Sorting Student Work

Ecomp 6102

Week 8

Rob Slater

Why do you think some work is better than others? Be as specific as possible. What were you saying to yourself as you placed a piece of work in one pile versus another?
Since I am sorting student biographical essays to be placed in their portfolios I am fairly firm on my expectations. These were "Final" Drafts. For some this means three or four drafts with significant improvement. For others it means they completed the required second draft with minimal improvement and/or effort. My initial thoughts and comments related to my perception of the amount of effort they had put in. Secondarily, I noted when a student had failed to correct items that had been pointed out in previous drafts.
Create a LIST of reasons why you sorted each work sample as you did. You have sorted this work in order to come up with the criteria for a high quality performance. Now list the criteria you used.
The first criterion I used was ease of reading. Does the writing flow. After that I looked for the level of grammar and spelling errors. One or less per page is a top-level paper. The third criterion was content and the fourth was appearance. I worked at creating a continuum of best to worst. After doing that I attempted to find a significant line between the three levels. Interestingly enough, what I got out resembled the traditional bell curve. It was very easy to see what a well-written paper was and what a poorly written paper was. Most of the papers fell into the middle section.
    • Readability
    • Grammar and spelling errors [Conventions]
    • Content
    • Appearance
Look at your list of criteria again. Do you have lots of general statements like, "communicates well", or "Understood the problem"? If these very general statements were used with students, would they understand what you meant? Re-write your list describing specifically what the students DID that helped you decide which pile to put their work in.
  • Readability: When read aloud the writing flows easily from word to word, sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. There are no places where the reader must go back and reread or guess what it is the writer is trying to say.
  • Grammar and spelling errors [Conventions]. Grammar and Spelling errors are few. Paper has been carefully edited. There are no sentence fragments, run-ons or improper punctuation.
  • Content. The paper contains enough information for its length. It is not padded or abbreviated. The chosen subjects are of interest to the reader.
  • Appearance. The font size and margins are appropriate. The layout is regular. Paragraphs are indented with no line breaks or non-indented with line breaks.
    		•
    When might you use Holistic Scoring and when is it most appropriate to analyze student work for strengths and weaknesses?
    It seems to me that Holistic Scoring is appropriate to use for daily work where it is important to find out if the student comprehends the big picture. A more in depth analysis should be used for assignments that are a greater portion of the grade or for a final assessment.
    What groupings of traits or characteristics were you able to identify in your students' work samples?

    Some traits were:
     --an inability to successfully paragraph. For some there was no paragraphing. For others there were paragraphs with no transitions.
     --a repetition of the same spelling or grammar errors.
     --strong "voice" characteristics. Most of the students are successful in writing with color and personality.
     --an inability to come to a good conclusion at the end of the paper. This tendancy is less pronounced at this level of draft. The first drafts were peppered with poor closing paragraphs of the "Thank you for reading my essay" type.
    Did you find that you used very negative words and phrases to describe the lowest or weakest pile? Were your descriptions of the lowest pile statements of what the student could NOT do? If so, how would your students respond - what would their reaction be? How could you modify negative statements so that they were merely descriptive of a lower level of development along a continuum?
    For the most part my descriptions were of what the student did not do. There is no implication that they could not do it. My comments continued to be suggestions of what could be done to improve the writing. I could, were I using a rubric, have described some success in certain categories, rather than pointing out the specific errors or omissions individually.
    Would sorting work samples be a useful activity for your students?
    I think sorting samples would be useful for my students because it would allow them to see the levels of competence in the different areas of expectations. I used some of that in peer editing this year, but did not take it to the level of having students create the basis for the rubric.

    Return To Portfolio Index Page