Blog 5: Feedback

When I look at all of the stages of writer’s workshop Tompkins tell us, I would have to say that one of my favorites in the publishing stage. I love being able to take pride in the work that I created and share it with others. I love the idea of taking my writing piece and publishing it either online as a blog or bind it into a small book. One of my favorite activities in elementary school is when we made a class book out of all the pieces that we wrote throughout the year.

Even though I love sharing my published pieces, I get really nervous about publishing them. I struggle with choosing that right word to express my idea or making the sentence flow smooth enough. I will always give my papers to at least one person to read before I submit it. I love getting feedback from my friends or family on how I can make my writing stronger. By having another set of eyes reading the piece, they can see things that I might have missed. 

I used to be scared to read the feedback that I would get on paper. I would look at what I got for a grade and ignore any other writing. I always thought that the more writing you had on your paper as feedback, the more you did wrong. Over the years, I have learned that the amount of feedback you receive does not determine your grade. I have learned that not all the feedback teachers write on papers is bad or about things that you need to change, some of the feedback might be about things that they liked. While student teaching, my fourth graders wrote poems about themselves using similes and metaphors. Along with giving them grades, I was able to give the students positive feedback on what ideas I liked. By giving each on a small personal note about their work, the students could tell that I took the time to read and think about their poems.

Along with implementing writer’s workshop into my classroom, I am going to implement time where students can exchange writing pieces and get feedback from their peers. Getting feedback from their peers will allow the students to be able to edit their writing before they hand it in. Philippakos says ”There are number of positive outcomes from the application of this approach, but perhaps the most important one is that the reciprocal aspect of peer review can potentially affect students awareness of the readers needs as the writer can anticipate the audience’s reaction” (Philippakos, 2017, p.14).  When I give my paper to a friend to peer review, I look at their face as they read to see if they would react the same way while reading certain sections.

Peer review is a great tool and strategy to use in the classroom but it has to be taught the right way so that the students value the time. Students need to be explicitly taught what they should be doing when they peer review a piece. Philippakos adds “Often, students do not value their partner’s comments as much as they would value their teacher’s comments, and students are not always able to identify problems in their peers’ papers” (Philippakos, 2017, p. 14). It is common for students to get in their group and read over their pieces but not know how to respond. Once they are done reading, they will get sidetracked and start having a conversation that is not related to anybody’s writing. In fact, I can admit that I have been guilty of this as well. By having a rubric or checklist that gives the students some suggestions to look for and talk about in the papers, they will stay focused.

In order for the students to know what they need to be doing and to make sure they have everything that you are looking for, they need a rubric to look at. Having rubric will let them know how you are going to grade their work so they can make sure they have included everything. I use to hate creating rubrics for my students because I struggled with deciding how to set it up. When I was younger I would only look at what the criteria was to get a perfect score and not read the rest of the rubric. I knew that I wanted to get a good score so I focused on what I had to do to get that.  

Feedback: The first secret john hattie reveled. The Australian society for evidence based teaching turning research into practical advice. [web page] http://www.evidencebasedteaching.org.au/crash-course-evidence-based-teaching/how-to-give-effective-feedback-to-your-students/

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019). Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Merrill.

Pilippakos, Z.A. (2017).  Giving feedback:  Preparing students for peer review and self-evaluation.  The Reading Teacher, 71(1), 13-22.  DOI: 10.1102/trtr.1568