1. In response to Belanoff’s paper, I wanted to ask: How would
you come up with standards with your students? And do you think they’ll be more
or less likely to understand and abide by them if you do create them together?
Finally, how much trust do you put in students to create the system they’ll be
evaluated on?
2. Thinking about Daiker’s paper, I tend to find it way easier
to write constructive criticism than to write constructive praise. Mostly my
praise sounds broad, brief, or ingenuine. Constructive praise is not something I’ve
often seen (except in the form of “this is good, but…”) or been trained in, and
I feel like when I do write it, it comes off as forced. Does anyone have any
strategies for writing useful praise that sounds genuine? Especially for
students new to college writing, who are bound to produce (overall) some
sup-par writing.
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteIn my internship the instructor (Mat Wenzel) and his students made the rubric for evaluating papers together. He asked them if they wanted a specific rubric. They were unanimous in their desire for clear boundaries and guidelines. They all took a minute to write down what they each thought the top three qualities of a good paper. From there, they read them aloud,and he sorted through them in Word on the projector screen. As he typed he talked about each one and ranked them. I could see the students appreciated the collaborative nature of it, and were more relieved to have explicit communication about what exactly was most important. And most of their thoughts on what was most important was right in line with the instructor's thoughts. So that was interesting to see.