Providing
feedback is a way to communicate between reader and writer. The reader is a
fresh pair of eyes for the writer, they are able to provide an unbiased opinion
of the writing piece, and give critical feedback that will help the writer make
improvements to their writing piece. The writer is being a risk taker and
asking for feedback on their writing. When given feedback from the reader, the
writer must use their feedback to make improvements to their writing piece.
Providing and receiving feedback plays an important role in writer’s craft.
(Tompkins & Jones, 2019).
One of the
six traits Tompkins & Jones (2019) discuss as part of writer’s craft is
assessment. Tompkins & Jones says that teachers can assess students using
these four different ways: student-teacher conferences, rubrics, scoring
practice, and checklists. (Tompkins & Jones, 2019) While they state that
teachers can use these to assess their students writing, I think students can
use these to self-evaluate and when providing feedback for other writers. Each
of these forms of assessing students writing can be used in multiple ways.
Rather than teacher-student conferences, they can be used as student-student
conferences. Students who are ready to share their writing with others can get
together with other students who are also ready to share their writing, and
give each other feedback on their writing pieces. While conferencing, students
could use either rubrics or checklists to monitor their writing. By having
access to these tools, writers are able to either help each other or
self-evaluate their writing. Rubrics help students know what the teacher
is looking for in the final writing piece. Students have the expectations for
the writing piece and are able to keep the expectations of their teachers in
mind which writing. Checklists are awesome! Checklists help students monitor
their writing; teachers can prepare checklists for different aspects of writing
for students to focus on. I love the idea of having the use of checklists being
a regular part of a writer’s workshop. The last form for assessing students
writing that Tompkins & Jones (2019) discuss is scoring practice. I had an
awesome experience with scoring practice. I was working with students on their
RACE writing responses. The teacher wanted us to use a rubric to evaluate the
responses. The kids were so incredibly critical of the writing
samples. It turns out that the writing samples were writing pieces from kids in
the class. This activity was eye opening to the students. Having students
practice scoring writing responses can help become better writers!
Having all
of these tools that students can use when evaluating writing is great, but the
students need to be explicitly taught how to give feedback to their peers.
(Philippakos, 2017) In order for students to be effective when giving feedback
to their peers, students must know how to do it. It is up to the teacher to
make sure that their students are prepared to be effective peer reviewers.
When I
think about my future classroom, I love the idea of having time for students to
collaborate, and work together on writing. Philippakos (2017) said, “Peer
review is based on such reciprocity, and when peers receive the feedback of
their reviewing partners, they can use it to improve their ideas and their
work.” (p. 14) Peer reviewing has the capability to be a very powerful tool in
the classroom, and it will be up to me to make sure that students and engaging
in giving feedback to their peers.
References
Philippakos,
Z. A. (2017). Giving feedback: Preparing students for peer review and
self-evaluation. The Reading Teacher,71(1), 13-22.
When were you working on RACE writing responses with your students? What other specific parallels might you draw between this experience you had with students and the principles Philippakos and Tompkins suggest?
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