Working on it one fix at a time

Thanks, Shaun, for your post on grading and getting tougher; also about blaming yourself for student mistakes. I’ve taken a new view on grading after reading the articles in the AB text and I’m making the same kinds of changes. As I’ve started talking to my students about the lit review, I’ve realized I have to change the way I’m grading. David mentioned the rubric he’s tentatively working from and I realized I needed to have a better idea of how I’m going to grade the lit review and how I’m going to prepare the students for it. In thinking about that, I’ve stopped leaving a lot of comments and started saying: “Look in Writing Matters for help organizing paragraphs, then revise and resubmit.” As I’ve started grading in a way that I hope will prepare students for the lit review, I’ve had some students challenge me on their grades. Working through these, I think the person in the room who most needs to be prepared for the lit review is me. I showed my classes the section in Writing Matters about outlining a paper. In both classes, students asked if I was going to have them submit an outline next week. I considered saying “yes” just because I know they won’t do it if they don’t have to but I also realize I have to fight the urge to coddle and babysit. In last year’s blog, Logan made a comment about when he realized that he couldn’t “save them all.” I’m beginning to understand how strong an urge that is and also question if I’ve done everything I can. The major questions my students are coming up with have to do with how to elaborate on a topic so that it lasts for 10 pages. They are having trouble imagining how a person could possibly write that much, especially when they think 2 pages is “killer.” On Tuesday I picked a topic and we drew lines and circles all over the board connecting authors and ideas to the keyword and each other. Tomorrow I’m going to take a few minutes to do a practice outline of a thesis and a few main ideas underneath it. I’m concerned about just how much practices and examples to work on in class. I want to see how tomorrow goes with a mini-outline. If we can do it in 10-15 minutes and it appears to be productive, then I think I’ll do another next week. Organizing so many interconnected ideas and authors is another concern they have. I’m cracking down on introductions, conclusions, and topic sentences in their connections papers, so hopefully that will provide practice for structure.