Things That Work: Presenting Grades

Answering the "What Now" Question
One of the most frustrating things about responding and grading papers is the sense often based in reality -- that students have not read, nor understood, the comments I took hours (so it seems sometimes) to write.

To counteract this, I devised a series of assignments which ask the students to respond to my comments in writing. It works more or less like this: Students are asked:

(1) to read my comments;
(2) to do a close reading of them (they have to actually quote their paper and my comments;
(3) to interpret them in their own words;
(4) and to write up a plan for using those comments in the writing of their next paper

One class day after they receive their graded paper back, they give it back to me, along with this response to my comments. I in turn read those responses, and I write short comments agreeing with their interpretations or making any corrective moves I might need to make. For example, one woman said that I hadn't made any comments about her textual work at all, so she didn't know what to do for her next paper; however, when I re-read the comments, I had in fact made five comments about her need for close reading some passages, and other comments which praised her for doing some good close readings.

It is important to return the response to the responses before the next final paper is due; I returned them the next class day after receiving them. It takes about an hour for 20 papers.

The advantage of this is that I learn who is and who isn't understanding what I'm saying, and I also learn what works as a good and useful comment, both in a general sense and in an individualized sense for a particular student. It also pushes the idea of learning how to read more than one kind of text in an academic situation.

--Katherine Lynes