What a helpful session Steve's presentation was about constructive criticism. How many times have we all, as teachers, spent endless hours grading papers, marking insightful comments on students' papers, rewriting weak paragraphs to give them some direction, only to find them looking at the grade on the top and then stuffing the work into their black hole of a binder. Really? That's all I get for staying up late and getting up early to grade their work?
But perhaps the problem wasn't with them being ungrateful. How important had I made that feedback? If all I did was grade each paper and then hand it back telling them when the next draft was due, haven't I just wasted both my time and theirs?
Using examples from students' work on the screen as a teachable moment is definitely something that I will employ, especially with my beginning journalism class. Students will be more attentive to see if their work makes the problem examples or the good work examples. I can also point out common errors that students made that might make the grading/editing process easier because I don't have to keep writing the same comments over and over and over.
Thanks Steve for modeling a great tool that I will definitely be adding to my bag of tricks.
Now if I had only taken a picture of it to add to my blog post.
Mindy Gilman
Blue Valley North High School
Overland Park, Kan.
Mindy,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree on using student examples. I've done this before in my English classes but usually I'm just reading them aloud or give a copy (with permission) to a couple of students. I haven't done this much with my journalism students in the practice stage, but will for sure put it into practice next year! Thanks for the idea, Steve!
Angela Carter
Winfield High School
Winfield, Kan.
It was clear that Steve had worked hard not only to read and respond to our writing but to use it in the next day's session. Having the feedback come that fast helped make it meaningful. Unfortunately, doesn't that mean a lot of late nights for us?
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