I remember the depressing ritual of hauling home a giant bag full of papers that I needed to grade day after day for weeks. Students would write multiple page documents that would take F-O-R-E-V-E-R to get through. So much so that sometimes I didn’t even have the willpower to open the bag. I’d set up treats for myself- grade five and you get THIS!- just to help me try to get through the massive stack. Work-life balance didn’t exist. It was painful for all involved, and I always worried that those on the bottom of the pile got less effective feedback than those at the top.
But then I learned something.
THEY WERE ALL GETTING LESS EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK.
After countless hours grading their work (and the return of said papers weeks after they had been submitted), my students didn’t. even. read. them. UGH. Of course they were basically irrelevant by the time I returned them, but still! How could they not care to read all the notes I scribbled in the margins? Why didn’t they use this feedback to improve their next writing assignment? Why did they keep making the same mistakes??! It was a vicious cycle of inefficiency and frustration. There had to be a better way.
And then, I found it! The better way! Students got MEANINGFUL feedback and I got my evenings and weekends back. It was ah-mazing. And now I want to share it with you.
So what changed?
My writing conferences.
Conferring with students 1:1 about their work completely revolutionized my writing instruction and improved student outcomes like crazy. Here’s how I did it. I used a writing workshop for all writing instruction, which meant that my students had time to work independently on their writing every day. While they wrote, I met with them 1:1 or in small groups to work on skills that I’d identified as weak areas in their work. In this way, I became familiar with my students as individuals and could target each one exactly where s/he was in the learning progression and help move her/him forward.
I kept a notebook with a list of all the writing standards for the year. I had multiple places to add in grades for each one using a standards based grading system. This allowed me to really track how my students were doing individually on each standard and the skills that went along with it. I taught a particular standard to the whole class in the minilesson, then students would work on their individual drafts to employ the skills I’d taught thus far. I then used conferences to see how each student did with the standards and skills I’d covered. I documented any time a student demonstrated mastery of a standard or skill, and I used conferences to reteach anything not yet mastered.
When students finished their drafts (we called it publishing), I used conference time to actually grade their papers using the rubric we’d referenced throughout my lessons and earlier conferences. Because I’d already met with them about their work, I typically was pretty familiar with the areas in which they were already solid and could look to see if they’d now demonstrated mastery of the remaining strands. I filled out the rubric with them, showing them where they’d demonstrated mastery or exactly why their work was not yet proficient in a particular area. This made for longer conferences, but the growth they demonstrated throughout the year made it completely worth it. I could clear up any misconceptions or misunderstandings right away, and students could leave the conference armed with new knowledge to apply immediately. It typically took me about a week to meet with each student, so the feedback was much more immediate, and it was almost impossible to ignore while sitting face to face with me at a table.
Why I love this method:
The students enjoyed the 1:1 time, the results were much more immediate, and they applied what I taught them to their work with greater fidelity.
Less work for me actually made for greater gains for them.
What could be better?
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