A Guide to Responding to Student’s Writing

Whether we like it or not, a necessary role of an educator is to evaluate his or her students.  Receiving feedback, whether it is positive or negative, is a vital role in the development of a student’s writing. However, too many times in education classes future educators are taught how and what to teach, but not necessarily how to evaluate. The evaluation process is often an overlooked aspect of the teaching curriculum.  Without receiving proper feedback, our students will never be able to reach their full potential as writers.

In Grave’s Chapter 13- Writing and Reading, the author highlights some suggestions that I view as important in determining how I will evaluate my student’s writing.  In an attempt to remember these valuable suggestions and share them with you, I will paraphrase them below:

Be positive- By emphasizing what works rather than focusing on what doesn’t, hopefully the student will repeat their positive behaviors and still have the confidence to continue writing.

Respond to only some of what students write and to only a few matters at a time- During some point in our academic careers, we have all had our fair share of teachers who over use the “red ink.”  Receiving too much feedback can be overwhelming and result in either too much confidence or too low confidence.  Students need focused in on only a few improvements they can make at one time in order to maximize their growth as writers.

Comment on works in progress and give feedback during brief conferences- Giving students the opportunity to correct and improve upon their work before they turn it in gives them an incentive to keep on improving.  Few students take a look and apply their feedback from a final paper. But if you give feedback in the middle of a project, hopefully students will apply it to their final draft.

Deal with content first and mechanics later- If the content is there, the mechanics will follow.  Too often, students get too caught up on grammar or format that they lose sight of the primary goal of quality content.  If you can get students on the right track content wise, you can always teach grammar later on.