COMMON TEACHING SITUATIONS:
Student Writing
As a TA, you might work with student writing in a number of ways. You may grade it and/or assign it, using either assignments developed by the professor in charge of the course or that you have developed yourself. You may also take your students through the writing process, assigning drafts and encouraging peer response and using writing to encourage active learning.
The following suggestions will help to make your work easier in each of these roles and will also help your students be more successful with their writing.
Grading Writing
If you have made clear to yourself and your students your criteria for grading a writing assignment, you will have a focused, objective way of responding, and your students will have a greater chance of meeting your expectations.
Develop grading criteria
Referring to the assignment, ask yourself what you expect students to do on the assignment. Your answer might result in a list of points reflecting the specific things you expect to see and how you expect to see them. Organize your list to reflect your priorities for the assignment; then think about what elements would be necessary for an A paper, a B paper, a C paper. This process should help you develop criteria specific to the particular assignment.
However, it is not enough for you alone to be aware of your grading rubric, you should also inform your students what you'll look for in their writing assignments. When they are informed of your requirements, they will be less likely to complain that their grade was "subjective." Whatever language you use to describe your grading scheme in this public rubric, you should then also use when you comment on student papers.
Be consistent
If TAs in charge of other sections are reading the same assignment, work together to develop, test, and use grading criteria. Some departments also require a "norming" session, so TAs can adjust their own grading to match that of their department's requirements.
Strategies for Giving Students Feedback
Consider attaching a separate sheet to each student's paper on which you have printed the criteria specific to the assignment, leaving blanks for your comments.
Whenever possible, make your comments text-specific by referring to particular places in the paper where students are successful or where problems occur. Comments like "Good!" and "Unclear" provide students with little information to help them revise or write the next paper.
Choose three areas that you will focus on in your end comments. That way, your students won't be overwhelmed by a paper that seems you've written more than they have.
Limit sentence level comments. Don't mark every grammar and spelling error in the paper; instead, select a representative page or paragraph for this level of response and ask the student to apply what he or she learns from your work to the rest of the paper.
Assigning Writing
Whether or not you have developed the writing, students will be more successful if the assignment contains the following information:
Purpose
What is the goal of the assignment? Why are students being asked to write it?
Audience
Who are students writing to? You? Each other? A specific audience?
Grading Criteria
Include a summary of the criteria you will use to grade the writing
Models
What have students encountered in their readings or lectures that illustrates the kind of thinking and writing you expect?
Format
Are there any special requirements?
Length, Due Date
Place this information prominently on the assignment sheet
Taking Students Through The Writing Process
Other ways to help students be more successful with their writing are to encourage drafts and peer response groups and to offer writing conferences. Not only do students benefit from this process, you will also benefit by receiving final papers that are easier to read and grade.
Drafts
Encouraging or requiring students to write drafts of papers one to two weeks before they are due helps students avoid writing the paper the night before and often results in better final papers. If there is time, you can review drafts, but students can also be referred to peer response groups or to writing centers.
Peer response groups
Having students respond to one another's drafts, either in pairs or as members of a small group, can permit valuable revision to take place without making more work for you as the grader. As readers of each other's work, students are especially effective in determining whether their peers have completed the required tasks of the assignments. For more information about using peer response, contact CIDR.
Writing Centers
Many departments have writing centers. If you send students to the center in your department, be sure to provide the center staff with copies of your assignment.
Writing Conferences
When there is time, one-to-one or small group writing conferences are valuable for helping students move from the draft to the revision.
Using Writing to Encourage Active Learning
There are many ways to take advantage of the role writing plays in learning. Below is a list of some roles writing can play in teaching and learning and how to facilitate them. For additional ideas about integrating writing into your teaching and your students' learning, contact staff consultants at the Center for Instructional Development and Research.
- To stimulate class or small group discussion
- To focus attention in small group discussion
- To focus attention or encourage reflection in lecture
- To direct reading
Assign five to ten-minute writing exercises.
These exercises can range from lists showing what information students have grasped to paragraphs in which students compare and analyze different positions or take a position and defend it. Sharing these written responses can enable both you and your students to discover what they know, what they still need to find out, and how they are thinking.
You do not need to grade this writing.
Additional Resources from UW and other universities are available online at Writing Tools and Resources, from CIDR (http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/writingtools.htm)