Chapter 14 in Bean: Writing Comments on Students' Papers

Bean begins his discussion by talking about how teachers often forget the "personal dimension" of grading students' papers (239). So often we got lost in a sea of run-on sentences, underdeveloped ideas, weak arguments, awkward sentences, missed punctuations, and lazy conclusions that we forget we are grading actual human beings' papers. We need to be aware of this as teachers so our comments aren't overly short or snarky. Our comments should encourage revision not dropping out of college.

Bean listed a sampling of comments left on students' paper and the reactions the students had to the comments. Here are some of my favorites:

Comment: Be more specific.
Student response: You be more specific (241).

Love it. So often "be specific" doesn't mean anything to a student. I know what when I have gotten that comment, I wondered "about what? I thought I was being specific."

Comment: You haven't really thought this through.
Response: How do you know what I thought? (241)

Comment: Try harder.
Response: I feel like kicking the teacher (241).

As you can see, all of these comments discouraged students from writing and revising when they should be encouraging students to do these things.

Shortly after Bean states that our purpose "is not to point out everything wrong with a paper but to facilitate improvement" (241). While I do agree with this to some extent, I do feel the responsibility to the writer to point out everything that I see as the reader, at least all of the higher-order concerns. I feel like when a student comes to me for help, or I am giving a student back his paper revise, he is trusting me to point out all the places that I see where he could revise his paper. I feel obligated to do so. As a student, I know I would be very frustrated if I revised my paper and re-submitted it and had cleared up all the issues that my teacher had pointed out, but I still got a B on the essay because the teacher didn't point out everything, so I didn't know that it needed more work. In fact, I would pissed.

I know it can be overwhelming for students to see all of those comments, but at least I feel like I am equipping them with everything they need to get an "A" and improve their essay. I feel like that is my job as a tutor or instructor. Plus, I don't think these comments are too overwhelming if handled appropriately. Instead of saying, "Be more specific," ask a question in the margin that the student can answer that will make his essay more specific. Psychologically this is better anyway. The student doesn't think, "Oh, I did this wrong," but "Oh, the teacher wants to know more.

I did, however, totally agree with Bean when he said that teachers' comments should prompt revision and deal primarily with higher-order concerns. He defines higher-order concerns as "ideas, organization, development, and overall clarity" (243). He then offers a list of questions to help guide revision:

-Does the draft follow the assignment?
-Does the writer have a thesis that addresses an appropriate problem or question?
-If the draft has a thesis, what is the quality of the argument?
-Is the draft effectively organized at the macro and micro level?

Again, Bean says the teacher should only comment on 2-3 areas, but as I stated before, I disagree.

I also disagree with how he suggests we handle lower order concerns. While I agree that we shouldn't line edit, he does suggest putting an "X" in the margin next to sentences that have grammatical errors. For a student who misplaced a comma, or forgot to put one in, this would be confusing as hell. A student wouldn't know if he was missing a comma, had improper punctuation, a problem with subject-verb agreement, or something totally different. I can see putting an "X" where there are misspellings or typos, but I think we should still circle other grammatical errors if we think the student does not know the rule. I think we should look for patterns of error, then explain the rule to the student. From what I hear, students are most frustrated with comments because they don't know how to go about fixing them. An "X" would just frustrate students, in my opinion.

Bean then goes on to discuss endnotes. He suggests that endnotes should" sum up the strengths of drat [...] identify main problems, [...] and make a few specific suggestions" (251). I think this is an effective model.

Basically what I gather is that we should use revision-based comments to respond to places where a student could improve his essay, praise him when he does it right, and have individual conferences with our students to make sure that they understand our comments and have a plan for revision.

Review of the Halls of Poetry

The Halls of Poetry creative works reading took place in the Hall of Languages, room 203, on Monday, October 19th, at 4:30 PM. Students from Dr. Jacob's undergraduate poetry class and Dr. Reid's graduate creative writing class too the stage to share their poetry, prose, and song.

The event was a success. Lots of people showed up, including folds outside of the creative writing classes. Dr. Jacobs required her students to read, so there were a lot of fresh faces at the podium. I overheard many folks say that they enjoyed being able to hear the new voices and see the new faces. I think this was a great way to introduce new students into Commerce's writing community. It also served as a way for more experienced readers to find a new audience for their works and learn new techniques from writers that they had never heard before.
I also took the opportunity to get many of these people involved with The Mayo Review, so that was good.

Hopefully this is an event we can do every year.

The Mayo Review Open Mic Night Interview

This is my semi-formal interview. I talked a little bit with Brandon, the Editor of The Mayo Review, about the Open Mic Night, and I am also going to use some of my own knowledge as the Assistant Editor to talk about the the event.

We planned the Open Mic Night for Thursday, October 22, 2009. We were planning on having an open mic night sometime in October before we even knew about the Commerce Week on Writing, but we decided to move the event to the actual Week on Writing so we could join in on the festivities. Our Submissions deadline is also coming up, November 2nd, so we figured it would be great opportunity to really get the word out one last time.

We decided to host it at the Cowhill Express since we held our first open mic at The Spot. The Cowhill Express seems to draw in just as large of a crowd as The Spot, and it is just the perfect atmosphere for an open mic night.

I think this open mic got a lot of extra publicity because of the Commerce Week on Writing. I know several teachers, myself included, gave students extra credit for attending the event. We also did our usual advertising by placing flyers up in the Hall of Languages and advertising the event of Facebook.

I did not get to attend the event because I got a sinus infection and was having some problems with my blood pressure, but I did speak with Brandon briefly about the event's success. He said:

"Things went really great. LOTS of new faces and a nice long list of readers/singers. A few people said from the mic how they thought Open Mic was great and that they planned on coming back. One of the guys who read also turned out to be someone from the East Texan who later spoke to me and Toni, so it looks like we'll get a little more publicity."

I think it is great that there were a lot of new faces and that people said they had never been to open mic nights before and planned on coming back. I was also happy to hear that we are going to get a little more publicity in the East Texan. That's what the Commerce Week on Writing is about, right, getting new people to think about, talk about, and enjoy writing. I would say mission accomplished.

Commerce Week on Writing

Well, I realize that I posted the wrong posts to the wrong blogs, so if you read my last blog, you were probably really confused because that post was meant for my pregnancy blog. Sorry!

Here is the right post:

For the Commerce Week On Writing I am attending and helping out at the following events:
-Halls of Poetry
-NCOW Theatre
-Open House and Memoir Workshop
-Open Mic Night for Kids
-The Mayo Review Open Mic Night
-The Story Slam

I'll be videotaping whatever events need to be video taped. I already hung up flyers for the Mayo Review, and I created a flyer for the Open house. I am also working on a board for the Open House.

I created a facebook event for the Commerce Week on Writing and invited several people.

Open Mic Night

The Mayo Review is hosting its second Open Mic Night of the year on October 22, 2009, at the Cowhill Experss in downtown Commerce. The event kicks off at 7:30. Come and listen, or come and share your poetry, prose, drama, or music with Commerce's growing writing community, and learn more about The Mayo Review, and how you can get involved.

Hope to see you there!

Writing Center Open House and Memoir Workshop

On Tuesday, October 20, 2009, the Texas A&M University-Commerce Writing Center (HL 103) will be hosting a series of events:

From 2:00-3:00, the Writing Center will be open to the public for a series of Creative Writing Workshops. Bring your poetry, drama, and/or prose, and have a one-on-one session with an experienced tutor.

From 5:00-7:00, there will be an Open House. This is your opportunity to get an insider's look at the services provided by TAMU-C's Writing Center, have a Meet and Greet with some of the tutors, and enjoy some refreshments.

Also from 5:00-7:00 in the Writing Center, Dr. Fred Tarpley and the Silver Leos will be holding a Memoir Workshop.

Hope to see you there!

Summary and Thoughts on "Designing Tasks for Active Thinking and Learning" from Bean's Engaging Ideas (No, I couldn't come up with an original title.)

I actually wanted to do my post on chapter 6, but I was too slow to raise my hand, and I wound up with chapter 7. Glad I did. This has been the most helpful chapter to me thus far. It sparked a whole bunch of ideas that I am going to use in my lab class. I'll talk about those in a bit. First, a summary of chapter seven:

The goal of this chapter is to help teachers design activities and assignments for their classroom that encourage critical thinking. Classrooms are then "problem-centered" rather than "lecture-centered," and students are "active" in their learning instead of "passive" (121). How much do you really learn by just having knowledge "dumped" in your head via lecture and notes? I know I learn more, and understand what I have learned more when I discover the knowledge through my own discussions, writings, and explorations that require me to use my own problem -solving skills.

In a classroom that encourages active thinking and learning, the teacher is not an all-powerful authority figure. Instead the teacher acts as a "coach" and a "guide" (121). "In adopting this role, the teacher presents students with critical problems, gives students supervised practice at solving them, and coaches their performance through encouragement, modeling, helpful intervention and advice, and critiquing their performance" (121). So teachers no longer consume their time planning out their lecture; they instead spend their time planning critical thinking activities for their class.

Bean states that, "the goal in designing critical thinking problems is to convert students from passive to active learners who use course concepts to confront problems, gather and analyze data, prepare hypotheses, and formulate arguments" (122). Bean offers "ten strategies for designing critical Thinking Tasks:"

1) Develop tasks or assignments in which students have to link course concepts with personal experience. That way, students apply the knowledge that they learned in class instead of just trying to commit it to their memory.

2) Develop assignments/activities in which a student has to explain course concepts to someone who does not understand them. This could be useful in helping students who don't understand difficult concepts while also helping the students who do. Every time you teach something to someone, you understand it a little better yourself. That is why I love tutoring!

3) Give students a thesis that they either have to defend or attack. This will help students see that there is more than one side to an issue.

4) Give students a problem that they then have to find the solution for.

5) Give students supporting evidence and make them write the thesis/hypothesis/ or argument that this data supports.

6) Make frame sentences for paragraphs and have the students "flesh" them out by adding in the specifics. This also helps with organization.

7) Design activities centered around "what if's" and allow students to role-play. That way they can look at problems from different points of view.

8) Have students write summaries/abstracts or articles and/or lectures.

9) Have students write a dialogue between two people with two different points of views on a controversial topic.

10) Develop case studies.

Bean 121-132.

I think these are excellent activities because it makes students responsible for their learning. This way they won't be able to get away with, "My teacher's lectures are just so boring," etc. I also think students learn better from "hands on" activities.

ENG 100L

I am going to do the frame paragraphs with my students and maybe even a frame thesis for their critical reflections paper. A lot of them are struggling with what exactly a thesis statement is and how to write them, and they are even more confused about keeping one idea in a paragraph and having that idea support the thesis. I think this could help clarify things for them. I've tried lecturing, but I don't think that works as well. Thank you, Bean. I also changed up their dialogue journals after reading this chapter. Here's the plan:

Dialogue Journals: English 100 10L

These assignments will be the rest of your dialogue journal entries. You may type these assignments, though you are not required to; however, it may be easier to do a word count. In these assignments you don’t have to worry so much about grammar, organization, or structure. I do, however, want you to write in complete, coherent sentences. You will be graded on whether you meet the word count or not, and the quality of your thinking, not your writing. These assignments will help you greatly when it comes to writing your critical reflections paper. If you spend the time on these assignments, writing your critical reflections paper should be a breeze. These assignments will make up a significant portion of your grade, and I will not accept late work. NO EXCEPTIONS. If you’re not in class the day that it is due, find a way to get it to me before 8 a.m. that day.

Class Summaries: Each week you will write a 250 word summary of your lectures/activities in your ENG 100 lecture class. Make sure to include in your summary the most valuable thing you learned that week. Your week ends on Thursday, so you must turn the summary into me the following Tuesday. Your summaries will begin with Week 5.

Writing Center Visit Reflection: After every writing center visit, write a 250 word report answering the following questions:
- In this visit, what was most helpful to you?
- In this visit, what was least helpful to you?
- Did you agree with your tutor’s advice or disagree?
- After the session, what is your plan for revision? In other words, how will you make use of the tutor’s advice?
These reflections will be due the same day as your writing center visit. You will begin this assignment with your 3rd writing center visit.

Writing Experience: Write a 250 word account of your experience writing every writing assignment. Touch on the following issues:
- What was the easiest part of writing this assignment?
- What did you struggle with most writing this assignment?
- What advice do you hope to get from your teacher, peer reviewer, or writing center tutor?
- You can also talk about your experiences peer reviewing.
This will be due one week after you turn in your writing assignment to your instructor.

Instructor Feedback: After you get an essay back from your instructor, write a 250 word report summarizing the following:
- Your expectations. Did you expect to do better on this paper, or were you pleasantly surprised?
- What did you make of your teacher’s comments? Did you agree with them? Were any of them hard to understand?
- After reading your instructor’s comments, what is your plan for revision?
You will begin this starting with WA 2. These won’t have specific due dates, but I will be making sure you are getting them done.

It might sound like a lot, but they need guidance. If I just give them a prompt in class, they don't take it seriously. That is why I put a word count down. Also, the book hasn't been at the bookstore, so they haven't been having to do any reading or homework for this class thus far. I've been lecturing (off the book), and we've been working on peer review. They also aren't doing their WC visits, so if there is a little paper/reflection involved as well, it might motivate them to go. I got these ideas from reading this chapter.