Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Teacher who doesn't read student essays

Peer grading starting in 3rd grade is the norm here too - and I think it's been really good for my kids both because they get practice in catching mistakes and correcting them in spelling/punctuation/grammar etc but also because they have the opportunity to read different writing styles and response types.

Unlike mon's experience, the peer edit step is just a step in our kids' classrooms - their teachers still read and edit/critique their writing assignments as the last step in the writing process. I can tell the teachers are reading them because they write in notes in various places in the work, make suggestions, and explain their grades. I think it's really sad to think of teachers assigning work that they aren't going to take the time to read and give feedback on!

polarbear

My high school AP English classes did peer reviews, but those peer grades had no input on the teacher's final grade. It was just an exercise in our ability to critique others, and accept criticism in return.

And thank goodness, because most of my peers had no idea what they were doing. Much of the feedback was idiotic. I was never amused when my correct grammar was "corrected."

Indeed. I kept reining DD in on that score, which in retrospect maybe I shouldn't have. She might have enjoyed it more if she had written about King Abraham Lincoln and the alien monkey invasion.

I may go to Heck for sharing this, but considering it came from my septuagenarian mother, I think I should get a pass:
http://wtvr.com/2014/04/08/english-teacher-profane-letter/

The actual profanity is blurred, but obvious.

At least the knucklehead student has a teacher who takes the time to read & criticize.

Seemed an appropriate response. I dislike peer editing. A student should be able to decide whether to share their private work. I think making them share is a) encouraging the child to curtail personal expression, and/or b) providing ammunition to bullies. I would have been in the formal category as i objected to sharing any but the most mundane writing without free consent.

Just so that no one thinks this is a modern problem, I had a science teacher in middle school (mid-80s) who used to assign bunches of questions and would make us rewrite the question and the answer. It turned out that he never really read them, so once you got past the first couple of them, you could write whatever you want. We used to have great fun with that, but now it's just sad.

This is so bloody hilarious... I had to share.

DS's teacher had the kids use on on-line system for submitting papers, which at first I thought was a nifty idea. Well now I know why. The teacher used this on-line system to perform the only critique the papers will ever see.

So my son received a computer-generated critique that managed to point out one missing comma and two spelling errors (that simply weren't in the checker's dictionary).

Passive voice? Not flagged. Nor was anything else that I know dang sure plagued that 1000 word paper. Glad he'll get to learn whether or not he provided strong theses... and properly supported with meaningful examples.

So he added the missing comma and will be resubmitting tonight to get his A. Awesome... absolutely awesome.

I'll make sure his short-list of colleges have robust remedial writing programs available.

I know students who write one paragraph, then copy and paste it until the AI grading system gives them the top score in the rubric. (They write their own, rather than ripping it from published works, so the plagiarism checker doesn't flag them.)

Oh, now that's amazing.

I gotta share that with DS. And then get an iron-clad promise that he will never EVER do such a dastardly thing.

LOL.

My DS is too honest or something to try these things. Last year in science I actually told him to just write nonsense when he didn't have a good answer to some of the science worksheets. The teacher only graded on completion and if one box wasn't filled out the whole page was marked wrong. I couldn't get him to do it. I guess that is good.. but aggregating since the other kids had figured this out.

My kids have both used these systems, but it always just to check for plagiarism and first level grammar check. The teacher has always looked it over, although many times not for months and they give very little feedback.