We've written a bit about giving feedback before, I believe, so I guess today I'll focus on how I gave feedback during my TPA. I had given the students a pre-assessment assignment the week before beginning our writing unit. I didn't give them a specific grade on this assignment, or even hand them back to students. Instead, I responded to the class as a whole in one of my mini lessons during the TPA. We talked about some of the challenges students had experienced and some of the area I had noticed for improvement.
One thing I really like about the writer's workshop model is that the longer writing time gives me more of a chance to walk around the room and read students' work with them right there. I can ask them questions about their thinking and give them ideas about things to think about in terms of where they will go next. Generally, I prefer to respond to student work in this format--they have it out on their desk and I can walk around and write a short comment as I read it. I think it's more interesting for them because we can have a quick conversation about it and it's much faster/easier for me than collecting everyone's work, correcting and passing back.
I am still analyzing students' final draft copies. I haven't given them a 'grade' and I don't think that I will. I am using the same checklist that I had them use with their peer reviewing, so they have had them opportunity to check one another's work and check their own with the checklist. Since they are so proud of their work, I'm wary of giving them a grade on it. I might just use the rubric to inform my own next steps.
A few comments your post brought up for me:
ReplyDelete1. It's smart to review a class's worth of work (as you did w/ the pre-assessment) and design a minilesson that looks at the strengths and needs of the group as a whole.
2. Did you notice any patterns in the response you offered your students as you did your walk-around with quick check-ins as they worked? Were your comments more general (how's it going?), related to editing ("watch how you're spelling beautiful") or focused on revision ("How are you going start your paragraph so it catches a reader's attention?") Or did you let the writer lead? With one-on-one conferences, I always struggled to make sure I wasn't talking too much. Eventually I figured out a system: I'd wait for students to ask to see me, then when I sat with him/her, my first question was, "What do you need help with?" A simple question, but it forced writers to need me for a specific reason (Not "will you read this and tell me if you like it?")
3. I think you're smart not to put a grade on students' final work, but are you going to give them some narrative feedback about how well their writing met the criteria for descriptive passages?