Sommers' Responding to Student Writing

As I read this article, I could easily place myself in the shoes of high school students, anxiously awaiting the return of their first drafts from their teachers. All too often after patiently waiting for a paper, I have received commentary that includes very little suggestions on content and purpose. Rather, grammatical errors are circled and sentence structure is noted. As author Nancy Sommers states in her article, Responding to Student Writing, “we want to know if our writing has communicated our intended meaning and, if not, what questions or discrepancies our readers see that we writers, are blind to” (p373). I realize that providing commentary on a student’s writing is quite times consuming, however, students need appropriate and helpful commentaries in order to further develop their writing skills.

Sommers states that “without comments from their teachers or from their peers, student writers will revise ain a consistently narrow and predicatbale way” (p373). I hate to admit but I know there have been (very few!) times when I have only written a draft of a paper, turned it in for critiquing, and turned in the same paper without making any changes. The most unfortunate part about this sometimes my grade on the same exact paper has improved!

Just as the text suggests, I have seen much improvement in my pieces of writing that have had a direct, genuine revision of the piece as a whole. Comments such as these help me (and other students) to not take comments too literally, ultimately allowing me to be detailed and organized rather than narrow and dull.

Not to suck up to the liking of Professor Martin, but I very much appreciate the commentary she has provided me on my writing. I have visited her several times to edit and revise pieces of writing and it is easy to see that her commenting style emulates what the author dictates as good writing commentary and revision.

Rubrics: Holistic vs. Analytic

When creating the elementary writing assignment for class Tuesday, I found difficulty in developing a quality rubric. I had an idea in mind for the activity and was proud of the assignment I created. Any teacher hopes that upon completing the assigned writing task, all students will have a concrete understanding of the assignment’s concepts and objectives; however, this can be a rarity in the classroom.

Rubrics, both holistic and analytical, help convey to the student whether or not they have mastered the important ideas and concepts within the assignment. In order to create a rubric that delivers this crucial information, a teacher must first identify the purpose and objectives of the assignment. If an assessment of the overall product is preferred, a holistic rubric is more appropriate. Holistic rubrics are used when “performance tasks require students to create some sort of response and where there is no definitive correct answer” (Mertler). Comparatively, analytical rubrics are used when the assignment requires a focused response in performance tasks where there may be one or two acceptable responses (Mertler). This type of rubric also involves many scores accumulated to one total sum, representing assessment on a multidimensional level (Mertler).

As a student, I have always appreciated rubrics. Rubrics present a system of guidelines that help me direct my written work, almost serving as a checklist. Rubrics also help me determine what the teacher is looking for. I feel an analytic grading style is more effective in upper elementary and secondary grade levels; a holistic grading style is more effective for lower elementary. In the lower elementary grades, students are learning basic concepts that serve as the foundation of their knowledge. Students in the upper elementary grades have the ability to focus on more details, and teachers can view their work in a more analytic manner.

That is not to say that either type of rubric should be specifically dedicated to one grade level. However, I’m interested to see which of the two rubrics mentioned appear to be more effective in the classroom?