Why Does Your Instructor Grade Your Writing As She Does? – It was an accidental discovery.

The Practice Essay

Because the goal of writing is to help you learn our nation’s history and the priority is for you to be accurate, I grade your writing by comparing what you wrote side by side with the facts in the textbook. With essays submitted, I use a method that lets me quickly identify all of the submissions where the students wrote on the same question. It is—as is obvious—a slow method, but it works.

1.     I place side by side these things. (With distance learning classes, I download the submissions, print them, and then place them side by side).

·         On the left, the textbook opened to the probable section or sections students should have used.

·         On the right, a stack of all the submissions of students’ papers on that question.

I also have a stack of rubrics to mark and a matrix for recording the class results.

 

In other words. I make it possible to grade you accurately and very fast.

The source turned to the exact page the student should have used or the content

 

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What you wrote for your Practice Essay

 

Grid page (from Banner) that I uses as a matrix to chart which question you had and who misread, “half-copied” and so on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.     I use the Evidence Rubric for feedback and grade each student’s submissions one by one. (With distance learning classes, I log what I see on the grid page on the right and then enter the results in the online rubric.)

3.     If there are multiple possible questions, I then repeat the steps above with the next question.

The 2 Unit Essays

With the two essays for the Unit exams, I grade one of the questions using the layoff shown above. Sometimes I toss a coin or something like that to be sure I am not grading the same topic number each time.

 

Unless I find problems such as factual errors in that first essay I grade, I grade the other one without the textbook side by side with your paper—a quicker method.

 

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2013

 

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2013

WCJC Home:

http://www.wcjc.edu/