Goal-setting approaches to student writing
I wrote a paper on the results that happened after implementing this program at two high schools. I give this presentation to inspire teachers to consider alternative grading methods and increase the number of writing assignments they require of their students. I have found that over the course of the year my students can double, if not triple the amount of words they put on a page in one class period. The next trick is to partner with an English teacher, who can help them take the quantity they are now proficient in and turn it into quality writing. I have found that this level of competition really motivates students. This work has borrowed heavily from Chip Brady and the excellent curriculum at The DBQ Project, who provided inspiring professional development and encouraged me along the way.
Peer review with tech
Many high quality studies influenced my decision to start evaluating student writing quantitatively, De La Paz, S. (2005), De La Paz, S., & Felton, M. (2010), Monte-Sano (2008, 2011) and (Monte-Sano & De La Paz, 2012). I strongly feel that History/Social Science departments should report descriptive statistics about their students’ writing in order to derive a common set of writing expectations by age and grade level. Further, recent advances in automated essay scoring may make it possible for students to receive feedback from a computer before approaching the teacher to partner in improving the writing together. See this Lightside Labs Revision Assistant video and feel free to expand on this annotated bibliography tracking the major players in the automated essay scoring market. K12 teachers should provide input to the companies developing these products and the lefty-Liberal in me hopes all of these products will eventually be open source, like the PaperRater product that my students recently used on a speech project.
Peer review without tech
Most of the work I reference here came from O’Toole (2013), Brookhart (2013), and Bardine and Fulton (2008). Learning by evaluation has long been used by English teachers, it is time for history teachers to embrace the practice. If the CCSS are truly able to get us off the breadth vs. depth Historical coverage treadmill, History/Social Studies teachers are going to need tools and strategies to assess the writing they assigned. Having students read each others writing gives them much needed context. Before I wrote my dissertation, I read dozens of others on the same subject. History teachers will need to learn how to use mentor texts and provide general feedback instead of making margin notations on every paper they receive. English teachers have used peer rubrics and criteria charts to help students with their writing. It is time for history teachers to start incorporating those tools into their classrooms.
CCSS Presentation Resources
Free Plagiarism Tools
http://elearningindustry.com/top-10-free-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-teachers
Robo-Readers are Better than Human Readers
http://hechingerreport.org/content/robo-readers-arent-good-human-readers-theyre-better_17021/
Flunk the Robo-Readers
Where Does Automated Essay Scoring Belong in K12 Education
https://www.edsurge.com/n/2014-09-22-where-does-automated-essay-scoring-belong-in-k-12-education
Free Robo-Graders
Hemingway App
Revision Assistant
https://www.revisionassistant.com/#/
Paper Rater
Peer Review Tools
LDC Rubrics
http://ldc.org/how-ldc-works/modules/what-task/rubric
Sample Online Rubric
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13tJkvBuoufBvNB885ZC8BMbGZF5o4XVuw929_i9Lrdc/edit#
Criteria Chart
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6qmQLlSxgMyWjRjekIwY3FkTFE/edit
Economic Systems Criteria Chart
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6qmQLlSxgMyZ3BnY3ZkX3VzV3M/view?usp=sharing
Peer Review Discussion Guide
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13tJkvBuoufBvNB885ZC8BMbGZF5o4XVuw929_i9Lrdc/edit#
Economic Systems Argumentative Rubric
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6qmQLlSxgMyNWR6OGVlbk82OEk/view?usp=sharing
Providing Effective Feedback
https://historyrewriter.com/2014/11/10/providing-effective-feedback/
Video Tutorials
Changing Weak Writing into Strong Writing
HistoryRewriter 