Inside Out book review chapter 14

Inside Out, Strategies for Teaching Writing

D. Kirby, D.L. Kirby, T. Liner

Chapter 14 – Grading and Evaluating

We all agree that grading and evaluating student progress is one of toughest jobs in teaching.  Deciding how evaluation and grading can help a student is part of the problem.

The book presents some General Principles for Grading Writing which I found very helpful.

·      Grading should be deemphasized – this works only if you actually deemphasize grades in your class by finding a set of strategies to put such rhetoric into practice

·      Drafts should not be graded – withhold grades until students engage in a number of drafts and then submit their pick for evaluation

·      Develop grading criteria with students – It shows what you want as well as develops their own critical sense and evaluative judgement.

·      Students should be involved as graders and evaluators – Students grade one another’s papers.  You don’t necessarily have to record the grades given, but it helps them become better readers of one another’s papers.

·      Grade process as well as product – Allows a grading strategy that rewards students for careful preparation, extensive revision, and practice.  Portfolios can be a component of this, and receive an grade of equal weight to the final product.

·      Focus your grading – Limit your criteria.  Focus on what you’ve been working on.  Add additional criteria to grading scale slowly.

·      Give ideas, inventiveness, and content an important weight in your grading scale  - Suggest use of a rubric that values both content and inventiveness.

As teachers think about grading they need to engage in self-evaluation.  Keep your primary emphases in the forefront.  Ask yourself what your grading methods will develop in your students?  Avoid the curse of mindlessness in grading. Develop a number of grading alternatives and test drive different ones.

Some additional approches discussed were:

·      Nongrading Approach  (A noble endeaver, not one usually open to public school teachers.  As an alternative you can have a number of assignments that are not graded.  These practice exercises lead to a published, graded product.) 

·      A performance System (do the assignment get the grade)

·       Holistic Grading Strategies (guided procedure for sorting or ranking work)

·      Roundtable grading (students read papers, establish criteria, and evaluate)

·       Impression Marking (mark papers on some general feeling about papers effectiveness)

·       Holistic Guide for Evaluating Student Work (use list of characteristics of good writing to guide grade)

·       Portfolios

1.     Performance (indicate a students point of mastery in a learning/writing process)

2.     Showcase (gathers and highlights a students best work)

3.     Process (Include the full range of pieces during the process of a specific assignment)

·      Analytic Scales (precise and carefully articulated grading scales that identify specific features and assign those features with specific points – Diederich Scale)

·       Checkpoints (teacher created, content specific)

·       Evaluation by Peers (Elbow’s Center of Gravity, Cooperative Grading, Round Robins, Psychological Boost)

·       Self Evaluation

I was surprised that the 6 traits scale is not recommended.  It was the standard for so long.   I am still unsure about the holistic grading strategy. I like the idea that all papers are graded consistently, and can see this would be more manageable as no errors or marginal notes are made.  I guess that the idea is the notes have been made in the drafts – still think it would be difficult not to make comments on students work.