I sat with T---- in the classroom and re-read her essay with her. We looked over the rubric together, and then I explained to her score.
“Your claim starts here,” I said, and read the sentence to her. “ And it continues here.” I read the second sentence.
“That’s good,” I said, “but your examples only show the first part."
I made her listen to me while I read to her the quotes that she provided in the body of her essay, and her explanations of the quotes.
When I was done, she turned to me and said, “I didn’t mean to make my claim that second part. All that I need to do is take that out.”
“But T-----,” I said, “That second part is what makes your claim a claim. Without the point you make about how loss makes people do things they would not imagine doing otherwise, there’s nothing but an observation that loss happens. Your claim is stronger with that second part because it shows you’ve noticed something about what motivates the characters, and it presents an idea other readers might not have observed.”
I hope I said it that clearly.
She looked puzzled.
“Your essay won’t be stronger just because you say less,” I said.
What was I doing giving comments on a final draft of an essay to my students during class?
In his address to the secondary section at this year’s opening of the NCTE convention, Jim Burke talked compared the changes digital technology has brought to his teaching to a journey down the rabbit hole as Alice. We tumble into an unfamiliar space and find that they knowledge and experience that guides us through our lives has only partially prepared us for the new challenges we encounter. One of his observations seemed to me to be the irony he identified in the tension between the fact that students working on keyboards and online seem to engage more with the reading and writing tasks we give them, and yet when writing and reading and the transmission of texts take place in digital spaces, we lose the face to face experiences that so many people -- teachers, students, and former students in all walks of life -- consider to be a huge benefit of classrooms.
This is the third year I have required students to hand their work in online using Turnitin. I like the program. I can load rubrics, check for plagiarism, and most importantly, use voice comments to give feedback. Having taught for 16 years, I never felt like students paid much attention to the written comments I gave them on their papers. Now I can sit on my couch, or in a coffee shop, or outside in the backyard, read their papers and talk my comments into the microphone of my district provided tablet, believing that students are happier to hear me explain the strengths and weaknesses of their writing, as if I were there in person.
The problem is, Turnitin also tells me who reviewed their comments. Most of my students, I noticed, simply wait until the grades for their essays are posted in the online grade book.
One purpose of writing is to take part in an extended human conversation. Handing papers in online seems to have removed all human interaction from the process, even the conversation about the writing itself. So I’ve decided we’re going to use class time because if my feedback is how I’m teaching kids to improve their writing, then as time consuming as it may be, face to face feedback matters.
As teachers, we may be going down the rabbit hole every time we consider changing our practice. I certainly feel as if I have lost control of who I am and how I understand the world in which I live by choosing to expand the my teaching beyond the walls the the classroom and into digital spaces. The joy for me, as a learner, is realizing that the skills that help me negotiate my way through everyday challenges are skills that help me find myself and my students in this world: Taking risks, examining results, and sharing my understanding of those results with others in face to face conversations, then reflecting on the meanings and ideas those conversations explore, answer, and leave unanswered.
What I realize too, from this, is how much company I have down here.
T-----’s preferred solution to the understanding that she had said more than she intended in her claim was to imagine that she could, by deleting her insight, make a stronger essay. The move into the digital world for me is similar to the move students make -- that I ask them to make -- in going from thinking to transferring thought into writing. They feel exposed, and that exposure changes them.
So we are in this together.
“Your claim starts here,” I said, and read the sentence to her. “ And it continues here.” I read the second sentence.
“That’s good,” I said, “but your examples only show the first part."
I made her listen to me while I read to her the quotes that she provided in the body of her essay, and her explanations of the quotes.
When I was done, she turned to me and said, “I didn’t mean to make my claim that second part. All that I need to do is take that out.”
“But T-----,” I said, “That second part is what makes your claim a claim. Without the point you make about how loss makes people do things they would not imagine doing otherwise, there’s nothing but an observation that loss happens. Your claim is stronger with that second part because it shows you’ve noticed something about what motivates the characters, and it presents an idea other readers might not have observed.”
I hope I said it that clearly.
She looked puzzled.
“Your essay won’t be stronger just because you say less,” I said.
What was I doing giving comments on a final draft of an essay to my students during class?
In his address to the secondary section at this year’s opening of the NCTE convention, Jim Burke talked compared the changes digital technology has brought to his teaching to a journey down the rabbit hole as Alice. We tumble into an unfamiliar space and find that they knowledge and experience that guides us through our lives has only partially prepared us for the new challenges we encounter. One of his observations seemed to me to be the irony he identified in the tension between the fact that students working on keyboards and online seem to engage more with the reading and writing tasks we give them, and yet when writing and reading and the transmission of texts take place in digital spaces, we lose the face to face experiences that so many people -- teachers, students, and former students in all walks of life -- consider to be a huge benefit of classrooms.
This is the third year I have required students to hand their work in online using Turnitin. I like the program. I can load rubrics, check for plagiarism, and most importantly, use voice comments to give feedback. Having taught for 16 years, I never felt like students paid much attention to the written comments I gave them on their papers. Now I can sit on my couch, or in a coffee shop, or outside in the backyard, read their papers and talk my comments into the microphone of my district provided tablet, believing that students are happier to hear me explain the strengths and weaknesses of their writing, as if I were there in person.
The problem is, Turnitin also tells me who reviewed their comments. Most of my students, I noticed, simply wait until the grades for their essays are posted in the online grade book.
One purpose of writing is to take part in an extended human conversation. Handing papers in online seems to have removed all human interaction from the process, even the conversation about the writing itself. So I’ve decided we’re going to use class time because if my feedback is how I’m teaching kids to improve their writing, then as time consuming as it may be, face to face feedback matters.
As teachers, we may be going down the rabbit hole every time we consider changing our practice. I certainly feel as if I have lost control of who I am and how I understand the world in which I live by choosing to expand the my teaching beyond the walls the the classroom and into digital spaces. The joy for me, as a learner, is realizing that the skills that help me negotiate my way through everyday challenges are skills that help me find myself and my students in this world: Taking risks, examining results, and sharing my understanding of those results with others in face to face conversations, then reflecting on the meanings and ideas those conversations explore, answer, and leave unanswered.
What I realize too, from this, is how much company I have down here.
T-----’s preferred solution to the understanding that she had said more than she intended in her claim was to imagine that she could, by deleting her insight, make a stronger essay. The move into the digital world for me is similar to the move students make -- that I ask them to make -- in going from thinking to transferring thought into writing. They feel exposed, and that exposure changes them.
So we are in this together.