I’ve focused too much in English 2 on an idea that my sophomores are not gravitating toward. They can gravitate toward it, but I don’t think I’ve provided enough scaffolding for us to have a proper discussion about it. We’re reading Fahrenheit 451 right now and I want them to feel strongly about the issues there. I either want them to stand up and say, “No! Books should not be burned, dang it!” or I want them to yell out, “It’s about stinkin’ time that books go away! They are such a waste of time!”

What I’m getting instead are largely glances of supreme disinterest. Those “yeah, so what?” looks. They can do better than that, I just need to figure out how to push them there.

The first group discussion prompt I gave asked them to talk about whether or not the firemen in the novel are being successful. The prompt went on to ask about why that society has decided to get rid of “conflicting theory and thought.” The written results of that discussion left me less than inspired. I think we could arrange a debate on the issue and get the blood flowing a bit more. There’s also a spot in the novel where Montag basically asks of his wife the same thing I’m asking of my students: “How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

On the other hand, I’m asking my English 3 students to take in too many things, perhaps. We are reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest right now and I’ve broken the book into eight sections. For each section, there is a set of Essential Questions and a Section Paragraph to be completed as homework. Then we have a set of In-class Discussion questions to be completed, you guessed it, in class. They meet in groups and first discuss the Essential Questions for that reading, move on to their Section Paragraphs, and finally tackle the In-class Discussion questions together as a group. Then they report out on all of that stuff.

Now that I write it, that really doesn’t sound like a lot, but when most students come in with neither the Essential Questions answered nor the Section Paragraph written, they suddenly are striving to complete all of that work in the amount of time I give them to simply answer a question or two as a group.

What I’m getting instead are groups largely just sitting around talking about other stuff. They’ve got so much to do that they either don’t start or spend 5 minutes simply trying to decide which thing to tackle first.

So how do I broaden the focus in one class to be large enough to include everyone and narrow the focus in another class to give students concrete objectives to complete? I can do this. Open things up during my early classes and sift things out in my later classes. Anyone else having the case of two conflicting extremes at the same time?

So when Literal.ly appeared today, I thought, “Ooo! Neato!” Yes, this is another one to add to the ranks of several other sites I want to use in the classroom… but can’t figure out how. Literal.ly looks more promising, though, because it seems an easier jump to the classroom. I have some ideas of how I’d use a few of these images for Do First writing (short writing at the beginning of a period). I might even have a way to turn some of these into impromptu presentations. What do you see?