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0.5: C. Ungrading

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    c. ungrading

    Music theory teacher Kris Shaffer\(^4\) says that “letter grades do an absolutely horrible job” of three things that would help students improve their writing: (1) determining whether students understand a concept well enough to implement it, (2) identifying elements of student writing that need improvement, and (3) helping students learn to better self-assess. Shaffer makes his argument specifically about writing music, but I’ve recast it here for writing words. Each of these three goals presents a helpful perspective on developing authors’ needs. An author’s ability to compose requires skill, understanding, and situational familiarity. None of those goals are met through a letter grade. Grades help label, sort, and rank students; they don’t inform students, target instruction, or encourage self-awareness. Those who have left school and begun their careers have long stopped expecting grades to help determine what they do and don’t do well because grades aren’t appropriate measures of learning. Schools need to stop relying on grades, too.

    Instead, we should teach people how to improve their writing through reflection and peer review. Variations of peer review help us write in many of our day-to-day situations. We learn what sorts of text messages work best by observing how our friends text and respond to us. We learn what makes an effective email by reading the ones we get and responding or deleting as we see fit. 

    In other words, situations, not teachers, define the importance of writing.

    If grades tell nothing meaningful about writing ability, and if learning to work as/with peer reviewers provides insights into and feedback about writing performance, then the traditional structure of writing education is backward.

    Writing should not be done for a grade. Teachers should not grade writing; instead, they should empower their students to meaningfully assess the effectiveness of writing.

    questions:

    • Do you learn more when you have intrinsic reasons versus extrinsic ones? Give an example…

    • What does it mean to you to know you may assess yourself and your learning in this course?

     

    Wednesday February 6, 2013\(^5\)

    "Some years ago Sir Ken Robinson, the author and creative advocate, once told a story of a six year-old girl in school.

    The girl was sitting in the back of the classroom drawing when the teacher walked back to her and asked “What are you drawing?” The girl said “I’m drawing a picture of God.” To which the teacher laughed a little and replied: “But nobody knows what God looks like.” And the little girl said “They will in a minute.”

    In telling this story Sir Robinson explains that children aren’t afraid to take chances. If they don’t know something they’ll risk failing or being wrong. Creativity isn’t about being wrong, of course, but to quote Sir Robinson: “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

    In those circumstances we have to look to children as examples. What do children do if they don’t know something? They think about it and then make assumptions, but they make those ideas without fear of being wrong and without worrying of failing."

    […]

    Posted 2/6/2013 at 4:15 PM

    questions:

    • What do you know about the topic of creative writing, overall? 

    • Have you written creatively before? If so, what have you written?

    • Are you ready to practice writing in various genres and categories?

    • Are you willing to take risks? Are you willing to be wrong, whatever that might mean?

    \(^4\)Snippet from = Friend, Christopher R. “Student Writing Must Be Graded By The Teacher.” Bad Ideas About Writing. Edited by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Libraries, Digital Publishing Institute, 2017. CC-BY.

    \(^5\)Blog entry by Sybil Priebe, licensed CC-BY.

     

     

    This page titled 0.5: C. Ungrading is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Sybil Priebe (Independent Published) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.