Yes, that's where I must put myself this weekend now that last week's work crunch for my own classes is past. Sigh. Letting the grading go during that crunch was absolutely necessary, so I have no regrets per se, but these papers -- oh, these papers. I've been working really hard to teach my students how to formulate arguments and sustain them throughout an extended piece of writing, but it seems they need a great deal more practice. What I'm reading from them, even after an in-class workshop and mandatory revision, is not up to snuff yet.
Positive feedback is so important to provide while you're trying to help students see where they need to direct their attention. I do my best to point out at least one thing each student has done well when I make comments on papers -- I'm running a bit thin on enthusiasm at this point in the semester, though! Frequent breaks, frequent breaks; they're all that will sustain me now. I find that after about six mediocre papers (and this is putting it generously), I can't find positive things to say on the seventh.
Well, this break is over. And I'm off to get D from the airport, which will hopefully clear my head enough for another round of grading before bedtime.
12 comments:
your student s seem to need a course in punctuation as well.... good grief.
Yes, HGG, it's sad but true. I have some students that don't use apostrophes. At all. I'm really stymied about whether to spend class time on actual lessons on that stuff -- weren't they supposed to have that somewhat mastered by the end of high school?
It is SO difficult sometimes to find positive and enthusiastic things to say on some papers. For me, that's why grading takes so long.
I grade all work on my computer in MSWord. Even when I taught on campus, I had students email papers so I could grade in Word. I have a very long list of positive comments in a Word doc so I can copy/paste little snippets at the end of each paragraph of writing.
So my grading process involved noting writing corrections throughout the paper (not making corrections, but just noting types of errors in general) and then content comments in between every 2-4 paragraphs. And at the end of each paragraph, I insert a short positive comment from my list.
It helps me a lot to read something a student wrote and then glance down my list of comments to see which one fits the best. Sometimes I just can't think of something nice to say but reading through my list of "nice" comments always brings something to mind that would work.
When I taught on campus, I had students email papers because it's just easier for me to comment electronically than handwriting. I'd highlight writing errors and then note what type of error but I didn't correct or edit papers. Then I have a word document with two pages of content comments, mostly positive, so that as I read each paragraph, if I can't find something enthusiastic to say, I can glance through my list and usually find a little something nice :-)
That's how I balance the criticism with positive comments here and there. Sometimes when a paper is just awful, it's really hard to find something nice to say!!
A back-up list of positive comments sounds like it would be helpful, Sherlock. I think I already have one running in my head -- I just wish there were more positive things to comment on in the papers! At least, more than what we started with at the beginning of the semester. Some of my students don't seem to learn from their mistakes.
I definitely need to do a better job of balancing the constructive with the positive. It can be very hard.
Oh, and hang in there!
Almost there, GEW! I've got the hand-written comments on all but two papers. Have to put in electronic versions (summing up the major reason for the grade) on about half.
It's funny hearing from the other side, as it were (with me always awaiting my marked essays from my tutor). I can't imagine anything more depressing than a pile of bad English essays.
Actually, what's depressing is the looks on my students' faces when they get their papers back. They try hard, many of them, but there are some fundamental skills they haven't grasped yet, and we just can't spend time on those things at this level. I encourage (implore?) them to come to office hours to discuss the things they're having trouble with for that very reason, but the ones that need the help most don't make the time. Can't do anything about that, of course.
They say you can't care if the student doesn't care, but then how is that constructive in the long run? There's a gap, I guess, between what I'd like to invest emotionally in the job and what is realistic to invest without driving myself into a constant funk.
nice pens.
Oh yes, pens that make you want to write are ESSENTIAL when grading.
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