Peer evaluations can be quite useful. Elbow, Lamott and Routman all agree and can be used for different age levels. Routman has her elementary students review each other’s work. Some of them are done in small groups; some are shared with the class. Elbow does this with his college students and Lamott does this with her writing classes. They all agree that feedback from peers is extremely useful. Plus, with all these view points, you aren’t getting “graded” by one person. Elbow argues that grading is subjective, and by having your peers evaluate your work, you get a more rounded critique.
Something my master teacher does in her class is free writing. At the beginning of the school year, they were writing to build stamina, something very similar with Elbow’s class. This you can do at any age and benefits everyone. Towards the end of September, the class was writing for 20 minutes and the students were sharing (it was voluntary) to the class. I think it is great to share in a safe environment. Not only can it help your writing, but it may help someone else write. It may spark a story or an idea which a person forgot about.
Holistic scoring wasn’t looked too highly on by Elbow. But when I read about it, I thought about the WEST tests. They hire people who are trained to use a rubric. I would be interested to see how each of those people grade. Is it consistent? If a grader comes across a failing paper, I wonder if they have someone else look at it to check if it really is failing. And as teachers, should we ask a fellow teacher to have a look at a student’s paper, to see if we are being consistent?
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