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last.updated 11.25.07

 


Evaluating Texts & Assessing Students

Purpose

For better or for worse, all teachers are put in the position where they have to assign an evaluation to students' work. As English instructors, this task becomes particularly tricky because the evaluations that we develop for student writing gets labeled as "subjective." In other words, the grade you assign a piece of writing may be different from the grade another teacher with the same qualifications will assign the same piece of writing. Therefore, each teacher has to be able to justify the grades they assign.

But evaluating student writing does not have to be just about the final high stakes grade. If done well, the teaching of writing can be designed to give students multiple opportunities to submit works (i.e., various types of prewriting) for review before they receive a final evaluation. These type of strategies also use the students' writing as an opportunity for individual writing instruction. In today's class, we will talk about the best strategies for reviewing and evaluating student work.


Before Class

Activity–Evaluating a Paper

You will be assigned one of three roles:

  • teacher looking at a rough draft to be revised for a final draft
  • teacher looking at the final draft of an early paper (a rough draft preceded)
  • teacher looking at the final draft of the final paper (a rough draft preceded)

Based upon the role that you have been assigned, write marginal and end comments on the papers. You will have the first fifteen minutes of class. I may collect this for a process evaluation.

Be prepared to explain and justify your response while we discuss the different ways teachers read a paper.

Discussion–Soven, Alsup & Bush, and Dornan et al.

  • We will discuss the following terms from Dornan et al. (p. 183-4):
    • Responding: writing, commenting on papers at any stage of the writing process; focus is mostly on communication with the writer; responders unavoidably makes subjective decisions about the way the text should be. (I also call this reviewing)
    • Assessing: collecting data with the purpose of describing what is going on; assessor will often use predetermined criteria to collect data; should be descriptive, but is often judgmental (e.g., SOLs)
    • Evaluating: judgments based upon on explicit or implicit criteria; comparing a piece to standards (e.g., a rubric).
    • Grading: judgmental and summative; usually confined to A-F marks
  • What questions do you have about the readings?
  • What is the difference between formative and summative evaluation? When is each most appropriate to practice? What is the most effective way of practicing each?
  • What are some effective strategies for peer review? How will you teach it? How will students practice it? In other words, how will they be asked to respond to their peer's work?
  • What are some strategies for incorporating conferences into the writing process? When will they occur? Who will they be with? Why?
  • In the state of Virginia, the SOLs are a fact of teaching. How do you prepare students for high stakes tests and prepare them to be writers for other situations beyond your classroom?

Presentations–Group 4

We will be the audience for teaching demonstrations from Group 4 (Felicia, Steve, Tia, Tiffany).