Scoring, Assessing, and Providing Feedback in Secondary Writers Workshop

In this post, I want to review my past practices in scoring writing, my newer approach to feedback in workshop, and then articulate some challenges. These blogs are as much for my reflection as they are (hopefully) a guide to some of you who may be facing similar issues or planning to jump into a workshop approach.

HOW I USED TO SCORE WRITING

Before I began using workshops, my classroom was a bit more traditional: whole-group instruction, engaging lessons (sometimes with technology), whole-class novels, and writing assessments with brainstorming, planning guides, and time to write. For any writing assessment, we had students work from previous short-writes and referred them to models we had read in class of that writing style. We would always have planning guides due before we asked students to start writing, and after glancing over them, we’d give whole-class notes on segments of planning to review. For some shorter, paragraph-length assignments, we would leave comments on planning guides. In-class time to write was a time when I (or my co-teacher and I) could mingle about the room and provide assistance and some feedback before work was due.

Then, once we had hard copies of final assessments, we’d attach a five-category rubric (with a conversation table, because we stated that a 3 out of 4 is what was expected, but giving a 75% would be unfair), leave standard notes/feedback on grammar, structure, or ideas, and pass the paper back. We did not have students revise papers, as they took us longer to grade than we’d like, and we were already off to the next assignment.

I loved the five categories, as well as the conversion table to a letter grade. We could track student writing across the five traits as this rubric was used for every piece. We had students combine their major pieces into a portfolio at the end of the semester and reflect on their work and the written feedback. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but we were definitely writing!

FEEDBACK AND ASSESSMENT IN WORKSHOP

Then, in December 2017, I began to transition to a readers-writers workshop. I was incessantly scoring papers, and I thought a workshop would help to also reduce at-home grading and writing feedback that students weren’t using. Rather than spending hours writing notes that were not being used, I wanted workshop to provide students with real-time feedback (feedforward) as they wrote.

When I first began at the end of our first semester (we’re on an intensified block schedule), I did not fully engage with conferencing. At that point in the semester, I was putting out fires, preparing for the end-of-course state exam, and addressing some behavioral concerns (as well as figuring out the workshop thing—check out my earlier blogs for an earlier iteration of workshop). At the start of the second semester, I introduced the procedures and dove into meeting with students each day and leaving a summary of our conversation on a student’s Google Doc Work Log.

I’d jump around the room, meet with as many students as I could (sometimes I’d ask, “Who has a question?”, and other times I’d just sit next to a student). This is tiring work, but having meaningful conversations about a concept (my students have been writing paragraph-length analyses on setting, characterization, objectivity, etc.) has been so helpful. I could clarify concepts or make stylistic suggestions.

When it came time to grade, I would drop a holistic rubric (in an attempt to move to a more standards-based approach—more on this in future blogs) into the student’s Google Doc and check off their grade without any typed feedback. This rubric is inspired by Alan Sitomer’s (@alansitomer) Mastering Short-Response Writing: Claim It! Cite It! Cement It! (2016).

Feedback came in conversation, and we began encouraging (but not insisting) students to revise to have their paper rescored. Since we were no longer copyediting, revisions became actual revisions and reworkings, not just making the changes the teacher told you to.

Once students began receiving about three scored papers back, however, I began to hold longer conferences with them to discuss past work (both what worked and what may not have worked as well). This has led me to identify some challenges to my new model.

SOME CHALLENGES

Now that I am having extended conversations with students about writing, I’ve run into some time management issues.

I still begin (and sporadically interject) each forty-five minute workshop session with “Who has a question or wants to run something by me?” However, once I answer those who explicitly have questions, I begin conferring with students one-on-one. I have begun by going through my class alphabetically (to more easily keep track of who I’ve seen). I note that we “Conferenced” in their daily work log next to the date, and leave any notes there (or under which learning target on the same document to look under for more specific feedback per concept/target).

These conversations can last five to ten minutes. When I have a co-teacher in the room, they can continue working one-on-one with students. However, now that we will always have more writing to review in class, these conferences are more meaningful—we can troubleshoot and I can personally encourage each student to revise. We can see patterns in writing and structures and clarify misconceptions over concepts (objectivity versus subjectivity or third limited versus third objective point of view, for examples). This has limited me to fully conference with anywhere between two to five students a block.

While that may not be a terrible number (if I can reach five), it does slow down how often I am providing feedback to each student.

As I score each assignment, I have the urge to leave typed feedback. However, I am working to better budget my time outside of school (don’t worry, I still put in countless extra hours, but I’d like to reduce them, especially when I take doctoral classes or direct a play). I feel that if I leave at least one comment, it can provide a student some direction (especially if they begin looking at my feedback now that we’re in workshop) and also provide a record of my thoughts as I scored the paper.

To this end, I want to attach a list of comments to my holistic rubric that I can check off for student reference. These comments may include:

·         Be more specific in your claim by stating what your conclusions are.

·         You provide evidence from the text, but you are not yet fully explaining how the evidence connects to and supports your claim.

·         Use a semi-colon to link two full sentences.

·         Be mindful to include a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) after a comma when writing a compound sentence.

·         Etc….

Being able to check one (or two) of these items would give students something else to consider other than their holistic score. That way, if I am conferencing or working with another student, that student can at least review the concept or have a more specific question to ask me later rather than just, “How can I make this better?”

MOVING FORWARD

I’ve begin constructing a manageable list of topics to check off for students and I hope that when I implement it, I can still quickly assess papers. The meaningful feedback is happening when I confer with students face-to-face. This process is so exciting, and I hope some of you have been able to join me in your respective classrooms!