I had a hard time with sloppy papers from students I like and well-written papers from students I don’t like. Along with that, I struggled with students who are in class and participate but haven’t turned anything in so their grade is terrible—I had to fight the desire to give them a grade they didn’t deserve because they are helpful in class or because they are among the smarter students in class. While I was writing my tip write-up I toyed with the idea of trying a blind grading system. Maybe for the final lit review I’ll take the papers from one of my classes, take their names off of them, and try grading them that way. It will be cumbersome to organize them so I can connect the papers with the names again when I’m done, but I think it will be a very different grading experience and I’m curious to see how it goes. In grading the midterm, I learned that I should not decide on a grade for any students until I have read through all of the papers. I tend to get too excited about small successes in the early papers and too critical of small errors when I get to the end of the stack. For the final, I’d like to read through, mark them, make a note to myself about what sort of score a paper might receive, and then after I’ve read them all I’ll go back through and decide on a grade. Hopefully that will even out the difference between papers I read at the top of the stack and papers I read at the bottom of the stack.

Prompt 6: Lessons Learned?

What have you learned from grading the literature reviews? What problems did you encounter? How do you think you'll try to solve them in the next one?

I had a student email me to tell me how much she liked workshopping because it had given her a chance to see what others were doing and she got some good ideas from others’ papers. Also, a had a few students come up to me after class and ask questions about things they’d seen in other papers or things that had been written on theirs…I like that this made them question and showed them what their peers are doing (and what level their peers are at). I think I need to focus the tasks a little more. As I mentioned n class, I gave them three tasks: find places that needs to be cut, find places that need to be expanded, find cool ideas. I think they talked about everything but those tasks. I’ll see how my first class seems to do with the workshopping tasks for Thursday. I wrote my own question/prompts for Tuesday and I’m going to stick with the very simple for Thursday: What needs to be cut? What needs to be moved? What needs to be expanded? Also since we’ve talked a lot about “quote sandwiches” (46) in my classes (my students love that it takes up space without looking like you’re taking up space), I’m considering asking them to look at each others quotes and comment on whether the quote is introduced, then explained (and if the explanation matches what is said in the quote). That will be too much to ask, I realize, but I’m musing over ideas for doing something to that effect. Inspiration usually hits between 2 and 3 a.m., so we’ll see… I had some doubts about workshopping. As a student, I rarely had helpful comments during workshopping (until I got into the graduate program). I was hesitant to put my students through the exercise. However, it seems that some students have had a good experience. I think I like having them read at least 3 papers per class—for the final, I may try to stretch it to 4, then hopefully it will balance out with some helpful comments and some unhelpful ones. I’ve also considered trying to group students—perhaps 4 in a group and then just pass the papers left/right in the group until everyone has read everyone elses’ (or something like that). That will also help manipulate the groups, which I like doing. Looking ahead, I’d like to have students workshop one of their summaries in the next part of the semester—perhaps bring 3-4 copies of the article and their summary, then have students read it as a group and discuss the main idea and supporting points. I’m wondering if this might help students as they are trying to analysis the sources they find.

Prompt: Workshopping

What's your experience with workshopping/peer review? What did you like?  What did you not like?  How do you hope make it as useful as possible for your students?

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.

What answer do you want?

I had a particularly frustrating conversation with a student today.  She was very upset because I was "not being clear on what I wanted."  She had "no idea what the heck" I wanted.  So we went through and looked at her assignments.  She wrote that Zinczenco argued that we should all take responsibility for our own health, just like Zinczenco did when he joined the military and got in shape.  She wrote that Warner's main point was that we need to stand up to big government just like Sarah Palin and Glen Beck were doing.  She wrote that Obama's main point was that the NAACP has a rich history and needs to continue to work for a better future.  She was missing the main point, but she thought I was simply being unclear about what I wanted.  "If you wanted me to say that Zinczenco's argues that people are victims of the fast-food industry, why didn't you tell me that is what you wanted?"  "If you wanted me to say that Warner argues for a cultural change, why didn't you say that?"  I felt like a math teacher being asked, "if the answer to the problem is seven, why didn't you tell us that seven was the answer you wanted us to get?" Any help? We talked for about forty five minutes, going through each of her assignments, but in the end she was feeling better, but I was actually more frustrated than ever.

As to Dr. Roger's question, I think the students are transitioning well.  Their connections sections are getting more detailed.  I think we could start to explore grouping the articles in different ways.  Most of the students still write their connections by comparing the current article to each of the other articles in the order we read them.  Maybe we could do an outline or practice review.

So far I am having them brainstorm in their in-class writing about how they would order their articles.  We tried to draw a scale on board with personal responsibility on one end and government involvement on the other.  The scale didn't work well, and we soon abandoned it for more of a spider plot.  I was really happy that they saw that a single line wouldn't work.

Prompt 4: Making the Turn

We need to begin transitioning from "getting the point" and "how would so-and-so respond" to the more complex task of assembling the first literature review.

What kinds of weaknesses are you seeing that will need to be addressed between now and then?  How are you attempting to deal address them?