Edit No More Responding to Student Writing Writing Across the Curriculum Workshop Center 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 problems you commonly encounter

Responding to Student Writing On right side of page, make a list of ways you commonly respond to these problems

An Assessment Process Continuous improvement cycle applied to responding to and evaluating student writing

Assignment ResponseEvaluate Blame Unreflective Practice

Kinds of Student Errors Process or Product tasks?

Process Tasks Critical reading Conducting research Analyzing information Drawing conclusions Writing process

Product Tasks Number of pages or words Focus, organization, development Presentation format Documentation format Style and correctness

Assignment ResponseEvaluate 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 process Support process Evaluate process

Improving Product Samples of product Review work-in-progress Evaluation criteria

Evaluation Criteria

Responding to Error Intensive Correction vs Minimal Marking

Intensive Correction Doesn’t teach students to write better Students 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 marked Student is responsible for quality of writing Not 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

Edit No More Effective Assignment Design Support Process Models Evaluation Criteria Minimal Marking