Bean’s chapter 14 about rubrics was interesting in the fact that I felt he really illustrated what you had to give up by creating one rubric over another. You could go for the grand specific rubric and change it each time, but in doing so Bean said that he had to give up reading drafts because there just wasn’t time. In my class, I do a preview draft (half the length of the paper) which I read to make sure the students are on the right track, a peer review in class (usually using a worksheet to complete for global and local issues), a revision that I grade, and then finally I offer a revision. Students aren’t required to revise, but it only improves their grade if they do. This is a lot of time allocation on revision, but I think it’s pertinent to put my time there. Additionally, I found that I tend to have a mixture of rubric styles. There rubrics correlate to the main holistic goals of the assignment, but there are also some task specific goals as well. These goals sometimes bleed into the next rubric (for example organization and details). My students are able to see improvement over the semester. Rubrics take me an extraordinary amount of time to make and test, but I think in the long run they really aid students’ growth. On that same note, I also realize that my students have time allocation/management, and if I give them a 32-page rubric, they aren’t going to look at it. I try to keep it to a 7(usually less) x 3 grid. I feel like this takes a lot of my students and my time, but I feel like it’s justified at the end of the semester.
Another activity that may help with growth extraordinary but takes up a great deal of time was discussed in Fleckenstein’s piece. It particularly drew my attention because of her depth of activity. Her article is a mere six pages of an activity for peer review that only analyzes one paragraph. Yes, I think this is an incredibly helpful idea, but really how practical is it? I understand that she was stating that this activity was for the introductory paragraph of the paper to help guide the rest of the piece, but it can’t be applied to a whole piece because of time constraints, or else we would be having peer review for a week for each project. I think this might be nice to start a conversation with, but I’m just very weary of using it as a go-to activity. In doing this activity, I think you give several opportunities up. For example, if you were to apply this to the whole paper, you give up two additional days of teaching/activities/etc. If you use this just for one class period, you still give up having a whole-paper peer review as well.
We discussed in class how peer review can be beneficial or it can fall really flat. I’ve had both happen in classes I’ve taught and classes I’ve been a part of. One of the methods I use to combat this is a worksheet that is very similar to the rubric. It asks open-ended questions or requires the students to do something to the paper. Then they discuss amongst one another about the papers, and finally they reflect on how well their peer reviewers did. Since peer reviewing is tied to a grade, I’ve found that students are more likely to work harder, especially since their peers will evaluate them. On the last peer review for the Literary Analysis, we did a coloring activity for details. I wanted my students to visually see where the vivid, sensory details were in their paper because so often they get stuck “telling” the details. That’s what they’ve been taught, and they haven’t much experience with experimenting creatively. When students get back their paper with very little green (color for details), it helps them understand and plan for revision. I also make students mark main events in red because there should be only one, but often I found students stating several events and the red (even though I dislike using the color) seeing areas of where they need to focus/areas they need to eliminate to keep on track for the purpose/goals of literary narrative. This peer review takes the whole time usually, and it gives students just about 10 minutes to discuss with their group about their findings. So, I’m giving up some of that conversation, and I’m not sure if that is beneficial or not.
I believe part of being a reflective teacher is trying these multiple angles and seeing what works best, so it will be nice to try Bean and Fleckenstein’s ideas out and see what works best for the class.
Katie Rieger, Portfolio 