One of the important jobs that a teacher must do is to assess the students’ work, to check whether they’ve really learned and how much they’ve learned. What criteria could we use to assess the students’ writings? What should we see in their writings? As for course designers, what artifacts should we teachers examine to give students a grade?
We’ve already known about the Six Traits to evaluate a writing piece, however, among ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice and convention, which one should we give the most credits? Should we focus more on the students’ ideas and their thinking processes, or should we be picky on their use of language? Isn’t organization important as well? What about the ESL learners? What kind of accommodations should we make for them while grading their papers?
While we are to give students their final grades at the end of the semester, what percentage of A should we be giving? Won’t people think it’s too easy to get an A if too many students got it? However, will students got discouraged thus lost their interest in writing if they only receive a B, or even a C? Should we emphasize more on the effort that our students have been paid, or on the quality of the papers that they’ve produced? What else should we examine besides one or two finalized papers when we consider grading?
There is also an important issue: while we are doing writing conference, or when the students are doing peer writing response, how can we make sure that we really helped, and motivate our students to be willing to write more, and to share with each other; instead of being scared, and even discouraged from writing and sharing? How can a teacher make sure that each one of the small group is really building a supportive community that foster real learning and scaffolded help?
These are tough questions. In terms of grading I think that developing a rubric could be helpful for myself as well as for students, that way they kind of know what I will be looking for when I grade their papers. But I do think it's important to take effort into account and therefore it can never be a static system, rather it should adapt to the class and the students. I know it gets really tricky, but it seems to me that, at least to a certain extent, grading should be used as just one more tool of teaching, and when viewed in that context, it makes sense to give a grade that the student both earned and that will also encourage them to keep writing and improving their work.
ReplyDeleteAs to the last issue you raise, I think that my experiences tutoring these last few months have prepared me to deal with this more than anything else. And while this may sound naive (I'm naive in my comment here, cynical in my comment on Andrea's blog, go figure) I think that the most important element in motivating and encouraging our student is a sincere effort to do just that.