Alternatives to Grading Student Writing

Evaluating a student's progress as a writer requires striking a delicate balance between the student's needs and the school's needs. This collection of essays offers several innovative options, concluding with ideas for formulating plans of action for introducing grading alternatives in classrooms, schools, and districts.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814101305
• ISBN13: 9780814101308
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: National Council of Teachers of English (Ncte
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 2.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Alternatives to Grading Student Writing

Evaluating a student's progress as a writer requires striking a delicate balance between the student's needs and the institutional needs of universities, colleges, and school districts. This up-to-date collection of essays, assembled by NCTE's Committee on Alternatives to Grading Student Writing, offers the writing teacher several innovative and interesting options. An introductory essay by editor Stephen Tchudi, chair of the Committee, delineates the field of possibilities - or "degrees of freedom" - determined by these often competing needs that teachers must address. Tchudi's introduction is followed by a section reviewing research on grading (which resoundingly argues against grading papers) and the paradigm shifts in compostition that make paper grading a questionable practice. Further sections address ways of making response to writing an increasingly productive part of the writing process, and classroom strategies from pass/fail and contract grading to portfolios, checklists, and student-developed criteria - all within the context of school grading systems. The volume concludes with ideas for faculty workshops, which can be used by groups of teachers (or prospective teachers), as well as by individual readers, to formulate plans of action for introducing grading alternatives in classrooms, schools, and districts. Alternatives to Grading Student Writing will provide elementary-to-college teachers with thoughtful, state-of-the-art, research-based approaches to classroom assessment. --- from book's back cover