Writing Feedback Loop

Writing experts from all around the world have discovered that the most effective method of writing improvement for any of us is to write frequently, for varied purposes, with guided feedback from a trusted revision partner.

After reflecting on this insight, learned during my studies at The Maine Writing Project (part of The National Writing Project), I will be changing my writing feedback frequency and intensity.

Frequency

Students will write frequently in my classroom, as well as outside of it. Sometimes the writing will be formal, academic, and to a specific common prompt. Other times it will be a fluency builder of free writing. Each writing assignment will have a specific purpose, even if it doesn't seem like "real writing" (free writing builds fluency, meaning that students feel increasingly more confident about their words having meaning - and thus value). The frequency will be fast, though the intensity of said feedback will look "light" to those of us who went to school before 2010.

Formal writing is essentially a two-part exercise: Craft followed by Editing Kelly Gallagher has a clear chart about what which aspects of writing are craft and which are editing. Ask your student to see a copy of this (I've given it out in class, and it is also on the Digital Downloads part of this site).

Most of the feedback that students will receive from me is of the Craft variety.

As a result of the frequency of writing I assign and receive from students, I will not be able to provide what most of us think of when we hear "feedback from a high school English teacher." The levels of feedback will fall into three areas: Bless, Address, Press (I'm adopting and adapting a protocol that I learned at The Maine Writing Project).

Bless

I will address only the craft aspects of the prompt: Did the student write to the prompt, answering its central question with all relevant requirements? Scores will be Partially Meets (70), Meets (85), and Exceeds (95-100). The Bless-level rubric is attached, below. There are six areas that I look at: Critical Analysis, Evidence & Support, Composition and Structure, Style, Mechanics, and Writing Process. Your student has a paper version of this rubric (Writing section). I've also attached a screen shot of it.

Address

When students are ready for more precise, customized feedback that might be "one problem or concern [they] want [me] to address" (Guidelines for Response Groups, National Writing Project, www.nwp.org), they will ask me a targeted "address" question. The focus of this question will depend on the writing assignment, itself, or an area of self-improvement that a student is focusing in his/her writing.

I will then provide targeted feedback on that one area, while also providing resources for the student to use in the future - so as to give the writer independence in that area of uncertainty.

I will offer students Editing feedback intensity on one writing prompt in lead-up to each Embedded Assessment. This means that the students will receive very intense Craft and Editing feedback. As a nod to Rich Kent, former Mountain Valley H.S. English teacher, now Professor of Literacy and English Education at University of Maine College of Education and Human Development - also director emeritus of The Maine Writing Project, I will call this stage of writing feedback the Press Prompt.

Students will also be tracking their "areas for improvement" all year. The idea being, of course, that they will move along a continuum of writing improvement - end result being more sophistication.

Questions? Please email me at ahernhuish@rsu73.com.