Shirley Clarke's "Formative Assessment in the Secondary Classroom" (2005) has been on my "to read" list for a couple years. I've finally gotten around to reading it. Not too long ago I read this section about "Comment Only Marking" that fits in very well with our departmental conversations about making feedback to students as good (and as efficient) as it can be. I thought that it might be useful to share now that we're moving into 2nd quarter.
Here's how you do it:
Phase 1: At the very beginning of a new work/assignment/paper, explain to the class that you will be changing the way you will mark their written work in order to help them make more progress in the future.
Phase 2: Read all of a student's work through very carefully before making any mark on the paper. Next, highlight three places in the writing where the student best met the learning intention(s) of the activity (where the student met with some success on the rubric or scoring guide). Then indicate with a star where an improvement can be made to the original work. Use your judgment about the one area on the rubric that would be best for this student.
Phase 3: Draw an arrow to a suitable space near the start and write a "close the gap" (yes, Shirley is British) prompt to support the student in making an improvement to their work. This prompt can be provided in a number of ways:
a) reminder prompt is simply a rather unhelpful reiteration of the learning objective, for example: ("give more detail about the impact of Henry VIII's reign" or "write a more interesting ending to this story")
b) scaffolded prompt involves the teacher giving examples and ideas as words or phrases. For example: ("Give more detail. For instance: what else did he change? what kinds of people were affected by this change? in what ways did the affect them? or could you make your story more interesting? what did the character learn from his experience? what advice might he give to future travellers?)
c) the example prompt involves the teacher giving exact models of what the student might write. The student is invited to choose one of these or to then write their own example.
Phase 4: Ensure that you provide time in class to enable students to read and respond to the 'close the gap' comment. This could also provide a suitable time to follow up individual needs with specific students 'face to face.' Finally, remember to comment on their improvement at the first available opportunity.
According to Clarke, you don't share a letter grade. You don't give 1 good thing and 3 things to work on. And, if at all possible, you provide the feedback verbally. (She says that later, when students are nearer mastery, you might want to give kids more "negative" feedback, but start this way.)
I just collected papers on Friday and finished
grading them Sunday. I have been meeting with each student these past
couple days and am doing this: provide exactly 3 areas that the student
has shown some success and 1 area for growth with a specific request for a
change. I have selected "good example paragraphs" from the
papers that I've graded to share as "example prompts" that will
provide examples for various KINDS of paragraphs (intro, summary,
response/critique, synthesis, conclusion) that I'm sharing with students. Everyone leaves with their paper, a “cover
sheet” of the 3+1, and an example photocopied paragraph. I look each student in the eye and say, “you’ve
done some really good work here. I think
that reworking this section will make a real difference. Work hard.”
I’m trying to make them blush and feel good about what their current
efforts and that they can do even better with some specific hard work.
No comments:
Post a Comment