A Red Pen and a Bottle of Pepto

So far, nothing has caused me more reflection and anxiety than grading the summaries. At times I feel too harsh, and other times too lenient. I have a rough rubric in my head, and an idea of what I'm looking for from the summaries, but it's still highly subjective. Compounding that issue is the fact that the students have widely different writing styles and problems within those styles. Student X nailed the main point, but the summary is a list summary. How does that grade compare to Student Y, who identifies a sub-point as the main point, but crafts an excellent summary of the text? And what about Student Z, who is nearly excellent but completely misinterprets one of the supporting details?

I'd like to grade on completion and effort, but that will only hurt them when it is time to write the literature reviews. If I keep my standards high and force them to meet them, the lit reviews should be that much easier. Then I meet in the Teaching Writing class and start to doubt, wondering if my standards are too high.

I don't want to leave the student feeling frustrated, or get the idea that I'm impossible to please, but I don't want them to get complacent either. It's a fine line I'm trying to walk to get them to produce the best work possible. While they generally are improving and avoiding many of the errors we have discussed in class, I'm sensing that some of them are not improving as fast as they would like. One student in particular seems displeased with his grades, and I'm not sure how to get through to him that, at this point, his grades are fine and he should focus on improving his writing.