Students in my junior English class, American Dreams and Voices, recently submitted essays about their analyses of The Great Gatsby. 21/25 student essays submitted had no red flags for use of Chabots. 3/25 did. Here’s what I noticed and here are important take-aways that will lead me to ongoing conversations with students. Writing Abilities I work to see patterns of writing and abilities for each student in my class, from the start of our year, through to its finish. Each student’s writing progresses at its own pace; therefore, as we advance throughout the year, foci change, and priorities shift and evolve. So, what looks like an A for one student might not necessarily look like an A for another, and so on. And, what looks like an A at the beginning of the year for one student, might not look like an A for that same student, as the year progresses, and so on. We grow. We change. And writing expectations increase. Once we understand the basics, we progress to more advanced writing. Therefore, it’s important to notice and track student patterns for writing and abilities. Even though grading and student evaluation of essays is objective and rubric-based (content, organization, mechanics), student essay evaluations also consider where each student has been and how much that student has or has not improved based upon his previous work, current abilities, and course goals. However, when I read and evaluate individual student essays that (1) overwhelmingly exceed student writing abilities, (2) greatly surpass student content knowledge, (3) extend far beyond student ability to analyze based upon previous work or class discussions, and/or (4) are structured in ways that imply organizational discrepancies from assignments, those are red flags – and cause for a conversation. These circumstances are outside the realm of the norm and deserve deeper dives with students. I always keep these ideas in balance as I evaluate individual student essays. And here examples of comments I make on student papers that I red flag:
My comments on student papers invite us to have reflecting conversations about the work. Three weeks prior to assigning this essay, I asked students to write a simple, in-class paragraph about The Great Gatsby. It was a prelection to their major essay. The paragraph content and structure requirements were discussed, and they completed the paragraph assignment during our block class. As they wrote during class, I monitored their progress during class using Dyknow – a tech-based, class management tool. Writers turned in their assignments through OnCampus, using our Turnitin.com filter, and I graded the paragraphs. Simple enough. I used the graded paragraphs as baseline data for comparing to and contrasting with future student writings – especially as the data relates to essay grammar and mechanics. All three of the red-flagged essays overwhelmingly exceeded students’ prior writing abilities based not only on previous essays but also on the most recent baseline data from the paragraphs they composed during class under my supervision. And all three of the red-flagged essays included well thought through ideas, with quotes, that we had not previously talked about or alluded to in class. Take-Away: when evaluating student essays and considering the possibility of Chatbots, keep in mind previous student writing and class conversations about content. Use prior student artifacts as baseline data for comparing and contrasting. Smaller Assignments that Support the Larger Essay Major essays for my class are supported by sequentially chunked, smaller assignments. I structure class time to provide opportunities for writing input and practice, helping students build skills and complete the essay assignment. I offer students practical resources: outlines, references, time to draft, my writing, peer-exemplars, pair/share opportunities, and conversations. After I assigned this essay, students completed and turned in the following assignments, which helped them with their final essay:
Sequential assignments are small, manageable, and start in class. They build on previous work. They require writers to focus on specific components of their essays. And, finally, these assignments eventually serve as concrete (or not) evidence of student work building toward a final product. Therefore, when I evaluate final essays, I should be able to reference prior student work to see how they arrived at their end products. I should see commonalities among the smaller assignments and the final essay. The three student essays I red-flagged were alike, as they related to the prior student assignments. Students who authored these red-flagged essays:
Again, assignments that lead to the major essay help students practice. They also serve as evidence of student work that leads to the final product. When students fail to do this work or turn it in, or when the work they turn it does not match the final essay, those are red flags – and cause for a conversation. Take-Away: design large writing essays around smaller, chunked-out assignments that invite students to practice skills and allow teachers to make connections between what they see in the small assignments and the final essay. Personal Experiences A large part of essay assignments for my class involves personal experience examples. Students are invited to reflect on and write about how the content we discuss – how the material they write about – somehow relates to their own personal experiences or to the experiences in the world they know about. This is complex and cannot be easily replicated through a Chatbot. This exercise of integrating personal experience into essays is a stretch for high school students, but it is an important component of our class – where students perhaps for the first time in their lives are challenged to reflect on how the content we discuss impacts them or those they know. In doing so, students reflect on and write about how they will think or act in new and different ways as a direct result of our class content. Red-flag essays are those that (1) do not include personal experience examples when they are required and/or (2) show great grammatical and mechanical disparity between their personal experience example paragraphs and the other paragraphs they write. Let me provide an example of what I’m talking about. The following two sentences are from a personal experience example paragraph by a student writer:
These two sentences, within the context of the writer’s personal experience example, attempt to draw connections between the intent of Kanye’s lyrics and Gatsby, which is terrific. The two sentences show the following grammatical and mechanical errors, though: comma usage, spacing issues, informal language, and sentence issues. It’s a lot, frankly. Here is a sentence from the same writer’s other body paragraph, which is not his personal experience body paragraph, where he discusses the Buchanans from The Great Gatsby:
This example, by contrast, has no grammatical or major mechanical errors and uses words and ideas (aristocracy, privileged) that go well beyond what we discussed during class. So, while this writer uses personal experience examples, there are grammatical and mechanical errors in his examples and the sentences seem out of place with the with the rest of the essay – therefore becoming red-flags and causes for a conversation about his work. Take-Away: require students to write about how their personal experiences relate to the essay content and notice the consistency of grammar and mechanics in the paragraphs within the essay. After I red flag an essay, I do not put a grade on the essay. Instead, I put a “N/G” on it, denoting No Grade. And I might offer the following comments: Can we have a conversation about this paper?
Through my written comments and our resulting conversations, students can begin to understand how their final essays might be perceived from an evaluator – how these red-flags are occasions for conversations to raise awareness about their work and are invitations to them to do better.
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Pete MussoAssistant Principal, Curriculum & Instruction Archives
May 2022
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