Why give feedback on papers?
We give feedback comments on student papers because we believe it is necessary for us to offer assistance when students are composing compositions. Comments create a motive for students to improve on their next draft. Without effective feedback comments on student papers, students assume their writing has communicated their meaning and perceive no need for revision for the next draft.
Or if you grade a paper with simply a low grade without giving comments, students have no idea why they got that low grade especially if you just put that C or D on the paper without explanation or without a rubric. When I give a low grade, I put comments next to the criteria set out on the writing rubric so students know what they did wrong.
Why grade in shifts?
I grade in shifts. First, I check for essay structure, then punctuation. With each successive round of papers, I grade for different writing skill sets so as not to overwhelm both student and teacher with too many comments.
When I grade papers, the first round of papers, I grade for essay structure. If students make mistakes like not having a thesis statement, not having a complete introduction, or if their body paragraphs do not match their thesis, whether or not their body paragraphs have topic sentences, or if their paragraphs are too long or too short.
The first round of papers I grade for global issues such as thesis, structure, evidence, tone, audience and purpose. If the student is writing an academic paper, I require the student to write in third person case for a more professional tone. Students need to learn that when you write a professional paper, the audience is a professional audience so the tone has to be objective to make the paper credible.
I grade for global issues first and this kind of revision I have covered before in previous blog posts, I call internal revision. The reason I check for internal revision first is that I want students to first learn how to write papers that make sense.
I also want students to learn how to present evidence that back up the main idea and I want students to learn how to stick to that main idea before emphasizing other revision needs.
I then hand back to the first round of papers, and I go over all the internal revision issues the class has. If the class had problems with thesis, evidence, structure, tone, audience or purpose, I go over these elements of writing one by one in class.
I don't talk about grammar, punctuation mistakes yet until the students hand in their second round of writing. Usually, in the second round of papers, students make no essay structure mistakes anymore.
So, I now check for local issues such as diction, syntax, grammatical structure, paragraph structure, sentence structure, transitional words, punctuation, mechanics, sentence fragments and spelling.
For each student, I don't correct every single grammar mistake on this second round of papers because correcting every single mistake would overwhelm the student and take up too much time for faculty grading especially if the school has a 3 to 5 day deadline for all essay grading.
So what I do in the second round of papers, is correct the 3 major local issue mistakes that students make in these second round of papers.
Then, when I have class, I go over the local issues mistakes the entire class made and so we go over the diction, syntax, grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes all students make.
By the time I get to the third round of papers, I receive papers with very few essay structure mistakes and very few grammar mistakes. Usually the third round of papers takes the least amount of time to grade since students have by this time mastered the core concepts of the writing class.
Why do selective grading?
When I do this kind of selective grading, I make more effective use of my time and students can see their progress from draft to draft or from paper to paper. When we compare student papers from their first draft to their third draft, or compare student papers from assignment1 to assignment3, students are delighted with the progress they have made, which increases student morale in class and students then gain confidence in their writing. I love seeing students enjoy writing because of my class!
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