too much grading?

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too much grading?
By Lisa in FL

I went to a fantastic writing workshop. The teacher advised us not to give more writing assignments (of the longer, essay-type) than we can give meaningful feedback for. In other words, a five-paragraph essay every week
is ineffective, because there is no way for you to give quality feedback for it. You can build skills w/ shorter assignments.
Also, you can teach the kids the rubric that you are using. Our state has a writing assessment that looks at four traits-- focus, organization, support, and conventions. The instructor @ the workshop gave us a kid-friendly description for each part of the rubric,

and used writing samples for the kids to evaluate in groups. They focused on one trait at a time (I'm going to work on Focus in Sept, Organization in Oct, etc) until they're experienced with the rubric. They move gradually from evaluating others' writing to evaluating their own. Kids are NOT good peer-editors and evaluators, unless you take the time to teach them. The great thing is that by teaching them to self-evaluate, the writing will improve and your job will be simplified.