A response to Shelley Stagg Peterson’s article “How can feedback to students on their writing function as a pedagogical practice?”

Assessment. Not a fun word for any teacher anywhere. Another word for it could be “judgement.” This is, essentially, what teachers do when they assess. They judge their students’ work.

Stagg’s article proposes two aims of feedback: criterion-based and reader-based. The former is for grading purposes, the second is to give students an idea about what their writing communicates. The expository essay is therefore easier to grade because it is almost entirely criterion-based. It is when it comes to grading creative work that English teachers find themselves truly challenged.

In thinking about these two aims, I have come up with some ideas on how to create a rubric for creative work. A good way to create rubrics, I think, is to get students involved in the process; this way, students feel less like they are being imposed upon by criteria from an authority figure.

Among things a teacher can use for a creative rubric:

1. Voice: does the work have a strong sense of voice or character? Is the voice consistent throughout the work, and if it isn’t, then is the shift explainable?

2. Use of literary elements: anything from similes, metaphors to hyperbole, euphemism, etc. Does the student create his/her work with aesthetics in mind?

3. Effect on reader: is the reader pulled into the world created by the student writer? What is communicated to the reader, and how strong is this effect?

4. Additional flair/originality: is there anything else about the writing that is praise-worthy (ie. theme, point of view, characterization, etc)? Why is it effective?

Such hard decisions to make around assessment! The most important part is to make assessment feel like an encouragement to improve, rather than a dismissal of not being good enough.