teaching with writing
Grading Writing
Pamela Flash,
Associate Director, Center for Writing
Grading
final drafts of students' work satisfies institutional demands and also
helps students measure their growth as writers against a group of reasonable
expectations. Complications can arise for instructors when they grade
student work, however. They may be concerned, for example, about the impact
grades will have on students' motivation. Also, when final drafts indicate
that students understood an assignment differently from the ways instructors
intended them to understand it, that instructor might be forced to debate
the ethics of docking the student, or changing grading criteria to accommodate
a less-than-clear assignment. Also, late at night, exhausted graders might
get the distinct feeling that the standards they used in the beginning
of the evening changed as they worked their way down the pile of drafts.
The strategies
listed below can help instructors
navigate these kinds of concerns.
Recommended
Grading Strategies
- Grading
rubrics (or grids) ensure that you are sticking to your criteria. Create
rubrics using announced criteria and consider including them on assignment
sheets. When students are apprised of grading criteria from the start, they
can be more involved in the process of working toward success.
- Providing
successful samples of past students' writing will give current students
a clearer idea of what you're after. That said, it is important to
provide a variety of models so that students don't feel that
they are being asked to follow the models as recipes. Once you have
obtained permission from students to use their writing in future classes, you are
free to put student-written passages on overheads, in course packets,
or on handouts.
- "Effort"
is not a useful criterion. University of Minnesota grading standards
are based on achievement. Although many first-year students may expect
to be rewarded for "trying hard" on a writing assignment,
in the post-secondary environment, effort is expected, not graded.
If these rubrics are to work, students whose writing meets the criteria
for an "A" paper should be rewarded that grade whether they
"tried hard," made radical revisions, or not.
- Asking
students to create a "cover
letter" or "revision
memo" can save you from telling them what they already know,
and can provide you with valuable information. When students identify
what they think of as the strongest and weakest aspects of their work,
and perhaps assess full drafts using the same rubric you plan to use,
you are in position to agree or disagree with their assessments and
to check their understanding of your criteria.
- Recognizing
that formative (constructive) and summative (evaluative) responses
are often incompatible, writing instructors find it most effective
to offer them in alternating stages. Intervening early in the process
with brief responses may help students to establish ideas they care
about, and devise manageable projects. Note also that commenting on
grammatical mistakes when you still hope for large-scale revisions
presents student writers with mixed messages. Are they to look at
surface features or fundamental content? Why correct a passage that
may end up being cut?
- By assigning
(and grading) numerous short assignments, instructors offer students
opportunities to improve, and underscore the idea that writing
is an integral part of learning subject matter (rather than an "add-on").
Complaints can understandably result when only one, heavily-weighted
paper is assigned in a class.
- Instructors
who teach similar courses may find periodic grade-norming sessions helpful.
- If grammar
and mechanics are heavily weighted on a grading rubric, and students
are indicating shared patterns of difficulty, course instructors should
consider addressing these concerns with the entire group.
Other
Resources
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